The magnitude of the short term market reaction to news announcements is adversely affected by the total number of announcements that day. We argue that the total number of announcements creates a level of distraction that results in a significant underreaction on high distraction days. The...

With the demise of traditional market makers and proliferation of trade execution algorithms that mix market and limit orders, it is no longer clear who provides liquidity in limit order book markets and what determines their liquidity provision decisions. To examine these issues, we develop and...

We investigate the new reality of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). We show that many ETFs are active investments in form (designed to generate alpha) or function (serve as building blocks of active portfolios). The median ETF has an Activeness Index of 93.1%. Active-in-form ETFs have positive...