If It's Good for the Firm,It's Good for Me: Insider Trading and Repurchases Motivated by Undervaluation

My findings suggest that information inherent in insider trading can be used to identify undervalued repurchasing firms. I examine the relation between insider trading and the performance of open market repurchase (OMR) firms. I show that firms with high net insider buying prior to OMR announcements not only earn abnormal stock returns in both the short‐ and long‐run, but also exhibit better operating performance. Overall, the evidence is consistent with insiders timing their trades prior to OMR announcements.     

What do insiders know? Evidence from insider trading around share repurchases and SEOs

We examine the nature of information contained in insider trades prior to corporate events. Insiders' net buying increases before open market share repurchase announcements and decreases before seasoned equity offers. Higher insider net buying is associated with better post-event operating performance, a reduction in undervaluation, and, for repurchases, lower post-event cost of capital. Insider trading also predicts announcement returns and long-term abnormal returns following events. Overall, our results suggest that insider trades before corporate events contain information about changes both in fundamentals and in investor sentiment.     

Insider Trading after Repurchase Tender Offer Announcements: Timing versus Informed Trading

Abnormally high net insider selling is commonly observed after repurchase tender offer (RTO) announcements although, on average, firms experience positive abnormal returns in the years after the repurchases. We explore two potential explanations: liquidity trade timing and informed trading. Consistent with the notion that fixed price RTOs are more likely than Dutch-auction RTOs to signal undervaluation, the results suggest that insider selling after fixed price RTO announcements are driven largely by insiders who time their trades with the repurchase announcements. In contrast, selling after Dutch-auction RTOs seems to be driven primarily by informed traders who exploit mispricing associated with the repurchase announcements.     

Merger Announcements and Trading

We test whether an increase either in informed trades or in large liquidity trades leads to greater correlation of trading volume across markets. We confirm that both trading volume and positive returns of target companies are abnormally high before merger announcements. We find a statistically significant increase in the correlation between New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq/regional trading volume before merger announcements. Furthermore, after merger announcements, we find evidence of both large liquidity trading and a statistically significant increase in the correlation of trading volume across markets.     

The Wealth Effects of Repurchases on Bondholders

Prior research has documented positive abnormal stock returns around the announcements of repurchase programs; several explanations of these returns have been suggested, including signaling, free cash flow, and wealth redistributions. This study analyzes abnormal stock, bond, and firm returns around repurchase announcements to examine these hypotheses. We find evidence consistent with both signaling and wealth redistribution. The loss to bondholders is a function of the size of the repurchase, and the risk of the firm's debt. We also find that bond ratings are twice as likely to be downgraded as upgraded after the announcement of the repurchase program.     

Managers' Trading Around Stock Repurchases

We analyze personal open market trades by managers around stock repurchases by tender offer. With the exception of Dutch auction offers, managers trade their firm's shares prior to repurchase announcements as though repurchases convey favorable inside information to outsiders. Prior to fixed price repurchase offers that do not follow takeover-related events, managers increase their buying and reduce their selling of their firm's shares. Prior to repurchases that follow takeover-related events, only a decrease in selling is found. No abnormal trading precedes Dutch auction repurchase offers.     

Are corporate managers savvy about their stock price? Evidence from insider trading after earnings announcements

We find that insiders trade as if they exploit market underreaction to earnings news, buying (selling) after good (bad) earnings announcements when the price reaction to the announcement is low (high). We also find that insider trades attributable to public information about earnings and the price reaction generate abnormal returns. By demonstrating that managers spot market underreaction to earnings news, our results imply that managers are savvy about their company’s stock price.     

Insider trading and share repurchases: Do insiders and firms trade in the same direction?

Signaling undervaluation is often considered a primary motive for repurchasing stock, but insider trading activity by repurchasing firms is not always consistent with undervaluation. Net insider buying and selling are both more frequent in quarters when firms are repurchasing non-trivial amounts of stock, with the odds of observing a repurchase the highest in quarters with net insider selling. In multinomial logit models, share repurchases associated with net insider selling are positively related to illiquidity, option exercises by insiders, and pre-repurchase returns and negatively correlated with industry-adjusted book to market ratios when compared to other repurchases. Hence, repurchases when insiders are selling stock are more likely done to support share prices or avoid dilution and are less likely undervaluation signals. We find that insider trades either validate or mitigate the undervaluation signal of the repurchase. Abnormal returns of repurchasing firms with net insider buying versus net insider selling in a given quarter are significantly higher for the quarter immediately after the repurchase and the three subsequent years. For repurchases accompanied by net insider selling, abnormal returns are negligible after only one year.     

