Information content of earnings announcements in the New Zealand equity market,a longitudinal analysis

We compute abnormal return variance and abnormal trading volume in the 3‐day window surrounding earnings announcements to examine the information content of earnings announcements in the New Zealand equity market over the past 16 years. We find that the information content of earnings announcements has increased significantly over time, and this finding holds true for both interim and preliminary earnings announcements. We find evidence that earnings announcements with June year‐ends exhibit a higher level of information content and experience a more pronounced rising trend as compared to earnings announcements with non‐June year‐ends. Several firm characteristics appear to relate to the level of the information content of earnings announcements as well as to compound the trend over time. We document an important finding that the information content of earnings announcements increases remarkably in the period after the adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).     

Do Attention-Grabbing Stocks Attract All Investors? Evidence from China

Abstract:

Using a unique and comprehensive data set of China’s Shenzhen Stock Exchange, we test whether all investors adopt attention-grabbing stocks. Only the less-wealthy individuals, the Small Group, are found to have the tendency to pursue attention-grabbing stocks, such as abnormal-volume stocks, extreme-return stocks, and initial public offering stocks. By contrast, wealthy individuals, such as the Middle and Large Groups, are the sellers of attention-grabbing stocks and prefer non-attention-grabbing stocks, thereby exhibiting a behavior resembling that of institutional investors. The wealth levels of individual investors may account for such heterogeneous trading behavior. Heterogeneous trading behavior may address one reason why only the less-wealthy individuals do poorly in China’s stock market. Accordingly, we suggest that the Small Group manage the stock selection problem through consultancy with investment institutions.     

Profitability of technical stock trading: Has it moved from daily to intraday data?

This paper investigates how technical trading systems exploit the momentum and reversal effects in the S&P 500 spot and futures market. When based on daily data, the profitability of 2580 technical models has steadily declined since 1960, and has been unprofitable since the early 1990s. However, when based on 30-minutes-data the same models produce an average gross return of 7.2% per year between 1983 and 2007. These results do not change substantially when trading is tested over eight subperiods. In particular, there is no clear trend of a declining profitability of technical stock trading based on 30-minutes-data. Those 25 models which performed best over the most recent subperiod produce a significantly higher gross return over the subsequent subperiod than all models. Between 2001 and 2007 the 2580 models perform worse than over the 1980s and 1990s. This result could be due to stock markets becoming recently more efficient or to stock price trends shifting from 30-minutes-prices to prices of higher frequencies.     

Price discovery in the round-the-clock U.S. Treasury market

We evaluate the efficacy of price discovery in the round-the-clock U.S. Treasury market. Using a comprehensive intraday database, we explore informational role of trades over the 24-hour day. We find that information asymmetry is generally highest in the preopen period and lowest in the postclose period. Information asymmetry in the overnight period is comparable to that in the regular trading period. However, on days with macroeconomic announcements, information asymmetry peaks shortly after the news release at 8:30. Moreover, information asymmetry is higher on Monday morning and higher immediately before than after the open of U.S. Treasury futures trading. Although volume is low after hours and trading cost is relatively high, overnight trading generates significant price discovery. Results suggest that overnight trading activity is an important part of the Treasury price discovery process.     

Does short selling improve stock price efficiency and liquidity? Evidence from a natural experiment in China

China introduced short selling for designated stocks in March 2010. Using this important policy change as a natural experiment, we examine the effect of short selling on stock price efficiency and liquidity. We show that the introduction of short selling significantly improves price efficiency, as measured by the differences in individual stock responses to market returns and the delay in price adjustments. Short selling also enhances stock liquidity, as measured by bid-ask spread and Amihud [2002. ‘Illiquidity and Stock Returns: Cross-section and Time-series Effects.’ Journal of Financial Markets 5: 31–56] illiquidity measure; and reduces stock volatility. Overall, our results suggest that short selling helps to stabilize asset prices, provides additional liquidity and improves market quality, even in an emerging economy with a less developed stock market than that in the US and Europe.     

Empty voting and the efficiency of corporate governance

We model corporate voting outcomes when an informed trader, such as a hedge fund, can establish separate positions in a firm's shares and votes (empty voting). The positions are separated by borrowing shares on the record date, hedging economic exposure, or trading between record and voting dates. We find that the trader's presence can improve efficiency overall despite the fact that it sometimes ends up selling to a net short position and then voting to decrease firm value. An efficiency improvement is likely if other shareholders’ votes are not highly correlated with the correct decision or if it is relatively expensive to separate votes from shares on the record date. On the other hand, empty voting will tend to decrease efficiency if it is relatively inexpensive to separate votes from shares and other shareholders are likely to vote the right way.