H7N9 not only endanger human health but also hit stock marketing

Jiang, Yan; Zhang, Yi; Ma, Chunna; Wang, Quanyi; Xu, Chao; Donovan, Connor; Ali, Gholam; Xu, Tan; Sun, Wenjie

Another plausible explanation in explaining the effect of H7N9 reporting on share market indices is due to the actual market participants in the Chinese stock markets. Compared with the United States where investors usually hire financial advisers to manage their investments and attain feedback on stock performance [10] , the Chinese stock market is far less mature and includes large numbers of individual investors who lack professional information and guidance and are quite often easily influenced by mass media reporting. Indeed, after experiencing the SARS outbreak in China, a majority of Chinese people fear H7N9 especially given the perception that it is a new emergency infectious disease with a high human fatal rate [5] , and with the potential to cause a severe epidemic or pandemic. Given mass media reporting that often indicates that humans infected by H7N9 virus from poultry are often in mortal danger, shareholders tend to selling off related stock without rational thinking.