January effect
How the SEC Helps Speedy Traders
Robert Jackson & Joshua Mitts
Columbia University Working Paper, November 2014
Abstract:
We show that the Securities and Exchange Commission’s system for disseminating market-moving information in securities filings gives some investors an advantage over others. We describe two systems — the SEC’s file transfer protocol (FTP) server and public dissemination service (PDS) — that give certain investors access to securities filings before the general public. While contemporaneous work on this issue is limited to insider filings, we show that both the FTP and PDS gaps are pervasive across all types of filings, including Form 8-K, which includes market-moving information such as corporate earnings. We show that FTP access gives investors a mean (median) 85 (11)-second lead time, and PDS gives investors a mean (median) 77 (10)-second lead time, before the filing is available on the SEC’s website. We also provide evidence suggesting that investors had the opportunity to take advantage of this lead time to earn trading profits. In particular, we show that traders could earn economically and statistically significant returns by trading on either the FTP or PDS gaps. Moreover, even investors who waited as long as ninety seconds to execute trades on the FTP or PDS gaps could earn meaningful returns using this strategy. We also identify abnormal trading volume in the moments after PDS subscribers receive SEC filings. Finally, our direct access to both FTP and PDS also allow us to document the changes to those systems that the SEC implemented after the public revelation of this issue in October 2014. We show that the SEC imposed a significant delay on the PDS service after the existence of the informational advantage was revealed. We also, however, show that, as of November 2014, PDS subscribers still receive some 37% of filings before the general public. We argue that lawmakers should consider reforms that would help the SEC develop a centralized information-dissemination system that is better suited for the high-speed dynamics of modern markets.
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Run EDGAR Run: SEC Dissemination in a High-Frequency World
Jonathan Rogers, Douglas Skinner & Sarah Zechman
University of Chicago Working Paper, October 2014
Abstract:
We use a large recent sample of Form 4 insider trading filings to provide evidence on the process through which SEC filings are disseminated via EDGAR. We find that while the delay from a filing’s acceptance by EDGAR to its initial public availability on the SEC website is relatively short, with a mean (median) posting time of 40 (36) seconds, in the majority of cases the filing is available to Tier 1 subscribers before its availability on the public SEC site. We further show that prices, volumes, and spreads respond to the filing news beginning around 30 seconds before public posting, consistent with some market participants taking advantage of the posting delay. These results raise questions about whether the SEC dissemination process is really a level playing field for all investors.
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The Freedom of Information Act and the Race Towards Information Acquisition
Antonio Gargano, Alberto Rossi & Russ Wermers
University of Maryland Working Paper, October 2014
Abstract:
We document a previously unknown source of information exploited by sophisticated institutional investors: the Freedom of Information Act, a law that allows for the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the United States government. Through our own FOIA requests we uncover the identities of several large institutional investors, chiefly hedge funds, that routinely request value-relevant information to the Food and Drug Administration. We first provide a detailed analysis of how FOIA requests are generated, the kind of information commonly requested by institutional investors and its costs. We then document that the target of FOIA requests are large firms that experience periods of low profitability and high stock price volatility. Finally, we show that FOIA requests allow institutional investors to generate abnormal portfolio returns and provide evidence suggesting that the FOIA information is not systematically known to other investors in the marketplace.
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Reuters Sentiment and Stock Returns
Matthias Uhl
Journal of Behavioral Finance, Fall 2014, Pages 287-298
Abstract:
Sentiment from more than 3.6 million Reuters news articles is tested in a vector autoregression model framework on its ability to forecast returns of the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index. We show that Reuters sentiment can explain and predict changes in stock returns better than macroeconomic factors. We further find that negative Reuters sentiment has more predictive power than positive Reuters sentiment. Trading strategies with Reuters sentiment achieve significant outperformance with high success rates as well as high Sharpe ratios.
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The JOBS act and IPO volume: Evidence that disclosure costs affect the IPO decision
Michael Dambra, Laura Casares Field & Matthew Gustafson
Journal of Financial Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
In April 2012, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) was enacted to help revitalize the initial public offering (IPO) market, especially for small firms. During the year ending March 2014, IPO volume and the proportion of small firm issuers was the largest since 2000. Controlling for market conditions, we estimate that the JOBS Act has led to 21 additional IPOs annually, a 25% increase over pre-JOBS levels. Firms with high proprietary disclosure costs, such as biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms, increase IPO activity the most. These firms are also more likely to take advantage of the act's de-risking provisions, allowing firms to file the IPO confidentially while testing-the-waters.
