Does Social Media Get Your Attention?

The author investigates how social media affects stock prices and post–earnings announcement drift in response to companies’ quarterly earnings announcements. Using quarterly earnings data as well Twitter and StockTwits data, the author utilizes Twitter volume and a residual methodology to generate an attention proxy that is orthogonal to the growth of Twitter accounts. The author finds that the new attention brought by social media after the earnings announcements positively affects the cumulative abnormal returns. Further, even companies reporting bad news can still have positive immediate cumulative abnormal returns if they attract enough attention from investors after an earnings announcement. The new attention effects are different in both magnitudes and statistical significance between social media popular and unpopular industries.     

Stock market reactions to environmental disclosures: new evidence from China

We study how the stock market in China responds to announcements by an environmental risk index and find that China’s stock market penalizes firms associated with unfavourable environmental news if the information is provided directly to investors in a manner that is easily understood. We also find that the negative impact on stock prices fades after multiple disclosures of the same information.     

Effects of US interest rates and news on the daily interest rates of a highly indebted emerging economy: evidence from Turkey

It has been widely demonstrated that asset prices react sensitively to macroeconomic news releases both in the industrialized countries and emerging markets. However, there are contradicting results on the effects of changes in interest rates of industrialized countries on asset prices of emerging markets. In heavily indebted economies, in addition to these factors, political news and announcements from international institutions that may increase or decrease concerns about debt sustainability can affect asset prices as well. This potential notwithstanding, there has been relatively limited empirical work on the effects of such variables. The objective of this study is to quantify the impact of all of these factors on interest rates of a highly indebted emerging economy. Using daily post-crisis data of the Turkish economy we show that both good and bad political news, International Monetary Fund announcements, and European Union related news significantly affected secondary market government securities yields, whereas volatility of yields was affected mainly by bad news releases. Changes in US Treasury bond rates and ‘appetite’ for risk of foreign investors did not affect government securities yields in the period analysed.     

Earnings management by firms announcing earnings after SEC filing

This study examines motivation and stock market reactions of firms announcing earnings in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) after filing with the Security Exchange Commission (SEC). Most firms announce earnings in the WSJ before SEC filing. Firms that reverse this sequence are voluntarily delaying public earnings announcements. The authors find that these firms are not only poor financial performers but also engage in earnings managements. They are delaying their WSJ announcements to postpone announcing bad news. The authors find significant stock price reactions to both the SEC filing and the WSJ announcement. The price reaction to earnings is incomplete at the SEC filings. The market continues reacting to firms' subsequent WSJ announcements as if the SEC filing fails to communicate earnings information to some investors.     

Inflation news and stock returns: market direction and flow-through ability

Previous studies of the short-run response of daily stock prices to announcements of macroeconomic news could be biased when responses in different scenarios cancel each other out. In our analysis of inflation news in the Spanish stock market, we consider market direction arguments and implement our study based on the sector of activity to control for the ‘flow-through’ ability of the firms in each industry. In general, our results are quite consistent with the ‘market direction’ and the ‘flow-through’ hypotheses. Unanticipated inflation news implies abnormal returns depending on the direction of the news, the state of the economy and the flow-through ability of the sector. The impact of positive surprises affects the abnormal returns of many more sectors than does the impact of negative surprises, especially in the low states of economy. These significant effects are mainly observed in industries that are characterised by low flow-through ability.     

Overflow effect of credit rating announcements on stock exchange based on event study

