The effect of the summer doldrums on the market reaction to earnings announcements

Hong and Yu (2009) document a significant decrease in trading volume and returns during the summer months. Given the tendency of noise traders to buy shares following both positive and negative earnings surprises (Lee, 1992), we hypothesize that reduced trading activity by noise-traders results in less of an earnings announcement premium during the summer. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find lower abnormal returns surrounding summer earnings announcements compared to non-summer announcements. We also find lower abnormal returns in the ten days prior to the announcement, consistent with less front-running by sophisticated investors. Finally, we show that these summer effects are stronger in recent years characterized by more online trading and greater noise trader participation.     

Informed trading before positive vs. negative earnings surprises

This paper investigates whether institutional investors trade profitably around the announcements of positive or negative earnings surprises. Using Korean data over the period of 2001–2010, we find that information asymmetry is larger before negative earnings surprises (earnings shock) among investors and that the trading volume decreases only before earnings shock announcements due to the severe information asymmetry. We also find that institutions sell their stocks prior to earnings shock announcements whereas individual and foreign investors do not anticipate bad news. Finally, we find that institutional trade imbalance is positively related to the post-announcement abnormal returns of negative events. This study complements and extends prior literature on informed trading around earnings announcements by documenting evidence that domestic institutions exploit their superior information around particularly earnings shock announcements.     

Informed Trading in Corporate Bonds Prior to Earnings Announcements

This paper examines the information content of corporate bond trading prior to earnings announcements using data from both NAIC and TRACE. We find that the direction of pre‐announcement bond trading is closely related to earnings surprises. This link is most evident prior to negative news and in high‐yield bonds. Further, abnormal bond trading during the pre‐announcement period can help predict both earnings surprises and post‐announcement bond returns. Such predictive ability of bond trading largely originates from institutional‐sized trades and is concentrated in the issuer's most actively traded bond. Finally, even after accounting for transactions costs, informed bond trading can generate significant net profits, especially prior to the release of bad news.     

Investor and price response to patterns in earnings surprises

As part of their model to explain short-term positive and long-term negative auto-correlation in stock returns, Barberis, Shleifer, and Vishny [1998. A model of investor sentiment. Journal of Finance 49, 307–345] suggest that investors may extrapolate trends in earnings performance. I test this portion of their model by examining investor trading patterns in firms that experience consecutive same-sign earnings surprises. Consistent with their model, after controlling for regularities in trading activity, I find that the net buying of small investors increases with the number of consecutive positive earnings surprises. I further find that purchasing activity of small investors subsequent to consecutive positive surprises is significantly negatively correlated with returns throughout the remainder of the year. These results suggest that such investors are not simply rationally updating after public news announcements. My results are robust to controlling for auto-correlation in earnings surprises.     

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.     

Twitter investor sentiment and corporate earnings announcements

We examine the impact of firm-specific investor sentiment (FSIS) on stock returns for negative and positive earnings surprises. Using a measure constructed from firm-specific tweets, we find that FSIS has a greater impact on stock returns for negative relative to positive earnings surprises. We further show that the impact of FSIS is greater for firms whose valuation is uncertain and difficult to arbitrage. Moreover, we provide evidence of return reversals over post-announcement periods. Our results highlight the importance of FSIS around earnings announcements.     

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.     

The options market response to accounting earnings announcements

We examine the reaction of the equity options market to accounting earnings announcements over the period 1996–2008 using changes in implied volatility to measure the options market response to earnings news. We find that positive earnings surprises and positive profit announcements produce a larger uncertainty resolution than negative earnings surprises and loss announcements. We demonstrate an inverse relation between the change in implied volatility and earnings news in a three-day window immediately after an earnings announcement. We refer to the magnitude of this relation as the ‘options market earnings response coefficient’. This ‘options market earnings response coefficient’ is stronger for both bad news announcements and positive profit announcements. We do not find any significant relation between changes in implied volatility and earnings news in the pre- or post-announcement periods. We conclude that the options market efficiently absorbs earnings information.     

Information efficiency of the U.S. credit default swap market: Evidence from earnings surprises

The credit default swap (CDS) market attracted much debate during the 2008 financial crisis. Opponents of CDS argue that CDS could lead to financial instability as it allows speculators to bet against companies and make the crisis worse. Proponents of CDS believe that CDS could increase market competition and benefit hedging activities. Moreover, an efficient CDS market can serve as a barometer to regulators and investors regarding the credit health of the underlying reference entity. We investigate information efficiency of the U.S. CDS market using evidence from earnings surprises. Our findings confirm that negative earnings surprises are well anticipated in the CDS market in the month prior to the announcement, with both economically and statistically stronger reactions for speculative-grade firms than for investment-grade firms. On the announcement day, for both positive and negative earnings surprises, the CDS spread for speculative-grade firms presents abnormal changes. Moreover, there is no post-earnings announcement drift in the CDS market, which is in direct contrast to the well-documented post-earnings drift in the stock market. Our evidence supports the efficiency of the CDS market.     

Information diffusion of upstream and downstream industry-wide earnings surprises and its implications

This study presents new evidence that industry-wide earnings surprises diffuse gradually across the supply chain at both industry and individual-firm levels. This evidence provides fundamental support for studies in the literature of gradual information diffusion, commonly using lagged returns as a proxy for information. To allow for the possibility that firms react differently to the industry-wide earnings surprises, this study measures how a stock’s returns respond to the part of its main customer or supplier industry’s lagged returns that are associated with earnings surprises. A long/short equity strategy that combines the firm’s response coefficient and the prior month’s main customer/supplier industry return is shown to be profitable. The strategy tends to select medium-sized firms across industries. Firms in the winner portfolio are more likely to have a positive earning response coefficient and to be less capital intensive and financially constrained. Winners also experience positive responses to both positive and negative shocks while losers experience negative responses to both types of shocks.     

