Do investors learn about analyst accuracy? A study of the oil futures market

We study the impact of analyst forecasts on prices to determine whether investors learn about analyst accuracy. The straight‐forward relationship between supply and price, the economic importance of the market, the predictable timing of forecast error realizations, and the high frequency of the data make the crude oil market an interesting and advantageous setting. We find that prices rise (fall) when analysts forecast a decrease (increase) in supplies. During the 15 minutes following supply announcements, prices rise (fall) when forecasts have been too high (low). Importantly, both relationships are stronger for more accurate analysts, implying that investors learn about analyst accuracy. © 2009 Wiley Peridocals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 29:414–429, 2009     

Whisper forecasts of earnings per share: Is anyone still listening?

Whisper numbers—unofficial forecasts of earnings per share—were widely reported alongside analyst forecasts and actual earnings in the late 1990s. Bagnoli et al. (1999) showed that whispers appeared to be more accurate than analyst earnings forecasts for a small sample of high-tech firms. We extend their study and investigate whether the superior accuracy of whisper numbers extends to a broader sample, whether whispers have incremental information vis-à-vis analyst forecasts and whether the market rationally uses the information available in whispers. We find that analyst forecasts are more accurate than whispers; however, whisper forecasts contain value-relevant information incremental to analyst forecasts. We also find that the incremental information in whispers is fully incorporated into share price. Lastly we find that whispers are common for firms with lower forecast accuracy, and also that the presence of whispers improves the information environment of firms. Our findings imply that while analyst forecasts are the more accurate expectation of earnings, whispers play a complementary role in providing information about the firm. To the extent that managers convey information to the market in the form of whispers, this study shows that the private information is captured in the share price.     

审计质量对分析师预测的影响研究

分析师预测是市场进行投融资决策的重要依据,因此分析师职业受到更多关注。以2011-2018年上市公司的数据为样本,研究了审计质量与分析师预测两者之间的联系。研究结果发现,审计质量对上市公司分析师预测有显著影响。进一步研究发现,在董事会规模较大的公司中,审计质量与分析师预测关系更显著。     

A Breed Apart? Security Analysts and Herding Behavior

Herding behavior occurs when security analysts ignore their private opinions and issue public forecasts that mimic the earnings forecasts of others. Joining the consensus provides cover for analysts' reputations. We question the ethics of this practice when the motive to protect one's reputation takes precedence over the forecast accuracy motive. While seemingly predictable behavior from a self interested perspective, herding behavior has subtle but long term ramifications for the efficient pricing of securities and the preservation of the public trust in the financial services profession. We call upon each individual analyst as well as the profession to exercise the moral courage necessary to cultivate a climate of personal and public integrity. Personal resistance and pro-active policies are prescribed as actions to assist analysts to become more cognizant of their motivations, as well as to promote a more ethical professional context.     

Analyst coverage,corporate social responsibility,and firm risk

This article examines the empirical association between analyst coverage and corporate social responsibility (CSR) by investigating their simultaneous and causal effects, and its joint effects of CSR engagement and analyst coverage on firm risk. We find a positive association between the level and change of CSR engagement and the level and change of analyst coverage after considering simultaneity and causality. Based on the first‐difference approach, we further find that the change in analyst following from the previous year affects the change in CSR in the current period, whereas the change in CSR from the previous period does not influence the change in analyst following in the current period. Furthermore, we find that the change in CSR engagement as well as the interaction effect of changes in CSR and analyst coverage reduces the change of firm risk. When we examine the CSR strengths and concerns separately, analyst following does not significantly influence firms’ CSR strength but CSR concern activities decreases significantly as firms have more analyst followings. We further find the mediating role of financial analysts between CSR concerns (but not CSR strengths) and firm risk. We maintain that analysts provide indirect but additional social pressure to the firms to eventually reduce their irresponsible activities. Taken together, we interpret these results to support the stakeholder theory‐based conflict‐resolution explanation that considers CSR engagement as a vehicle to reduce conflicts of interest between managers and noninvesting stakeholders but not the overinvestment hypothesis that views CSR as a waste of valuable resources at the cost of shareholders.     

Analysts' Strategic Distortion during IPO Waves

We study analysts' strategic distortion during different stages of initial public offering (IPO) waves. We find analysts affiliated with leading underwriters time the market and “speak in two tongues” in recommendations and forecasts when they balance between conflicting interests of corporate finance clients and brokerage clients. They are more optimistic than nonaffiliated analysts in recommendations, but not in earnings forecasts in the early stages of IPO waves. More positive recommendations help them win a larger share of the booming IPO business. This distortion is absent in the late stages of IPO waves. We also find that the market discounts strong‐buy recommendations from affiliated analysts in the early stages of IPO waves.     

Does the External Monitoring Effect of Financial Analysts Deter Corporate Fraud in China?

