Odd lot trading and earnings announcements

This study investigates odd lot trading, both trades and orders, around quarterly earnings announcements to determine whether odd lot traders are informed regarding the information contained in earnings announcements. We find pre-announcement odd lot order imbalances are not positively correlated with post-announcement returns and odd lot traders do not earn excess returns. Portfolios long stocks highly bought by odd lot traders in the pre-announcement period and short stocks highly sold by odd lot traders do not outperform the market. We conclude that odd lot traders are not in possession of earnings announcement information prior to its release to the public.     

Informed trading around earnings and mutual fund alphas

We examine whether informed trading around earnings announcements drives mutual fund performance. The measure is motivated by prior studies arguing that a mutual fund is skilled if it buys stocks with subsequent high earnings announcement returns. We find that this measure predicts future mutual fund returns. On average, after adjusting for Carhart’s four risk factors, the top decile of mutual funds outperforms the bottom decile by 44 basis points per quarter. By decomposing fund alphas into two components in their relations to earnings, we find that this measure is only associated with earnings-related fund alphas. This measure can also be used to predict stock returns at future earnings announcements.     

Block trading and information revelation around quarterly earnings announcements

I investigate the empirical importance of information revelationin the pricing of block trades. In particular, I examine whetherblock prices are correlated with the unexpected part of firms'quarterly earnings. For my sample of block trades, informationrevelation does indeed appear to be a significant factor shortlybefore earnings announcements.     

The effect of restatements on trading volume reactions to earnings announcements

This paper examines whether restatements affect trading volume reactions to subsequent earnings announcements. It closely follows the theoretical model developed by Kim and Verrecchia (J Account Econ 24:395–419, 1997) that decomposes the trading volume reactions around earnings announcements into the effects of pre-disclosure and event-period private information, and examines whether restatements change the trading volume reactions to earnings announcements in the post-restatement period. We find that restatements increase the degree of differential event-period information, leading to more divergent interpretation of earnings announcements subsequent to restatements. We also find that investors have less differential pre-disclosure private information in the post-restatement period, consistent with the view that investors’ beliefs converge when facing higher uncertainty in the information environment. Finally, focusing on irregularity restatement firms, we document that the effect of restatements on trading volume is more pronounced for firms announcing restatements after the passage of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act and after dismissing auditors and experiencing executive turnover. Overall, these results indicate that restatements affect investors’ behavior in forming judgments regarding earnings announcements.     

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.     

Caught on tape: Institutional trading,stock returns,and earnings announcements

Many questions about institutional trading can only be answered if one tracks high-frequency changes in institutional ownership. In the United States, however, institutions are only required to report their ownership quarterly in 13-F filings. We infer daily institutional trading behavior from the “tape”, the Transactions and Quotes database of the New York Stock Exchange, using a sophisticated method that best predicts quarterly 13-F data from trades of different sizes. We find that daily institutional trades are highly persistent and respond positively to recent daily returns but negatively to longer-term past daily returns. Institutional trades, particularly sells, appear to generate short-term losses—possibly reflecting institutional demand for liquidity—but longer-term profits. One source of these profits is that institutions anticipate both earnings surprises and post-earnings announcement drift. These results are different from those obtained using a standard size cutoff rule for institutional trades.     

Are trading bans effective? Exchange regulation and corporate insider transactions around earnings announcements

There is considerable controversy on the role of corporate insider trading in the financial markets. However, there appears to be a consensus view that some form of regulation concerning their activities should be imposed. One such constraint involves a trading ban in periods when corporate insiders are expected to be advantaged vis-à-vis the information flow. This paper directly tests whether constraints of this kind are effective in curtailing insider activity through a study of the trading characteristics of UK company directors. The London Stock Exchange Model Code (1977) imposes a two-month close period prior to company earnings announcements. We find that although the close period affects the timing of director trades, it is unable to affect their performance or distribution. Directors consistently earn abnormal returns irrespective of the period in which they trade. They tend to buy after abnormally bad earnings news and sell after abnormally good earnings news. Moreover, there are systematic differences in the trading patterns of directors surrounding interim and final earnings announcements. It appears that many corporate insiders have private information and exploit this in their trading activities. As a result, one can conclude that trading bans do not impose significant opportunity costs on the trading of corporate insiders.     

The impact of regulation Fair Disclosure on investors' prior information quality — Evidence from an analysis of changes in trading volume and stock price reactions to earnings announcements

We document that Regulation Fair Disclosure has reduced differences in information quality between investors prior to quarterly earnings announcements consistent with the intent of the regulation. This reduction is driven by small firms and high technology firms, rather than the large firms targeted by the SEC, which suggests that selective disclosure among large firms may have been much more limited than what was presumed by proponents of FD. In addition, we document that FD has decreased the average information quality of investors in small and high technology firms in the period prior to an earnings announcement while having no lasting effect on other firms. Taken together these two results suggest that, for small and high technology firms, FD succeeded in eliminating selective disclosure but also lowered the average quality of information available about these firms.     

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.     

