We correlate analysts' forecast errors with temporal variation in investor sentiment. We find that when sentiment is high, analysts' forecasts of one-year-ahead earnings and long-term earnings growth are relatively more optimistic for “uncertain” or “difficult to value” firms. Adding...

Prior research on equity analysts focuses almost exclusively on those employed by sell-side investment banks and brokerage houses. Yet investment firms undertake their own buy-side research and their analysts face different stock selection and recommendation incentives than their sell-side...

This paper reveals that in addition to fundamental factors, the 52-week high price and recent investor sentiment play an important role in analysts' target price formation. Analysts' forecasts of short-term earnings and long-term earnings growth are shown to be important explanatory variables...

We examine whether, and to what extent, investors focus on salient and easy-to-process features in responding to analyst forecasts. We focus on rounding as arguably the most salient forecast feature. We find that while rounding is only marginally associated with forecast accuracy, investors...

We present evidence of the impact of buy-side analysts on the behavior and performance of fund managers. Using data provided by a large global asset manager, we relate buy-side analysts' recommendations to fund transactions on a daily basis. Our results show that buy-side analysts have a...

Investors, regulators, academics, and researchers all emphasize the importance of financial statement comparability. However, an empirical construct of comparability is typically not specified. In addition, little evidence exists on the benefits of comparability to users. This study attempts to...

We present evidence on the trading and performance impact of buy-side analysts. Using data provided by a large global asset manager, we relate buy-side analysts' recommendations to fund transactions on a daily basis. We show that buy-side analysts significantly influence trading decisions: Fund...

We show that U.S. analysts alter their behavior in response to a randomly assigned shock that exogenously varies the timeliness and cost of accessing companies' mandatory disclosures in the cross-section of investors: analysts reduce the number of stocks they cover, issue less optimistic and...

Despite the increased frequency of analyst forecasts during earnings announcements, empirical evidence on the interaction between the information in the earnings announcement and these forecasts is limited. We examine the implications of reinforcing and contradicting analyst forecast revisions...

Using data from Chinese listed firms, this paper examines the investment behavior of Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (QFIIs). QFIIs have a preference for large well known firms with some element of state ownership, lower liability levels and greater turnover capacity. Furthermore, the...