We examine whether analyst coverage influences corporate fraud in China. The fraud triangle specifies three main factors, i.e. opportunity, incentive, and rationalization. On the one hand, analysts may reduce the fraud opportunity factor through external monitoring aimed at discouraging managerial misconduct, which can moderate agency problems. On the other hand, analysts may increase the fraud incentive factor by pressurizing managers to achieve short-term performance targets, which can exacerbate agency problem. In either case, the potential influence of analysts on the fraud rationalization factor may be more pronounced among firms that are more dependent on the capital market for corporate finance. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms, we show a negative association between corporate fraud propensity and analyst coverage, and that this effect is more pronounced among non-state-owned enterprises, which are more reliant on the stock market for external funding. These findings suggest that analyst coverage contributes to corporate fraud deterrence in emerging economies characterized by weak investor protection. The main policy implication is that further development of the analyst profession in emerging economies may benefit investors and strengthen business ethics.     

关键审计事项准则实施能提高分析师预测准确性吗?

我国于2016年12月批准印发了《在审计报告中沟通关键审计事项》准则,主要初衷是促使审计师披露更多公司个性化信息和审计过程信息,试图同时解决审计报告信息含量不足和财务报告信息过载带给使用者的困扰。为了反映实施该准则的效果,本文以中国2015-2017年沪深A股上市公司为样本,实证检验关键审计事项准则实施与分析师预测准确性的关系,并分别检验盈余管理和盈余透明度对两者关系的调节作用。研究发现,关键审计事项准则实施使得分析师预测准确性显著提高,上述关系在盈余管理程度高、盈余透明度低的公司更加明显;关键审计事项文本可读性越高的公司以及披露越多收入确认事项和资产减值事项的公司,分析师的预测准确性越高。     

股票送转、除权日异常收益与分析师关注度

本文使用事件研究的方法,利用1999年到2009年的中国股市上市公司的股票送股、转增事件的相关数据,分析发现这些股票会由于除权日时间而获得正的异常收益,这一结果不随着不同的统计假设、送转事件是否伴随着现金红利以及按照送股与转增的比例、现金红利数量划分的子样本而改变。探究这种异常收益的来源,发现分析师关注度(下文以分析师关注度来代替)会正向显著的影响异常收益;每多一名分析师关注这支送转的股票会在除权日多带来0.2元的异常收益,并且这种关系是稳健的,进一步通过工具变量回归解决了分析师关注的内生性。     

The Under-Examined Public: Making Sense of Industry Analysts and Analyst Relations

SUMMARY

The first section of this article looks at who the key analysts are in the U.S. and Europe, what it is they primarily do, and why they matter to the communication departments of IT and telecom vendors. A set of clear metrics is offered to gauge analyst influence across the board: on market intelligence, media, investors, and customers. The second section examines case studies of agency-driven and in-house managed analyst relations (AR) programs from both geographies, benchmarking the most successful strategies. From these and the direct testimony of analysts, a checklist or best-practices metric for analyst relations management is derived. The final section extrapolates from this model a template for measuring the results of analyst relations efforts. The template includes tools and services recently available through a new breed of agencies and consultants that specialize in evaluating analyst programs. It also, for the first time, broadens the tracking metrics to include the wide range of publics influenced by industry analysts (IAs).     

Stock price informativeness and analyst coverage

We examine whether more analyst coverage translates into more informative stock prices and apply this to both developed and emerging markets. We measure price informativeness using the association between current stock returns and future earnings. We argue that more informative stock prices contain more information about future earnings. Results indicate that analysts' activities do not contribute to the impounding of future earnings information into current stock prices, in accordance with the view that analysts are outsiders who do not have full access to firm‐level information. We also find that analysts specialize according to industry and that “industry expertise” is limited to developed countries. Overall, our evidence is consistent with the explanation that analysts focus on gathering and mapping industry‐ and market‐level information (macroeconomic information) into stock prices. Copyright © 2013 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The influence of strategic patterns of internationalization on the accuracy and bias of earnings forecasts by financial analysts

This paper examines how financial analysts’ earnings per share forecasts are affected by strategic patterns that multinational firms have used to expand abroad. Prior empirical studies have examined a firm's internationalization level as a one-dimensional construct involving increased task complexity for financial analysts’ forecasting and therefore resulting in lower accuracy and greater optimistic bias in earnings forecasts. In contrast, we use two strategic patterns of internationalization associated with geographic dispersion and cross-border integration to characterize a firm's international strategy, and find different empirical results using a sample of U.S. public companies with domestic and international operations. The empirical evidence suggests that geographic dispersion contributes to increases in forecasting accuracy and decreases in optimistic bias. Further, the results support that cross-border integration leads to decreases in forecasting accuracy. The two strategic patterns of internationalization are a consequence of managerial choices and therefore these results are important for managers, investors and shareholders as they help explain the linkages between international strategies and earnings forecasts by financial analysts.     

