Implications of Transaction Costs for the Post–Earnings Announcement Drift

This paper examines the effect of transaction costs on the post–earnings announcement drift (PEAD). Using standard market microstructure features we show that transaction costs constrain the informed trades that are necessary to incorporate earnings information into price. This implies weaker return responses at the time of the earnings announcement and higher subsequent returns drift for firms with higher transaction costs. Consistent with this prediction, we find that earnings response coefficients are lower for firms with higher transaction costs. Using portfolio analyses, we find that the profits of implementing the PEAD trading strategy are significantly reduced by transaction costs. In addition, we show, using a combination of portfolio and regression analyses, that firms with higher transaction costs are the ones that provide the higher abnormal returns for the PEAD strategy. Our results indicate that transaction costs can provide an explanation not only for the persistence but also for the existence of PEAD.     

Insider trading,stock return volatility,and the option market's pricing of the information content of insider trading

We find strong evidence that net insider selling is positively associated with future stock return volatility, consistent with insider selling increasing outside investors’ uncertainty. The positive effect of net insider selling is significantly stronger when the volatility is measured around the earnings announcement. Apparently, option prices do not fully reflect the information content of insider trading for future volatility. More specifically, we find no evidence that option traders adjust the implied volatility for the insider trading effect in a timely manner. Consequently, net insider selling is significantly associated with future option straddle returns and delta neutral returns.     

Bonus schemes and trading activity

Little is known about how different bonus schemes affect traders' propensity to trade and which bonus schemes improve traders' performance. We study the effects of linear versus threshold bonus schemes on traders' behavior. Traders buy and sell shares in an experimental stock market on the basis of fundamental and technical information (past share price evolution, realized earnings, analysts' earnings forecasts, and evolution of the market index). We find that linear and threshold bonus schemes have different effects on trading behavior: traders make more transactions but of a smaller size under the threshold than under the linear bonus scheme. Furthermore, transaction frequency significantly decreases when bonus thresholds are reached but only after building in a safety margin. Under the threshold scheme, the traders' performance is lower (even when there are no transaction costs) than under the linear bonus scheme as a consequence of poorer market timing. This is especially the case when earning money by trading is relatively difficult (i.e., under low profitability conditions). Nevertheless, under low profitability conditions, traders seem to collect more information about the relationships between share price and market returns, earnings, and earnings forecasts, put more effort into understanding those relationships, and thus eventually learn to perform better.     

Empirical tests of efficiency of the Italian index options market

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the Italian index option contract (MIBO30), recently introduced in the Italian Derivatives Market (IDEM), is efficient. Two different methods are used in the analysis. First, we tested on the Italian index option market the validity of the put–call parity conditions, extended to account of transaction costs associated with replicating and establishing a short hedge on the index. We find that the significant deviations from put–call parity are not exploitable when all transaction costs are accounted for. Since the put–call parity is just a weak test for market efficiency, we further investigate the possibility to generate profitable positions through the simulation of an ex-post volatility hedging strategy. This strategy does not allow for systematic abnormal returns, supporting the hypothesis that option prices are consistent with market efficiency.     

Information,uncertainty, and behavioral effects: Evidence from abnormal returns around real estate investment trust earnings announcements

In this study, we examine the influence of real estate market sentiment, market-level uncertainty, and REIT-level uncertainty on cumulative abnormal earnings announcement returns over the 1995–2009 time period. We first document the relative coverage of analysts' earnings forecasts on U.S. REITs, as well as REITs from several countries (i.e., Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Japan, the Netherlands, and UK). We show that coverage outside of the U.S. is limited, and we consequently focus our analysis on U.S. REITs. We find strong evidence that earnings announcements contain pricing relevant information, with positive (negative) earnings surprises relative to analysts' forecasts resulting in significantly positive (negative) abnormal returns around the announcement date. Consistent with the findings from the broader equity market literature, we find limited evidence of a pre-announcement drift in the cumulative abnormal returns. However, in sharp contrast to the existing equity literature, we find no evidence of a post-earnings announcement drift in our aggregate sample or when the sample is restricted to the largest negative surprises. We find evidence of a post-earnings announcement drift for only the largest positive earnings surprises. These results are consistent with REIT returns more quickly impounding information relative to the broader equity market, in part because of the parallel private real estate market and because of the U.S. REIT structure and information environment. Finally, in our conditional regression analysis of cumulative abnormal returns, we find that real estate investor sentiment, market-wide uncertainty, and firm-level uncertainty significantly affect the magnitude of abnormal announcement returns and also influence the effect of unexpected earnings on abnormal returns.     

Option trading: Information or differences of opinion?

This paper investigates the motive of option trading. We show that option trading is mostly driven by differences of opinion, a finding different from the current literature that attempts to attribute option trading to information asymmetry. Our conclusion is based on three pieces of empirical evidence. First, option trading around earnings announcements is speculative in nature and mostly dominated by small, retail investors. Second, around earnings announcements, the pre-announcement abnormal turnovers of options seem to predict the post-announcement abnormal stock returns. However, once we control for the pre-announcement stock returns, the predictability completely disappears, implying that option traders simply take cues from the stock market and turn around to speculate in the options market. Third, cross-section and time-series regressions reveal that option trading is also significantly explained by differences of opinion. While informed trading is present in stocks, it is not detected in options.     

