Analysts' functions are divided into discovery and interpretation roles, but separating between the two is non-trivial. We conjecture that analysts' interpretation skill can be gauged by their forecast revisions following material unanticipated news — in particular following non-earnings 8-K...

This paper examines the relation between firm-level implied volatility skew and the likelihood of extreme negative events, or crash risk. I show that volatility skew identifies which firms are likely to experience crashes, but only in short-window earnings announcement periods. The predictive...

We present evidence of investors underreacting to the absence of events in financial markets. Routine-based insiders strategically choose to be silent when they possess private information not yet reflected in stock prices. Consistent with our hypothesis, insider silence following routine sell...

We find that an increase in the ``unusualness'' of news with negative sentiment predicts an increase in stock market volatility. Similarly, unusual positive news forecasts lower volatility. Our analysis is based on more than 360,000 articles on 50 large financial companies, published in...

I examine the relationship between aggregate news sentiment, S&P 500 Index returns, and changes in the implied volatility index (VIX). I find a significant negative contemporaneous relationship between changes in VIX and both news sentiment and stock returns. This relationship is asymmetric...

We provide evidence that equity investors with limited attention are slow to incorporate how current oil price changes affect future earnings announcements. A cross-sectional equity trading strategy that exploits this inefficiency yields an annualized Sharpe Ratio of 0.57. Stock prices respond...

Using a large dataset of news releases, we study instances of investors' mistaken reaction, or misreaction, to news. We define misreaction as stock prices moving in the direction opposite to the news when it is released. We find that news tone predicts returns in the cross-section only upon the...

More than 650 U.S. public company executives predict the stock price response to their quarterly financial reports and share their prediction after under a nondisclosure agreement. Despite having full knowledge of the reports before their release, executives’ estimates differ from realized...

This paper investigates the informativeness and value relevance of analyst target prices in the context of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Our results indicate that firms with high 12-month ahead target prices relative to current stock prices are more likely to become a takeover target and offer...

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the predictability of earnings information before the quarterly disclosure date. Two categories of firms are contrasted: the firms that announce better quarterly earnings than the prior period and the firms that do not. The paper uses a sample of 67...