内部资本市场影响证券分析师预测吗?--基于我国企业集团的经验证据

企业集团内部资本市场错综复杂的关联交易降低了内部交易各方对高质量公开信息的需求,也提高了证券分析师通过市场信息对交易行为进行类比解读的成本。因此,企业集团内部资本市场规模越大,其成员公司的股价中包含的特有信息越少,体现为更少的证券分析师关注度和更低的盈余预测准确度。通过对我国2004-2011年企业集团成员公司内部资本市场关联交易和分析师预测的考察,本文提供了支持上述推测的经验证据,拓宽了分析师盈余预测影响因素的研究范围,同时增进了实务界对企业集团内部资本市场的理解。     

Is cognitive bias really present in analyst forecasts? The role of investor sentiment

This paper analyses four key markets within the European context. In this context, where the level of analyst coverage is lower than in the US setting, we aim to ascertain whether the origin of optimism in analyst forecasts in these markets is mainly strategic or whether it also contains an element of cognitive bias. Despite the fact that forecast errors lack the explanatory power to account for a significant percentage of the relationship between market sentiment and future stock returns, our new tests based on selection bias (SB1 and SB2), in conjunction with an analysis of abnormal trading volume, confirm the presence of both cognitive bias and strategic behaviour in analyst forecasts. This shows that, although regulation can reduce analyst optimism bias, the benefits are constrained by the fact that optimism bias is partly associated with cognitive bias.     

职业声誉、信息质量与信息吸收效率

中国的审计市场正处于发展阶段,存在大量声誉差异较大的审计事务所,这为研究声誉机制如何为企业带来价值提供了特殊的制度环境。从证券分析师视角出发,以"四大"作为高职业声誉事务所的代表,研究结果发现:聘用"四大"审计的企业,分析师预测精确度较高,预测分歧度较低。这表明聘用高职业声誉的事务所能够提供更高质量的信息,降低了投资者对企业内部价值相关信息的分歧,提高了市场对信息的吸收效率。上述结果为研究声誉在证券市场中的作用机制提供了新的证据。     

Dare to be different? Investigating the relationship between analyst categorisation hierarchies and corporate social responsibility (CSR) conformity

This paper investigates how analyst categorisation hierarchies (CH) affect corporate social responsibility (CSR) conformity. We argue that firms that are labelled as either high rank or low rank by analysts have higher institutional immunity, while firms that are categorised as middle rank have lower immunity. These heterogeneous institutional immunities will affect the levels of CSR conformity differently. Our results, which originate from a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2009 to 2016, suggest that CH exhibit an inverted‐U‐shaped relationship with CSR conformity. High‐ranked and low‐ranked firms are most likely to be CSR nonconformist, while middle‐ranked firms tend to conduct CSR like the majority of their industry peers. Moreover, we also investigate the environmental boundary conditions of this curvilinear relationship. This relationship is moderated by environmental munificence (positively) and dynamism (negatively). Our findings fill the theoretical gap by proposing an institutional‐based explanation for the CSR conformity heterogeneity which is rarely discussed and extending the boundary conditions for the categorisation‐CSR conformity relationship.     

The Effects of Market Makers and Stock Analysts in Emerging Markets

We exploit a quasi‐experiment to examine the effects of market makers and stock analysts in three emerging stock markets. We find substantial differences in the effects across markets, and in contrast to existing literature, the effects of market makers are not always positive. Our results suggest that the structure of market makers' agreements and compensation matters for their effects on market quality. Stock analysts, on balance, have marginally positive effects on liquidity and informational efficiency. The benefits of market makers are weaker in the presence of stock analysts, and vice versa, suggesting that market makers and stock analysts are more like substitutes than complements in their effects on market quality.     

我国财务分析师远期盈余预测偏差的实证研究

我国财务分析师行业起步较晚,研究财务分析师的远期盈余预测的精确度及在公司层面的影响因素有重要意义。远期盈余预测预测期越长偏差越大,上市公司受财务分析师的关注程度和上市公司的未来非营业利润的比重两大因素,始终显著地影响财务分析时的远期盈余预测精度。     

论上市公司的分析师沟通战略

一个形象良好的企业不仅要有良好的运营成果,还需要有效的与投资者交流的渠道与方法。投资者往往不喜欢盈余变化莫测的企业,因此投资者关系管理成为企业吸引投资者的一个重要因素。然而,在我国上市公司开始大力开展投资者关系管理的背景下,证券分析师作为降低上市公司和投资者之间信息不对称、增加市场透明度的特殊群体,并没有得到上市公司应有的重视。上市公司普遍缺乏同证券分析师的有效沟通。分析证券分析师在上市公司与投资者盈余信息沟通中发挥作用,并对我国上市公司证券分析师沟通战略的发展路径与方法进行探索。     

The economic significance of conditional skewness in index option markets

This study examines whether conditional skewness forecasts of the underlying asset returns can be used to trade profitably in the index options market. The results indicate that a more general skewness‐based option‐pricing model can generate better trading performance for strip and strap trades. The results show that conditional skewness model forecasts, when combined with forward‐looking option implied volatilities, can significantly improve the performance of skewness‐based trades but trading costs considerably weaken the profitability of index option strategies. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 30:378–406, 2010