The Impact of Information Flow by Co-Shareholder Relationships on the Stock Returns: A Network Feature Perspective

One shareholder may invest in different listed energy companies, so the information held by common shareholders can be transmitted among companies. Based on the two-mode complex network method, we construct an information flow shareholder-based network and employ different network indicators representing features of information flow as variables to construct panel regression models to analyze the impact of information flow among listed energy companies on the stock returns. The results indicate that the information flow of listed energy companies are increasingly important and play a significant role over a period. The efficiency of information flow among listed energy companies is increasingly high and the network information is concentrated among a few of these companies. The efficiency of information flow and the independence of listed energy companies are significantly positively related to stock returns, while the listed energy companies’ ability to control information is not significantly related to stock returns. We employ a new perspective to analyze the information flow on how to influence stock returns, and offer some related suggestions for investors and policy makers in the future.