This study is aimed to identify the impact of credit rating announcements on the stock returns in stock markets and for this purpose, four different sectors of Pakistan stock exchange were selected and from each of these four sectors, different business organizations were selected, i.e. total 32 business organizations were selected. The credit rating announcement data were collected for these 32 business organizations belonging to four different sectors. Totally 101 credit rating announcements were selected and the time period for which the credit rating warnings were selected include last three years period, i.e. from 2014 to 2016. The collected data were analysed by calculating abnormal returns for each of the selected security and average abnormal returns, and cumulative average abnormal returns were calculated for four different sectors. Event study methodology was applied, and t-test and t-stats value were calculated and results were analysed on the basis of t-statistics. The results of analysis identified that credit rating announcements have a significant impact on stock prices and investors and other market participants are earning abnormal returns during two-day period after the announcements are made. In addition, these abnormal returns were either negative or positive, depending upon the nature of credit ratings announced. If the credit rating announced was upgraded, investors enjoyed positive abnormal returns while in case when credit rating announcements were downgraded, then investors bear negative abnormal returns. Finally, the findings of the study identified the applicability of random walk hypothesis on the Pakistan Stock Exchange and Pakistan Stock Exchange confirms the efficient market hypothesis with its semi-strong form of efficiency.     

盈余信息披露、投资者行为与市场内幕交易

本文以2008—2017年的季报、半年报和年报盈余公告信息为研究对象,利用Fama MacBeth横截面回归方法考察了公司高管和机构投资者的内幕交易行为。研究发现：（1）我国股票市场的盈余漂移异象在盈余公告前后具有明显的非对称性,股价倾向于在盈余公告前（后）对“好（坏）消息”反应过度、对“坏（好）消息”反应不足;（2）盈余公告前,机构投资者的资金净流入（出）与公司的未预期盈余之间呈显著正相关关系;（3）盈余漂移异象在不同板块之间存在明显的分化效应,在盈余公告前,主板市场对“好消息”的反应程度弱于中小板和创业板,而在盈余公告后正好相反。     

Foreign News and Spillovers in Emerging European Stock Markets

We analyze foreign news and spillovers in the emerging EU stock markets (the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland). We employ high‐frequency five‐minute intraday data on stock market index returns and four classes of EU and US macroeconomic announcements during 2004–07. We account for the difference of each announcement from its market expectation and we jointly model the volatility of the returns accounting for intraday movements and day‐of‐the‐week effects. Our findings show that intraday interactions on the new EU markets are strongly determined by mature stock markets as well as the macroeconomic news originating thereby. We show that strong contemporaneous links across markets are present even after controlling for macroeconomic announcements. Finally, in terms of specific announcements, we are able to show the exact sources of macro news spillovers from the developed foreign markets to the three new EU markets under research.     

Short sale constraints,disperse pessimistic beliefs and market efficiency — Evidence from the Chinese stock market

In the Chinese stock market, the regulatory agency lists qualified stocks on announcement date and permits investors to sell short on the effective date, a practice that allows us to directly study the impact of short sale constraints. Applying an event study to 511 additions, between February 2010 and August 2013, of individual stocks to the list of securities qualified for short sale, we find that short sale constraints cause individual stocks to be overpriced and that such overvaluation is exclusively related to distortions associated with pessimistic beliefs. In addition, we observe lower volatility, skewness and extreme value frequency of stock returns after short sale constraints are lifted. This implies the emergence of a more appropriate distribution of returns and improved market efficiency at the individual stock level as the range of securities qualified for short selling expands.     

Individual Characteristics and the Disposition Effect: The Opposing Effects of Confidence and Self-Regard

We conduct two experiments to examine potential causes of the disposition effect. In Experiment 1, we rule out beliefs in mean reversion as a cause of the disposition effect. Although a belief in the mean reversion of stock prices should be independent of whether an investor owns or only follows the stock, we show only investors who own the stock behave as though prices will reverse. In Experiment 2, participants buy and sell securities over multiple periods. We find that self-regard and investing confidence (two types of self-esteem) have opposing influences on investors’ tendency to hold losing investments. Investors with lower self-regard hold losing investments longer than those with higher self-regard, and investors with higher confidence hold losing investments longer than those with lower confidence. We focus on investors’ tendency to hold losing stocks too long because prior research suggests the gain versus loss sides of the disposition effect are driven by different biases.     

