Trading Against the Random Expiration of Private Information : A Natural Experiment

For years, the SEC accidentally distributed securities disclosures to some investors before the public. This setting is unique because the delay until public disclosure was exogenous and the private information window was well-defi ned, which we exploit to study informed trading with a random stopping time. Trading intensity and the pace at which prices incorporate information decrease with the expected delay until public release, but the relation between trading intensity and time elapsed varies with traders' learning process. Noise trading and relative information advantage play similar roles as in standard microstructure theories assuming a fixed time window