We propose that speculative trading arising from the joint effect of investor disagreement and short-sale constraints plays an important role in explaining the idiosyncratic volatility (IVOL) puzzle, the correlation among IVOL, market beta and trading volume, and the co-movement of IVOL....

Campbell, Lettau, Malkiel, and Xu (2001) document a positive trend in idiosyncratic volatility during the 1962-1997 period. We show that by 2003 volatility falls back to pre-1990s levels. Furthermore, we show that the increase and subsequent reversal is concentrated among firms with low stock...

After seventy years with no changes to short sale regulation, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission intervened three times with regulatory action from July 2007 through October 2008. The Commission first loosened restrictions on short sales by repealing the “Uptick Rule” in...

We study the trading behavior of short sellers in the presence of economic policy uncertainty (EPU). Daily short selling activity at either the aggregate level or the individual stock level is increasing in the EPU index (Baker, Bloom and Davis, 2016). EPU has great explanatory power for short...