"What Goes Up Must Come Down"-How Charts Influence Decisions to Buy and Sell Stocks

Five experiments examine how charts depicting past stock prices influence investing decisions. We expected investors to use extreme past prices depicted in charts as comparison standards to which expectations about future prices are assimilated. Investors should thus expect stocks depicted in a chart with a salient high to perform better than stocks depicted in a chart with a salient low. And as a consequence, investors should be more likely to buy and less likely to sell stocks depicted in a chart with a salient high than a low. Results of five experiments support this reasoning. Whether investors are private or professional and whether background information about the stock was limited or abundant, expectations about future prices assimilated to extreme past prices. Consequently, investors buy more and sell less when the critical chart is characterized by a salient high than a low. The implications of these findings for the core role comparison processes play in investing decisions are discussed.     

Managerial Expectations of Synergy and the Performance of Acquiring Firms: The Contribution of Soft Data

This study examines whether the “soft” information present in merger and acquisition (M&A) announcement press releases contains incrementally valuable news relative to traditional “hard” data. Using the methodology of Loughran and McDonald [2011], we construct measures of synergy expectations and managerial optimism for more than 1,200 M&A announcements over the period 1995–2007. We find that synergy expectations are positively related to announcement period returns, longer-run performance, and the market's reaction to quarterly earnings announcements. Managerial optimism is insignificant for explaining a merger's subsequent performance. We conclude that the soft information contained in M&A announcements concerning synergy expectations can provide useful information to investors.     

On the Effects of Asset Purchase Programs on Emerging Stock Markets

ABSTRACT

It is well documented that there has been a relationship between stock markets and unconventional monetary policies. However, most research concentrates on developed economies and analyzes the effects of shocks from such polices on stock prices. This paper is different from this research in that we investigate the impact of surprises from the Fed’s and the ECB’s announcements on the stock returns and volatility in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries using GARCH models. We find that a positive surprise associated with a fall in the U.S. Treasury yield causes an increase in ADX returns. We show significant effects of the ECB’s shocks on price returns. In particular, announcement that induces a decline in yield spreads in Italian sovereign bonds leads to higher stock prices. We also document a significant impact of surprises both by the Fed and ECB on volatility. However, the estimates are mixed. We note that volatility went down in response to the ECB’s policies, while they increased after the Fed’s asset purchases. Finally, when we distinguish surprises by their sign, the GJR-GARCH model estimates indicate that the effect on the volatility which is, perhaps surprisingly, symmetric for both types of news.     

Numerosity: Forward and Reverse Stock Splits

Abstract

Individuals have a tendency to fixate on large numbers and ignore other relevant information in their decision making process. The numerosity heuristic, a cognitive bias, is the first behavioral hypothesis to explain why investors prefer to receive more shares (rather than less shares) in a stock split even though the aggregate economic value is the same. For forward splits, after controlling for the positive signaling of improved earnings growth and liquidity from the split announcement, the stock price reacts positively to the larger number of shares issued. More importantly, the use of a dual class numerosity model can explain why most conventional hypotheses fail to explain the negative stock price reaction to reverse splits. Given a typical bearish outlook associated with a reverse stock split, investors’ cognitive resources have already been conditioned to derive a systematic conclusion to sell the stock at the higher price. Focusing only on large stock price numerosity, investors are incorrectly inferring a higher investment value. As the high numerosity encourages bearish investors to sell at the higher perceived investment value, the stock returns react more negatively to the higher post-reverse split price level. In both forward and reverse split cases, investors react to high numerosity.     

Volatility spillovers and macroeconomic announcements: evidence from crude oil markets

The paper applies an event study methodologyaims to investigate the macroeconomic announcements effects on Standard&Poor’s500 and oil prices. Our results provide evidence for a significant impact of the US macroeconomic news on oil prices. This impact is split into two components, namely the direct effect (common response) and indirect effect (volatility transmission). Altogether our results show that the volatility transmission is bidirectional. Not only a significant volatility transmission from the oil market to the US stock market is revealed, but also a high volatility transmission is recorded from the oil market to the stock market especially after the release of consumption indicators.     

