Does the Centrual Economic Work Conference (CEWC) affect the stock market?

PurposeThis paper focuses on the orientation of the economy expressed in the communication of the Central Economic Work Conference (CEWC) of China and its relation with the stock market. This study seeks to explore which orientation of the economy may have a stronger impact on the rise of the stock market. It proposes words connoting orientation of the economy (WOE) that is closely related to the stock market, and different WOE has different impacts on the stock market in terms of intensity. The study aims to provide investors with better investment strategies by identifying the stronger developmental WOE.Design/methodology/approachThe paper opted for an exploratory study using the textual analysis approach, based on a corpus of 28 CEWC communications spanning from 1994 to 2021. The raw corpus amounted to 50,754 words in total that are treated with noise reduction method and record an effective corpus of 39,591.FindingsThe paper provides empirical insights into the close relationship of the WOE of the CEWC to the stock market, and different WOE has different impacts on the stock market in terms of intensity. It suggests that WOE connoting development may forecast a rising stock market if it is nearly 40% higher than the other two WOEs by impact index.Research limitations/implicationsAs WOE is only proven in the CEWC, this paper has its limitations in the scope of samples. It is necessary to apply WOE to more Central Bank communication (CBC) and countries. It is desirable to apply the Gunning–Fog index.Practical implicationsThe paper includes implications for investors to read out the orientation of the economy and the degree of different WOEs. Investors are keener to know “what” degree of the CEWC leads to the rise/fall of the stock market. The impact index can be an indicator of a tendency of the stock market, which upgrades the rationality of investment decisions.Social implicationsThis paper fulfills words connoting the orientation of economy as an identified linguistic feature, which the impact of CEWC on stockmarket can be measured.Originality/valuePrevious academic research studies mostly focus on the impact on stock market from the language features of CBC, rather than that from the more influential body, CEWC communication. This study seeks to provide the relationship of CEWC communication and the time length of the impact on the stock prices.