Effects of prior voluntary disclosure on earnings announcements in an environment with low information and regulation

This study examines the association between levels of annual report voluntary disclosure and the market reaction to the next interim earnings announcement in a market with both low regulation and analyst following. We examine the first order effects of voluntary disclosure by using direct measures for both the level of voluntary disclosure, and the market effects of such disclosure. The results show that preannouncement voluntary disclosure significantly reduces the price and volume reactions in the earnings announcement period, and is consistent with the Kim and Verrecchia (1991a) framework and the Atiase and Bamber (1994) empirical findings. We extend the analysis to investigate trading behavior during the earnings announcement period, and observe the trading behavior predicted by Kim and Verrecchia (1991b, 1994). We conclude that voluntary disclosure in annual reports can be regarded as an important determinant of preannouncement information precision in markets with low regulation and analyst following, and observe the expected trading behavior as modeled in Kim and Verrecchia (1991a), and extended in Kim and Verrecchia (1991b, 1994).     

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.     

Informed trading in public debt markets

This study examines the occurrence of informed trading in public debt issued by companies in the United States. I find that earnings surprises are positively associated with bond price changes prior to the release of financial report data to the public, for firms with non‐investment‐grade ratings. Additionally, I find that the effect appears to be driven by firms with publicly traded equity. Evidence further indicates an increase in trading activity during the time window between report period end date and filing date, for firms with larger earnings surprises.     

Institutional stakeholdings and better-informed traders at earnings announcements

Utama and Cready [Utama, S., Cready, W.M., 1997. Institutional ownership, differential predisclosure precision and trading volume at announcement dates. Journal of Accounting and Economics 24, 129–150] use total institutional ownership to proxy for the proportion of better-informed traders, an important determinant of trading around earnings announcements. We argue that institutions holding small stakes cannot justify the fixed cost of developing private predisclosure information. Also, institutions with large stakes generally do not trade around earnings announcements since they are dedicated investors or face regulations that make informed trading difficult. However, institutions holding medium stakes have incentives to develop private predisclosure information and trade on it; we show that their ownership is a finer proxy for the proportion of better-informed traders at earnings announcements.     

High-frequency traders and price informativeness during earnings announcements

Review of Accounting Studies - High frequency traders (HFTs) account for a significant fraction of the total market volume. Prompted by concerns that HFTs reap unfair advantages over other traders...     

Disclosure of GAAP line items in earnings announcements

We provide new evidence on the disclosure in earnings announcements of financial statement line items prepared under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). First, we investigate the circumstances that might provide disincentives generally for GAAP line item disclosures. We find that managers who regularly intervene in the earnings reporting process limit disclosures at the aggregate level and in each of the financial statements so as to more effectively guide investor attention to summary financial information. Specifically, this disclosure behavior obtains when managers habitually cater to market expectations, engage in income smoothing, or use discretionary accruals to improve earnings informativeness. Second, we predict and find that the specific GAAP line items that firms choose to disclose are determined by the differential informational demands of their economic environment, consistent with incentives to facilitate investor valuation. However, these valuation-related disclosure incentives are muted when managers habitually intervene in the earnings reporting process.     

Informed and uninformed trading on the Australian dollar

Using a high-frequency data set of the spot Australian/US dollar, this study examines the distribution of quotes, spreads, and returns across the trading day. By identifying the direction of trade and the subsequent quote returns from contributing banks, the segmented nature of the market into market-makers and informed and uninformed traders is investigated. The results suggest that the economic gain possible from private information is maximised over 2 to 5 quotes and is rapidly eroded by 20 quotes (about 2 min later during busy trading times) as other new information enters the market. Also, the analysis is revealing of discontinuities in trading and the volatility of pricing across the trading day.     

Revisiting the corroboration effects of earnings and dividend announcements

Using a unique market setting in Hong Kong, where (i) all firms release earnings and dividend information in the same announcement; (ii) corporate transparency is low; (iii) dividend income is non‐taxable and (iv) corporate ownership is highly concentrated, we re‐examine the corroboration effects of earnings and dividends. We use the control firm approach to avoid the return estimation bias resulting from observation clustering. We also add in variables and use econometric procedure to control for the potential impacts of earnings management, special dividends and heteroskedasticity. Our findings show that there exists a corroboration effect between the jointly announced signals.     

The intraday speed of adjustment of stock prices to earnings and dividend announcements

This paper examines the effects of Broad Tape news releases of earnings and dividend announcements on three aspects of intraday stock price behavior: mean returns, return variance, and serial correlation in consecutive price changes. The initial price reaction is evident in the first pair of price changes following the release (i.e., within a few minutes, at most). The returns earned by simple trading rules dissipate within five to ten minutes, although significant returns are detected in the overnight period and at the opening of trading on the next day. Disturbances in the variance and serial correlation persist for several hours and extend into the following trading day. As a class, dividend announcements induce much less activity than do earnings, although the response to dividend changes is comparable to the earnings announcement effect.     

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,information uncertainty,and price momentum

In this paper we investigate the effects of informed trading (PIN) and information uncertainty in determining price momentum. We find that trading strategies based on buying high-uncertainty good-news stocks and shorting high-uncertainty bad-news stocks work well when limited to high-PIN stocks, while stocks with low-PIN do not exhibit price continuations, even when the uncertainty level of those stocks is high. In contrast, momentum returns are always significant for high-PIN stocks, irrespective of information uncertainty. Overall, we show that the informed trading effect is both independent of and stronger than that of information uncertainty in determining price momentum.