Are individual investors liquidity providers around earnings announcements? Evidence from an emerging market

We first document that both buying and selling by individual investors before earnings announcements are negatively correlated with post-event abnormal returns using a unique dataset that allows us to precisely identify individual investor trading. Next, we show that both buying and selling by individual investors before earnings announcements not only are positively associated with contemporaneous returns, but also respond positively to past returns. This is consistent with the idea that individual investors act as liquidity providers (demanders) when they sell (buy) before earnings announcements. Individual investor buying and individual investor selling after earnings announcements confirm this point.     

Individual Investor Trading and Return Patterns around Earnings Announcements

This paper provides evidence of informed trading by individual investors around earnings announcements using a unique data set of NYSE stocks. We show that intense aggregate individual investor buying (selling) predicts large positive (negative) abnormal returns on and after earnings announcement dates. We decompose abnormal returns following the event into information and liquidity provision components, and show that about half of the returns can be attributed to private information. We also find that individuals trade in both return‐contrarian and news‐contrarian manners after earnings announcements. The latter behavior has the potential to slow the adjustment of prices to earnings news.     

Early Movers Advantage? Evidence from Short Selling during After‐Hours on Earnings Announcement Days

We examine short sellers’ after‐hours trading (AHT) following quarterly earnings announcements released outside of the normal trading hours. Our innovation is to use the actual short trades immediately after the announcements. We find that on these earnings announcement days, there is significant shorting activity in AHT relative to shorting activity both during AHT on nonannouncements days and during regular trading sessions around announcements. Short sellers who trade after‐hours on announcement days earn an excess return of 0.82% and 1.40% during before‐market‐open (BMO) and after‐market‐close (AMC)sessions, respectively. The magnitude of these returns increases to 1.48 (3.92%) for BMO (AMC) earnings announcements with negative surprise. We find that the reactive short selling during AHT has information in predicting future returns. Short sellers’ trades have no predictive power if they wait for the market to open to trade during regular hours. In addition, we find that the weighted price contribution during AHT increases with an increase in after‐hours short selling. Overall, our results suggest that short sellers in AHT are informed. Our findings remain robust using alternative holding periods and after controlling for macroeconomic news announcements during BMO sessions.     

Insider Trading and Corporate Governance: The Case of Germany

We analyse transactions by corporate insiders in Germany. We find that insider trades are associated with significant abnormal returns. Insider trades that occur prior to an earnings announcement have a larger impact on prices. This result provides a rationale for the UK regulation that prohibits insiders from trading prior to earnings announcements. Both the ownership structure and the accounting standards used by the firm affect the magnitude of the price reaction. The position of the insider within the firm has no effect, which is inconsistent with the informational hierarchy hypothesis.     

Accelerated share repurchases

Accelerated share repurchases (ASRs) are credible commitments by firms to repurchase shares immediately. Including an ASR in a repurchase program reduces the flexibility that firms have to alter an announced program in response to subsequent changes in the price and liquidity of its shares, unexpected shocks to cash flow and/or investment, etc. Thus, we investigate whether firms' decisions to include ASRs in their repurchase programs are associated with factors expected to influence the costs of lost flexibility and the benefits of enhanced credibility and immediacy. We find robust evidence consistent with the costs of lost flexibility and the benefits of credibility and immediacy being important determinants of ASR adoption. Additionally, we find that ASR announcements are associated with positive average abnormal stock returns.     

INSIDER TRADING EFFECTS ON STOCK RETURNS AROUND OPEN-MARKET STOCK REPURCHASE ANNOUNCEMENTS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

In this paper we empirically examine the effects of insider trading activities, the percentage of common shares outstanding authorized for repurchase, and management ownership on stock returns around open-market stock repurchase announcements. The study is conducted on a sample of 204 firms that announced open-market stock repurchases between 1982 and 1990. Results show that insider trading activities during the month that immediately precedes the announcement have a significant effect. While stockholders of firms with insider net selling activities earn positive excess returns, those of firms with insider net buying activities earn larger and more significant excess returns. Insider trading activities during more distant periods do not show any effects on stock returns. Results also indicate that management ownership has a significant positive effect on stock returns, and this effect is more positive when the percentage of common shares outstanding authorized for repurchase is large.     