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Jan Kleinnijenhuis, Friederike Schultz & Dirk Oegema
Journal of Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
Communicative complexity concerns the variety of issues and stakeholders (agenda complexity) and their associations (frame complexity) in the news. One issue may dominate news in crises (9/11, Katrina), but as soon as complexity recovers, uncertainty may decrease and the public mood may improve. The financial crisis in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany (2007–2012) offers an example. An automated content analysis was applied to over 160,000 newspaper articles. Frame complexity decreased until the spotlight fell on the demise of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers (2008). The subsequent gradual recovery was only partly interrupted by the euro crisis. A Vector AutoRegression time series analysis shows that increasing frame complexity may indeed have fostered the recovery of financial markets and consumer confidence.
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Structured debt ratings: Evidence on conflicts of interest
Matthias Efing & Harald Hau
Journal of Financial Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We test if issuers of asset- and mortgage-backed securities receive rating favors from agencies with which they maintain strong business relationships. Controlling for issuer fixed effects and a large set of credit risk determinants, we show that agencies publish better ratings for those issuers that provide them with more bilateral securitization business. Such rating favors are larger for very complex structured debt deals and for deals issued during the credit boom period. Our analysis is based on a new deal-level rating statistic that accounts for the full distribution of tranche ratings below the AAA cut-off point of a structured debt deal.
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The Invisible Hand of Short Selling: Does Short Selling Discipline Earnings Management?
Massimo Massa, Bohui Zhang & Hong Zhang
Review of Financial Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
We hypothesize that short selling has a disciplining role vis-à-vis firm managers that forces them to reduce earnings management. Using firm-level short-selling data for thirty-three countries collected over a sample period from 2002 to 2009, we document a significantly negative relationship between the threat of short selling and earnings management. Tests based on instrumental variable and exogenous regulatory experiments offer evidence of a causal link between short selling and earnings management. Our findings suggest that short selling functions as an external governance mechanism to discipline managers.
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Momentum Trading, Return Chasing, and Predictable Crashes
Benjamin Chabot, Eric Ghysels & Ravi Jagannathan
NBER Working Paper, November 2014
Abstract:
We combine self-collected historical data from 1867 to 1907 with CRSP data from 1926 to 2012, to examine the risk and return over the past 140 years of one of the most popular mechanical trading strategies — momentum. We find that momentum has earned abnormally high risk-adjusted returns — a three factor alpha of 1 percent per month between 1927 and 2012 and 0.5 percent per month between 1867 and 1907 — both statistically significantly different from zero. However, the momentum strategy also exposed investors to large losses (crashes) during both periods. Momentum crashes were predictable — more likely when momentum recently performed well (both eras), interest rates were relatively low (1867–1907), or momentum had recently outperformed the stock market (CRSP era) — times when borrowing or attracting return chasing “blind capital” would have been easier. Based on a stylized model and simulated outcomes from a richer model, we argue that a money manager has an incentive to remain invested in momentum even when the crash risk is known to be high when (1) he competes for funds from return-chasing investors and (2) he is compensated via fees that are convex in the amount of money managed and the return on that money.
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Informational efficiency of the clandestine and official gold markets in Paris
Georges Gallais-Hamonno, Thi-Hong-Van Hoang & Kim Oosterlinck
Economics Letters, January 2015, Pages 28–30
Abstract:
For gold, moving from clandestine to official trading does not significantly change informational efficiency. Both markets are inefficient suggesting that efficiency is linked more to the type of asset than to the legal status of the market.
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Why ‘financialisation’ hasn’t depressed US productive investment
Andrew Kliman & Shannon Williams
Cambridge Journal of Economics, January 2015, Pages 67-92
Abstract:
The rate of capital accumulation in the USA has fallen markedly in recent decades. Works in the financialisation literature have tried to explain this phenomenon by arguing that rising financial payments and purchases have come at the expense of productive investment. This article shows that such arguments are not supported by the data. It also explains theoretically why rising dividend payments and the growth of corporations’ portfolio investment are compatible with the fact that corporations’ productive investment did not decline during the first two decades of ‘neoliberalism’ in the USA. There would necessarily be a trade-off between these uses of funds if they were all funded out of current profits, but there is no necessary trade-off because borrowed funds are an additional source. Finally, the article shows that the fall in US corporations’ rate of profit (rate of return on investment in fixed assets) fully accounts for the fall in their rate of capital accumulation.