Unexpected Share Repurchase Announcements

Abstract

Open-market stock repurchase announcements are generally perceived by the stock market as a signal of firm undervaluation. Our study shows that repurchase announcements that were preceded by SEOs of other firms in the same industry within the prior six months (namely SEO-RPs) are more likely the result of lacking investment opportunities than signaling undervaluation, especially in concentrated industries. Specifically, we find investors response negatively to SEO-RP announcements while react positively to regular repurchase announcements. The higher the intensity of SEO activities in the industry, the more negative market reaction to SEO-RP announcements. We argue that the market doesn’t expect a repurchase announcement when other rival firms are raising more capital via SEOs. These SEO-RPs represent a negative surprise to the market and lead to a downward adjustment in value of the repurchasing firms in the announcement window. In the three-year post-announcement periods, the SEO-RP firms underperform regular repurchasing firms in both stock return and operating performance. Moreover, while regular repurchasing firms gradually increase their capital expenditures, SEO-RP firms significantly reduce their capital expenditures. These findings support our arguments that repurchase announcements that immediately follow SEOs of rival firms (SEO-RPs) more likely indicate the announcing firms entering a slower growth rate with fewer investment opportunities than signal the undervaluation problem. The underperformance in stock return and operation combined with a significant reduction in capital expenditures in the post-announcement periods are consistent with this logic and also explain why the market reacts negatively to SEO-RP announcements.     

ADAPTIVE EXPECTATIONS AND STOCK MARKET CRASHES*

A theory is developed that explains how stocks can crash without fundamental news and why crashes are more common than frenzies. A crash occurs via the interaction of rational and naive investors. Naive traders believe that prices follow a random walk with serially correlated volatility. Their expectations of future volatility are formed adaptively. When the market crashes, naive traders sell stock in response to the apparent increase in volatility. Since rational traders are risk averse as well, a lower price is needed to clear the market: The crash is a self‐fulfilling prophecy. Frenzies cannot occur in this model.     

Investor reaction to IMF actions in the indonesian financial crisis

Many observers have criticized recent IMF actions and program announcements during the Asian crisis by arguing that the IMF's declaration that Asia needed drastic reforms with respect to institutional issues such as transparency, corporate governance and corruption has led investors to panic and withdraw from the region. We examine the reaction of investors in the Indonesian stock market to IMF news. Evidence indicates that IMF actions and program announcements are associated with a decline in market uncertainty. Hence, our finding does not appear to support the panic view. Policy implications of the findings are also discussed.     

The Effect of Annual Earnings Announcements on the Chinese Stock Markets

This paper examines the annual earnings announcement effect of the stock markets in China. The investigation is based on events analysis and carried out by modeling the daily changes of stock returns using the M-EGARCH approach, by testing the news effects of annual earnings announcement on the conditional mean of abnormal return and the variance of the returns. It is found that a higher than expected earnings announcement leads to a rise in the conditional mean of stock returns on days before the news announcement and a fall afterwards. The conditional volatility of the changes are significantly reduced by bigger absolute values of reported earnings before the news announcement and increased afterwards, supporting the rejection of semi-strong-form efficiency.     

Abnormal returns before acquisition announcements: evidence from Europe

Acquisition announcements influence the stock price of target firms, providing an opportunity for insiders to obtain significant abnormal returns. We study the presence of positive abnormal returns before the announcement date, in target firms, quoted in Euronext markets (Belgium, France, The Netherlands and Portugal) from 2001 to 2007. We investigate whether the pre-announcement run-up of prices can be explained by rumours in the media and the percentage of capital previously owned by the bidding firm, among other factors. We examine cumulative abnormal returns in an event window of 60 days prior the acquisition announcement, with the event date adjusted for the previous disclosure of news about the acquisition, in the media. We compute a run-up index, and find that there are abnormal positive returns before the announcement date, confirming previous studies. We find that a significant part of the run-up is explained by: (i) market anticipation triggered by legitimate sources of information, namely, rumours in the media about the possibility of an acquisition bid and (ii) the percentage of capital previously owned in the target firm, by the bidding firm.