Do Limit Orders Alter Inferences about Investor Performance and Behavior?

Individual investors lose money around earnings announcements, experience poor posttrade returns, exhibit the disposition effect, and make contrarian trades. Using simulations and trading records of all individual investors in Finland, I find that these trading patterns can be explained in large part by investors' use of limit orders. These patterns arise mechanically because limit orders are price‐contingent and suffer from adverse selection. Reverse causality from behavioral biases to order choices does not appear to explain my findings. I propose a simple method for measuring a data set's susceptibility to this limit order effect.     

Synthetic Trades and Calendar Day Patterns The Case of the Dollar/Sterling Markets

Significant day of the week patterns are shown to exist in the dollar/sterling market. These patterns are associated with the returns to synthetic and actual forward trades as well as to spot trades. These trading strategies, geared to buying or selling sterling, reflect different timing, if not valuation, considerations on the part of traders. Nevertheless, pronounced calendar patterns are observed on Wednesdays for all the trading strategies evaluated. This is attributable to significantly different risks on Wednesdays. The observed end‐of‐the‐week patterns in forward returns persist and reinforce the returns at the start of the next week of trading. Furthermore, the overall returns to forward speculation on Fridays and Mondays are of opposite sign. Our results on calendar day patterns are thus supported by both parametric and non‐parametric tests. We provide evidence that the frequency of synthetic trading opportunities is inversely related to maturity. We also find that the period of market turbulence analyzed did not trigger abnormal opportunities for covered interest arbitrage.     

Information and Long‐Term Stock Performance Following Open‐Market Share Repurchases

We find that firm managers have private information when they decide on open‐market share repurchases, and that this information is significantly correlated with announcement period and post‐announcement abnormal returns. We further find that long‐term post‐announcement abnormal returns are related to private information differently for firms that actually repurchase shares when compared to firms that announce a repurchase program but do not acquire shares. Our results indicate that managers’ private information is only ambiguously revealed by the repurchase announcement, and that the market waits for the firm's subsequent actions, such as actual repurchase, to further interpret the private information.     

Can Companies Influence Investor Behaviour through Advertising? Super Bowl Commercials and Stock Returns

Recent research shows that mood and attention may affect investors’ choices. In this paper we examine whether companies can create such mood and attention effects through advertising. We choose a natural experiment by investigating price reactions and trading activity for firms employing TV commercials in 19 Super Bowl broadcasts over the 1969–2001 period. We find significant positive abnormal returns for firms which are readily identifiable from the ad contents, which is consistent with the presence of mood and attention effects. For recognisable companies with the number of ads greater than the sample mean, the event is followed by an average abnormal one day return of 45 basis points. The effect appears to persist in the short term with the 20‐day post‐event cumulative abnormal returns for such firms averaging 2%. We find significant abnormal net buying activity for small trades in shares of recognised Super Bowl advertisers indicating that small investors tend to be the ones most attracted by the increased publicity.     

Insider trading patterns

We revisit the information content of stock trading by corporate insiders with an expectation that opportunistic insiders will spread their trades over longer periods of time when they have a longer-lived informational advantage, and trade in a short window of time when their advantage is fleeting. Controlling for the duration of insiders' trading strategies, we find robust new evidence that both insiders' sales and purchases predict abnormal stock returns. In addition, we provide evidence that insiders attempt to preserve their informational advantages and increase their trading profits by disclosing their trades after the market has closed. When insiders report their trades after business hours, they are more likely to engage in longer series of trades, they trade more shares overall, and their trades are associated with larger abnormal returns. Finally, we show how accounting for these trading patterns sharpens screens for corporate insiders who trade on infor- mation.     

The information content of stock split announcements: Do options matter?

We provide a new test of the informational efficiency of trading in stock options in the context of stock split announcements. These announcements tend to be associated with positive abnormal returns. Our traditional event study results show abnormal returns that are significantly lower for optioned than non-optioned stocks, whether traded on the NYSE, Amex, or Nasdaq. After controlling for market returns, capitalization, book-to-market ratio, and trading volume, we find that the abnormal returns are significantly lower for NYSE/Amex optioned than non-optioned stocks. Although the results for Nasdaq stocks are not as clear, the overall effects tend to be lower after optioning. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the prices of optioned stocks embody more information, diminishing the impact of the stock split announcement. They provide new evidence of the beneficial effects of options on their underlying stocks.