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Inside the “Black Box” of Sell-Side Financial Analysts
Lawrence Brown et al.
Journal of Accounting Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Our objective is to penetrate the “black box” of sell-side financial analysts by providing new insights into the inputs analysts use and the incentives they face. We survey 365 analysts and conduct 18 follow-up interviews covering a wide range of topics, including the inputs to analysts’ earnings forecasts and stock recommendations, the value of their industry knowledge, the determinants of their compensation, the career benefits of Institutional Investor All-Star status, and the factors they consider indicative of high-quality earnings. One important finding is that private communication with management is a more useful input to analysts’ earnings forecasts and stock recommendations than their own primary research, recent earnings performance, and recent 10-K and 10-Q reports. Another notable finding is that issuing earnings forecasts and stock recommendations that are well below the consensus often leads to an increase in analysts’ credibility with their investing clients. We conduct cross-sectional analyses that highlight the impact of analyst and brokerage characteristics on analysts’ inputs and incentives. Our findings are relevant to investors, managers, analysts, and academic researchers.
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Information reliability and welfare: A theory of coarse credit ratings
Anand Goel & Anjan Thakor
Journal of Financial Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
An enduring puzzle is why credit rating agencies (CRAs) use a few categories to describe credit qualities lying in a continuum, even when ratings coarseness reduces welfare. We model a cheap-talk game in which a CRA assigns positive weights to the divergent goals of issuing firms and investors. The CRA wishes to inflate ratings but prefers an unbiased rating to one whose inflation exceeds a threshold. Ratings coarseness arises in equilibrium to preclude excessive rating inflation. We show that competition among CRAs can increase ratings coarseness. We also examine the welfare implications of regulatory initiatives.
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The Psychology of Investment Behavior: (De)Biasing Financial Decision-Making One Graph at a Time
Rod Duclos
Journal of Consumer Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Consumers’ welfare largely depends on the soundness of their financial decisions. To this effect, the present research examines how people process graphical displays of financial information (e.g., stock-prices) to forecast future trends and invest accordingly. In essence, we ask whether and how visual biases in data interpretation impact financial decision-making and risk-taking. Five experiments find that the last trading day(s) of a stock bear a disproportionately (and unduly) high importance on investment behavior, a phenomenon we coin end-anchoring. Specifically, a stock-price closing upward (downward) fosters upward (downward) forecasts for tomorrow and, accordingly, more (less) investing in the present. Substantial investment asymmetries (up to 75%) emerge even as stock-price distributions were generated randomly to simulate times when the market conjuncture is hesitant and no real upward or downward trend can be identified. Allying experimental manipulations to eye-tracking technology, the present research begins to explore the underpinnings of end-anchoring.
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Retail Financial Advice: Does One Size Fit All?
Stephen Foerster et al.
NBER Working Paper, November 2014
Abstract:
Using unique data on Canadian households, we assess the impact of financial advisors on their clients' portfolios. We find that advisors induce their clients to take more risk, thereby raising expected returns. On the other hand, we find limited evidence of customization: advisors direct clients into similar portfolios independent of their clients' risk preferences and stage in the life cycle. An advisor's own portfolio is a good predictor of the client's portfolio even after controlling for the client's characteristics. This one-size-fits-all advice does not come cheap. The average client pays more than 2.7% each year in fees and thus gives up all of the equity premium gained through increased risk-taking.
