This paper analyzes the relation between security issue announcement returns and the choice between debt, equity, and not issuing. As in Myers and Majluf (1984), higher-valued firms do not issue, and hence security issues are associated with negative announcement effects. Firms that choose to...

We examine a simple measure of operating leverage: the ratio of fixed costs (measured by depreciation and amortization plus selling, general, and administrative expenses) to the market (or book) value of assets. We find that this measure of operating leverage positively predicts returns....

Hard-to-value stocks provide opportunities for managers to exploit their informational advantage through trading on their firms' and their own personal accounts. In contrast to the prediction that such transactions reflect private information about future events, they are contrarian and heavily...