Consensus analyst target prices are widely available online at no cost to investors. In this paper we consider whether these consensus target prices are informative for predicting future returns. We find that when considered in isolation, consensus target prices are not generally informative...

We use a proprietary dataset to test the implications of several asymmetric information models on how short-lived private information affects trading strategies and liquidity provision. Our identification rests on information acquisition before analyst recommendations are publically announced....

Despite the mounting evidence that stock misvaluation affects takeover characteristics and outcomes at the deal level, there remains a prolonged debate over whether mispricing drives aggregate industry-level merger activity. We depart from the extant literature and investigate whether stock...

Individual investors’ overall return in stock markets decreases with the increase in trading frequency due to factors such as commission expenses, insider trading, spreads, and institutional investors’ high-frequency algorithms. In this study, the relationship between believing the technical...

We document a strong positive initial market reaction to merger announcements from bidders with either large earnings growth or significant earnings decline, relative to those with neutral earnings change, reflecting a U-shaped pattern between bidders’ earnings growth and announcement returns....

We examine the impact of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) on financial analysts. We hypothesize and find that analysts are more pessimistic, less precise, and more asymmetric in their boldness in the fall, as indicated by their forecasts of quarterly earnings. The effects are apparent in all...

We explore the effects of fundamental extrapolation on stock returns. Empirically, we propose a novel approach to extrapolate firms' fundamental information and find that a strategy based on fundamental extrapolation earns an average return of 0.80% per month. Theoretically, we show that...

We examine article, author and firm characteristics of investment articles published by non-professional analysts on the social media investment platform Seeking Alpha from 2006 to 2020 leading to visible market value changes. We show that there are differences between articles followed by stock...

Amendments to NASD Rule 2711 and NYSE Rule 472, enacted in May 2002, mandate that sell-side analysts disclose the distribution of their security recommendations by category of buy, hold, and sell. This regulation enhances the transparency of analysts' information and mitigates the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine securities analyst independence in China's capital market and the effect on analyst independence of institutional investors' shareholding and separation between control rights and cash flow rights of ultimate...