The Extreme Future Stock Returns Following I/B/E/S Earnings Surprises

We investigate the stock returns subsequent to quarterly earnings surprises, where the benchmark for an earnings surprise is the consensus analyst forecast. By defining the surprise relative to an analyst forecast rather than a time‐series model of expected earnings, we document returns subsequent to earnings announcements that are much larger, persist for much longer, and are more heavily concentrated in the long portion of the hedge portfolio than shown in previous studies. We show that our results hold after controlling for risk and previously documented anomalies, and are positive for every quarter between 1988 and 2000. Finally, we explore the financial results and information environment of firms with extreme earnings surprises and find that they tend to be “neglected” stocks with relatively high book‐to‐market ratios, low analyst coverage, and high analyst forecast dispersion. In the three subsequent years, firms with extreme positive earnings surprises tend to have persistent earnings surprises in the same direction, strong growth in cash flows and earnings, and large increases in analyst coverage, relative to firms with extreme negative earnings surprises. We also show that the returns to the earnings surprise strategy are highest in the quartile of firms where transaction costs are highest and institutional investor interest is lowest, consistent with the idea that market inefficiencies are more prevalent when frictions make it difficult for large, sophisticated investors to exploit the inefficiencies.     

Profitable predictability in the cross section of stock returns

Haugen and Baker (1996) report that a long-short stock selection strategy based on more than 50 measures of accounting information and past return behavior would have generated excess returns of approximately 3% per month. We find that the Haugen and Baker strategies do not provide attractive returns after transaction costs if an investor already has access to strategy portfolios based on book-to-market and momentum. We also provide an extensive analysis of transaction costs over a long sample and we report results of independent interest to researchers in market microstructure.     

Odd‐lot Costs and Taxation Influences on Stock Dividend Ex‐dates

Abstract:   Past research has revealed significant abnormal ex‐date returns for stock dividends even though the ex‐date is known in advance and the distribution contains no new information. Various researchers have suggested that the higher transaction cost of selling odd‐lot share parcels compared to round‐lot share parcels is a key driver in the abnormal returns. However, no study to date has directly compared the ex‐date price reaction of stock dividends distributed when odd‐lot transaction costs were charged to those issued when odd‐lot costs were not evident. As odd‐lot trade costs were eliminated from the New Zealand Stock Exchange on 1 October, 1991, the New Zealand market provides a unique opportunity to directly test the role, if any, that odd‐lot transactions costs have in explaining stock dividend ex‐date returns. We find that prior to October 1991 stock dividend ex‐dates exhibit significantly positive returns, however, we do not find any significant ex‐date return once the higher odd‐lot transaction costs were removed. The New Zealand market also enables us to examine an imputation tax based argument of the ex‐date price reaction and we find evidence that imputation tax credits have a value greater than zero.     

Earnings surprise and sophisticated investor preferences in India

In this paper, I examine the existence of earnings surprise anomaly for a sample of actively traded stocks in the Bombay Stock Exchange during 2001–2006. I also examine if sophisticated institutional investors, in particular transient investors, exploit the earnings surprise anomaly. My results indicate that using a standard time series model to forecast earnings, there is clear evidence of a post-earnings announcement drift in the Indian market, even after controlling for common factors that affect risk and transaction costs. However, I find very little evidence that indicates transient investors exploit the earnings surprise mispricing. Attribution analysis of hedge portfolio returns based on increases in ownership by transient investors indicates that earnings surprise does not play a role; risk and liquidity does. A direct test of what causes increase in ownership by transient investors provides little support for the role of earnings surprise. Robustness tests also indicate that while earnings surprise is mispriced by the market, the level of transient investor ownership does not mitigate this effect.     

Options and earnings announcements: an empirical study of volatility, trading volume, open interest and liquidity

In this paper we study the impact of earnings announcements on implied volatility, trading volume, open interest and spreads in the stock options market. We find that implied volatility increases before announcement days and drops afterwards. Also option trading volume is higher around announcement days. During the days before the announcement open interest tends to increase, while it returns to regular levels afterwards. Changes in the quoted spread largely respond to higher trading volume and changes in implied volatility. The effective spread increases on the event day and on the first two days following the earnings announcement.     

The R&D-abnormal return anomaly: a transaction cost explanation

Previous research finds a positive and significant relation between current increases in R&D expenditures and future abnormal stock returns. While the existence of this anomalous pattern is well-established, its underlying causes are the subject of much debate. Recent research also shows that transaction costs can lead to apparent market anomalies such as the post-earnings-announcement drift. We combine these two lines of research and posit that the positive relation between R&D increases and future abnormal stock returns is due to transaction costs. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that abnormal returns on R&D-based, zero-net-investment portfolios disappear after incorporating standard measures of transaction costs. Overall, our results show that the R&D-abnormal return anomaly is more likely due to transaction costs than to the alternative hypotheses of market inefficiency or omitted risk factors.     

