Further Evidence on the Impact of Stock Splits on Trading Liquidity

Stock splits have attracted the attention of academicians and practitioners for a long time. Many debates revolve around these often called „cosmetic” events that do not bring about any direct valuation implications. In spite of their simplicity and theoretically no motivation for any potential reaction this corporate event exerts influence on various stock's characteristics like liquidity, rates of return, shareholders' base etc. Considering the time period 2000–May 2011 the author examines the behavior of share volume following the stock splits of companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange and reports a 1–percent significant deterioration of this proxy of liquidity. Additionally, the greatest amplitude of abnormal changes in liquidity is observed during two trading sessions around the actual stock split although there is provided no new information to the market through the physical split of the shares outstanding since it is well–known in advance. The results obtained are indicative of the fact that splitting the stock as opposed to liquidity and/or trading range hypotheses on splits leads to liquidity deterioration what, in turn, should result in greater liquidity risk faced inter alia by brokers and/or market makers who may be willing to compensate for this unfavorable corollary of the corporate event at issue and, as a result, to charge higher transaction costs in the form of e.g. greater bid–ask spreads. On the other hand, shareholders, both existing and prospective, are likely to demand higher compensation for increased risk by requiring greater returns on such stocks