Using proprietary data from a major fund data provider, we analyze the screening activity of investment consultants (ICs) who advise institutional investors with trillions of dollars in assets. We find that ICs frequently shortlist funds using threshold screens clustered at round, base 5 or base...

When brokers, analysts and fund managers buy or sell for their own account, they outperform retail investors over short windows up to a month. They earn particularly high abnormal returns when they trade simultaneously with other financial experts and when they trade before earnings...

When brokers, analysts, and fund managers buy or sell stocks for their own accounts, these “access employees” of financial institutions outperform retail investors over short windows up to a month. They earn particularly high abnormal returns when they trade before earnings announcements,...

Quantitative research analysts (Quants) produce in-depth quantitative and econometric modeling of market anomalies to assist sell-side analysts and institutional clients with stock selection strategies. Quants are associated with more efficient analyst forecasting behavior on anomaly predictors...

The use of technical analysis by financial market professionals is not well understood. This paper thus analyzes survey evidence from 692 fund managers in five countries, the vast majority of whom rely on technical analysis. At a forecasting horizon of weeks, technical analysis is the most...

Using a comprehensive database of corporate news, we find that bond funds trade against the direction of news sentiment. The trading against news phenomenon is concentrated in funds selling on positive news and in the post-financial crisis period when dealer liquidity provision is constrained....

Using a novel database, we show that the stock-price impact of analyst trade ideas is at least as large as the impact of stock recommendation, target price, and earnings forecast changes, and that investors following trade ideas can earn significant abnormal returns. Trade ideas triggered by...

This paper shows that intensity of high-frequency trading (HFT) in stocks held by mutual funds is negatively related to fund performance. This negative relation can largely be explained by the illiquidity premium: HFT-intensive stocks provide lower returns because the majority of these stocks...

This study collects and examines a comprehensive sample of written analyst reports for worldwide equity funds. I investigate two features related to the Berk and Green (2004) model: investor sophistication and decreasing returns to scale. First, I find that the tone in analyst reports drives...

The on-going debate over whether fund managers have skills and whether those skills are short-lived is still inconclusive. Using the performance measure that can't be manipulated with respect to the underlying distribution, time variation, nor estimation error, (the manipulation-proof...