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.     

Investor Inattention and Friday Earnings Announcements

Does limited attention among investors affect stock returns? We compare the response to earnings announcements on Friday, when investor inattention is more likely, to the response on other weekdays. If inattention influences stock prices, we should observe less immediate response and more drift for Friday announcements. Indeed, Friday announcements have a 15% lower immediate response and a 70% higher delayed response. A portfolio investing in differential Friday drift earns substantial abnormal returns. In addition, trading volume is 8% lower around Friday announcements. These findings support explanations of post‐earnings announcement drift based on underreaction to information caused by limited attention.     

Information of Unusual Trading Volume

This article investigates the information content of stock unusual trading volume from the aspect of firm fundamental information revealed by both earnings formal announcements and preannouncements. By using the stock market data of China from the second quarter of 2003 to the end of 2015, this article provides evidence that, in general, stocks that experience unusually low trading volume over the week prior to earnings announcements have more unfavorable earnings surprises. However, because of the feature of mandatory pre-disclosure policy in China, this article further finds that the relation between unusually low trading volume and unfavorable earnings surprises only exists in the stocks without earnings preannouncements, because fundamental information is incorporated in the stock prices timely around preannouncements date. In addition, unusually low trading volume signals negative fundamental changes revealed by preannouncements, and this effect is more pronounced among stocks with higher short-selling constraints, but unusually high trading volume is value-irrelevant.     

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.     

Return predictability following large price changes and information releases

We examine return behavior following large price change events. Unconditional post-event abnormal returns are found to be unimportant. As we condition on other criteria related to the quality of information like volume and public announcements, the abnormal returns become large. The type of news provides further refinement. If the news relates to earnings or analyst recommendations then the 20-day abnormal returns become much larger ranging from 3% to 4% for positive events and about −2.25% for negative events. Finally, an out-of-sample trading strategy confirms investor under-reaction and generates significant abnormal annualized returns of the order of 12–18%.     

Earnings Surprises,Growth Expectations,and Stock Returns or Don't Let an Earnings Torpedo Sink Your Portfolio

We provide new evidence that the inferior returns to growth stocks relative to value stocks are the result of expectational errors about future earnings performance. Our evidence demonstrates that growth stocks exhibit an asymmetric response to earnings surprises. We show that while growth stocks are at least as likely to announce negative earnings surprises as positive earnings surprises, they exhibit an asymmetrically large negative price response to negative earnings surprises. After controlling for this asymmetric price response, we find no remaining evidence of a return differential between growth and value stocks. We conclude that the inferior return to growth stocks is attributable to overoptimistic expectational errors that are corrected through subsequent negative earnings surprises.     

Insider trading and response to earnings announcements: the impact of accelerated disclosure requirements

This paper contributes to the debate on the consequences of increased disclosure regulation by investigating the effects of expedited reporting requirements of Form 4 filings, mandated by the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX), on the market response to earnings announcements. We first confirm that SOX reduces opportunistic insider trading without deterring insider trading due to diversification needs, and that post-SOX, opportunistic insider trades more strongly reveal upcoming earnings surprises. We then document that, at the earnings announcement date, earnings response coefficients (ERCs) are lower when earnings are preceded by opportunistic insider trades. We conclude that accelerated disclosures of insider transactions mandated by SOX lend to more informationally efficient prices prior to earnings announcements. Our findings stand as one piece of evidence suggesting positive externalities from recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosure regulation and add to the scarce evidence on the consequences of changes in Form 4 filing requirements.     

EARNINGS ANNOUNCEMENTS,QUALITY AND QUANTITY OF INFORMATION,AND STOCK PRICE CHANGES

We analyze the informational effect of earnings announcements on stock price changes. Although prior studies postulate that the direction and magnitude of earnings surprises contribute to abnormal stock price changes, we attribute earnings surprises and subsequent stock price changes to the quality and quantity of available information. If a stock is followed by many financial analysts, the amount of information available to investors contributes to higher quality information, which in turn is reflected by a small earnings surprise. Furthermore, we demonstrate that as the quality and quantity of information increase, stock prices adjust more quickly, which sheds additional light on the post-earnings-announcement drift issue. Finally, cross-sectional analysis reveals that the flow of information, as measured by the rate of trading volume changes, and the stock of information, as measured by the number of financial analysts, contributes significantly to the variations in excess returns and return volatility. Traditional variables, such as earnings surprises, earnings reporting lag, and firm size, do not perform well.     

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.     

Individuals’ Trading Prior to Earnings Announcements

This paper investigates the relationship between individuals’ net trading and stock price movements before and after annual earnings announcements for the Taiwan Stock Exchange. We conduct an event study on the effects of pre‐event individual trade imbalances on pre‐ and post‐announcement abnormal returns. With a unique and comprehensive dataset, we accurately classify executed orders by aggressiveness of order price. The evidence indicates that while individuals, as a group, are not informed about impending earnings announcements, individuals who place aggressive orders are informed as their net trading coincides with contemporaneous and future stock returns. Aggressive individuals lose their edge during the financial crisis. More importantly, the advantage (disadvantage) for individuals who adopt aggressive (passive) orders weakens when foreign institutions own concentrated equity in firms. We also find that net individual trading contains information about abnormal returns that either past returns or volume does not subsume. Controlling for past returns, trading volume and volatility, or using an alternative measure of net individual trading does not change our conclusions.