Recent evidence (Stambaugh, Yu, and Yuan, 2015) indicates that the most promising explanation for the negative price of idiosyncratic volatility is from its function as a limit arbitrage. Our evidence incorporating firm specific news is inconsistent with the limited arbitrage explanation. Since...

This study examines the effect of option volume relative to stock volume (O/S) on market response to earnings surprises. The market reaction per unit of earnings surprise is lower for firms that have high O/S prior to earnings announcement than for firms with low O/S prior to earnings...

Stock market makers are afraid that informed insiders will take advantage of them in trade. To protect themselves, they may increase the bid-offer spread to include a fee for the adverse selection risk . If set correctly, market makers will share in profits from others trading on private...

We investigate whether investors' perception of a firm's trustworthiness affects underreaction to earnings news. We develop a model that predicts how trust helps explain underreaction to news, and test this prediction under three different empirical settings where a firm's perceived...

This paper investigates the robustness of post-earnings-announcement-drift (PEAD) on a price signal perspective, unlike the traditional literature that focuses on fundamental signal. The studied period is 2003-2015, for four main US indices. The results suggest that some economic agents are too...

Investors are reluctant to trade in the high-information-asymmetry days before earnings announcements. We show that the decrease in liquidity trading before announcements is asymmetric. We analyze buy and sell orders of investors with passive investment strategies, and find they do not reduce...

Prior research documents that volatility spreads predict stock returns. If the trading activity of informed investors is an important driver of volatility spreads, then the predictability of stock returns should be more pronounced during major information events. This paper investigates whether...

We study the role of firm ambiguity on stock price reaction to earnings announcements. By using the firm's variance risk premium (VRP) prior to earnings news arrivals as a proxy for firm-level information ambiguity, we provide evidence that this “micro” form of ambiguity has a significant...

We show that the cost of trading on negative news, relative to positive news, increases before earnings announcements. Our evidence suggests that this asymmetry is due to financial intermediaries reducing their exposure to announcement risks by providing liquidity asymmetrically. This asymmetry...

We show that a lack of investor trust affects the revision of cash flow expectations and delays the incorporation of accounting information into the stock price. To overcome investors' dependence on trust, managers can obtain external certification—either through credit ratings or by employing...