Momentum strategies and stock returns: Chinese evidence

This paper investigates the profitability of momentum investment strategies for equities listed in the Shanghai Stock Exchange. We also investigate the role of trading volume to examine whether there is any relationship between stock returns and past trading volume for Chinese equities. We find evidence of substantial momentum profits during the period 1995 to 2005 and that momentum is a pervasive feature of stock returns for the market investigated in this paper.Our findings suggest that investors can generate superior returns by investing in strategies unrelated to market movements. We also investigate the potential of past volume to explain momentum profits, and find no strong link between past volume and momentum profits. Our findings also show a strong momentum effect around earnings announcements but the magnitude of these returns is small in relation to the average monthly returns earned in the early months following portfolio formation.     

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.     

Option Prices Leading Equity Prices: Do Option Traders Have an Information Advantage?

Recent evidence shows that option volatility skews and volatility spreads between call and put options predict equity returns. This study investigates whether such predictive ability is driven by option traders’ information advantage. We examine the predictive ability of volatility skews and volatility spreads around significant information events including earnings announcements, other firm‐specific information events, and events that trigger significant market reactions. Consistent with option traders having an information advantage relative to equity traders before information events, we find that the option measures immediately before these events have higher predictive ability for short‐term event returns than they do in a more dated window or before a randomly selected pseudo‐event. We also find that option measures have predictive ability after information events. However, this predictive ability holds only for unscheduled corporate announcements, which suggests that, relative to equity traders, option traders have superior ability to process less anticipated information.     

Earnings Forecast Revisions and Security Returns: Canadian Evidence

The impact that revisions of financial analysts' forecasts of earnings have on Canadian security returns during the 1979-1988 period is tested using an event study methodology. A post-revision announcement drift in security prices is documented; the Canadian capital market displays a marked delay in reacting to positive revisions in earnings forecasts. Contingent on revision size, positive and significant excess returns are apparent for up to seven months following their release. The returns, before transaction costs, are not marginal; over a 12-month holding period, excess returns are 18.2%. The results for negative and non-revisions in earnings forecasts suggest that the market reacts quite efficiently to the information implicit in these events. An explanation for the asymmetrical results for the positive and negative revision portfolios is offered. These findings are robust to five control procedures used to test the sensitivity of the reported results to changes in the methodology. A number of explanations for this result are proposed including overlapping excess returns and beta shifts; none reconciles the anomalous results.     

Abnormal returns to investment strategies based on the timing of earnings reports

This paper adds to recent evidence on market inefficiency in processing information in earnings reports. It documents that short positions taken in sample stocks which did not report earnings by the date expected during the sample period, 1971–1976, would have been abnormally profitable, before transaction costs. This is because late reports, on average, revealed bad news which was not anticipated in market prices prior to the report date. The magnitude of the average abnormal returns is in the order of 1.0% over 20 days but is larger for smaller firms in the sample and positively related to the length of the reporting delay. The paper also documents that long positions taken in stocks reporting early with good news would have generated abnormal returns of approximately 1.0% on average over a 20-day holding period.     

Trading Returns for the Weekend Effect Using Intraday Data

The existence of the weekend effect has been documented as early as 1885. This paper examines whether the serial dependence in returns around weekends and the magnitude of negative Friday returns can be used to produce superior trading returns. We find some success for this endeavor after accounting for transaction costs (including the bid/ask spread), especially when trading is confined to weekends for which there are large negative Friday returns and to positions opened on Friday afternoons. The effect of stocks trading ex-dividend on Mondays does not appear to bias our results.     

The efficiency of the buy-write strategy: Evidence from Australia

We examine the performance of the buy-write option strategy (BWS) on the Australian Stock Exchange and analyse whether such an investment opportunity violates the efficient market hypothesis on the basis of its risk and returns. This study investigates the relationship between buy-write portfolios returns and past trading volume and other fundamental financial factors including dividend yield, firm size, book to market ratio, earnings per share (EPS), price earnings ratio and value stocks within these portfolios. We also test the profitability of the buy-write strategy during bull and bear markets. Consistent with the literature, it is observed that BWS offers superior risk adjusted returns for low levels of out-of-moneyness and contrary evidence is observed for deeper out-of-money portfolios. Consistent with a preference for options with a maturity of around 3 months in Australia, this research shows that quarterly rebalancing periods offer better returns for the BWS.     

The Predictability of Equity REIT Returns: Time Variation and Economic Significance

This article presents evidence on predictability of excess returns for equity REITs relative to the aggregate stock market, small-capitalization stocks, and T-bills using best-fit models from prior time periods. We find that excess equity REIT returns are far less predictable out-of-sample than in-sample. This inability to forecast out-of-sample is particularly true in the 1990s. Nevertheless, in the absence of transaction costs, active-trading strategies based on out-of-sample predictions modestly outperform REIT buy-and-hold strategies. However, when transaction costs are introduced, profits from these active-trading strategies largely disappear.