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Disentangling Risk and Change: Internal and External Social Comparison in the Mutual Fund Industry
Aleksandra Kacperczyk, Christine Beckman & Thomas Moliterno
Administrative Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using data on 3,225 actively managed U.S. mutual funds from 1980 to 2006, we test hypotheses designed to disentangle risk and change as outcomes of behavioral performance feedback routines. We theorize that managers make decisions involving risk and decisions involving change under different conditions and motivated by different concerns. Our results show internal social comparison across units within a firm will motivate risk, whereas external social comparison across firms will motivate change. When a fund experiences a performance shortfall relative to internal social comparison, the manager is likely to make decisions that involve risk because the social and spatial proximity of internal comparisons trigger individual concern and fear of negative individual consequences, such as job loss. In contrast, when a fund experiences a performance shortfall in comparison with external benchmarks, the manager is more likely to consider the shortfall an organizational concern and make changes that do not necessarily involve risk. Although we might assume that negative performance in comparison with both internal and external benchmarks would spur risky change, our results indicate that risky change occurs most often when a decision maker receives unfavorable internal social performance feedback and favorable external social performance feedback. By questioning assumptions about why and when organizational change involves risk, this study begins to separate change and risk outcomes of the decision-making process.
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Learning on the Job? Employee Mobility in the Asset Management Industry
Aaron Chatterji, Rui De Figueiredo & Evan Rawley
Duke University Working Paper, November 2014
Abstract:
We present a new mechanism by which prior employment can influence transitions to other firms. We propose that some employees divert effort toward unproductive activities to learn about their own fitness for alternative employment. Based on the results of this costly learning experience, or “experiment,” some employees will transition into other firms or launch their own ventures, while others will remain at the incumbent firm. We develop a theoretical model to explicate these propositions, and test them using four datasets from the mutual fund and hedge fund industries. We find evidence that managers who engage in excessive risk-taking at mutual funds are subsequently more likely to join or start hedge funds, even though there is little evidence that this risk-taking is intended to signal quality to outside observers. Taken together, our findings suggest that learning about one’s own fitness for alternative employment, through experimentation on the job, is an important mechanism for enabling employee mobility.
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Geographic Proximity and Analyst Coverage Decisions: Evidence from IPOs
Patricia O'Brien & Hongping Tan
Journal of Accounting and Economics, February 2015, Pages 41–59
Abstract:
Using hand-collected data on analyst locations, we study how geographic proximity affects analyst coverage decisions for U.S. firms that went public during 1996–2009, along with the impact of local coverage on firm visibility. Analysts are 80% more likely to cover local firms than non-local ones, and nearby non-underwriter analysts initiate coverage one to three weeks earlier than distant ones. Proximity matters most for smaller, less visible firms, for firms with less complex operations and for lower status analysts. Less visible firms may use local analyst coverage as a stepping-stone to increase visibility with other analysts and institutional investors.
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Marina Agranov, Alberto Bisin & Andrew Schotter
Experimental Economics, December 2014, Pages 564-585
Abstract:
In this paper we experimentally investigate the impact that competing for funds has on the risk-taking behavior of laboratory portfolio managers compensated through an option-like scheme according to which the manager receives (most of) the compensation only for returns in excess of pre-specified strike price. We find that such a competitive environment and contractual arrangement lead, both in theory and in the lab, to inefficient risk taking behavior on the part of portfolio managers. We then study various policy interventions, obtained by manipulating various aspects of the competitive environment and the contractual arrangement, e.g., the Transparency of the contracts offered, the Risk Sharing component in the contract linking portfolio managers to investors, etc. While all these interventions would induce portfolio managers, at equilibrium, to efficiently invest funds in safe assets, we find that, in the lab, Transparency is most effective in incentivising managers to do so. Finally, we document a behavioral “Other People’s Money” effect in the lab, where portfolio managers tend to invest the funds of their investors in a more risky manner than their Own Money, even when it is not in either the investors’ or the managers’ interest to do so.
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Do Short-Sellers Profit from Mutual Funds? Evidence from Daily Trades
Salman Arif, Azi Ben-Rephael & Charles Lee
Stanford Working Paper, September 2014
Abstract:
Using high resolution data, we show that short-sellers (SSs) systematically profit from mutual fund (MF) flows. At the daily level, SSs trade strongly in the opposite direction to MFs. This negative relation is associated with the expected component of MF flows (based on prior days’ trading), as well as the unexpected component (based on same-day flows). The ability of SS trades to predict stock returns is up to 3 times greater when MF flows are in the opposite direction. The resulting wealth transfer from MFs to SSs is most pronounced for high-MF-held, low-liquidity firms, and is much larger during periods of high retail sentiment.