Most existing studies conclude that the accuracy of analysts' target prices is questionable. In forecasting target prices, analysts estimate a future stock price under the constraint of a time frame of usually 12 months. We exclude this source of uncertainty by focusing on valuations in takeover...

The value of technical analysis (TA) has been debated for decades; however, limited evidence exists on the profitability of investment recommendations issued by technical analysts. These ‘chartists' sometimes claim that TA is an art rather than a science. We evaluated more than 5000 TA-based...

Based on prospect theory, we posit that security analysts' target prices function as a reference point for takeover bids and affect deal completion. Using a sample of US takeovers from 1999 to 2014, we find a negative relation between target prices for a takeover target and the chances for...

The recent global financial crisis reignited concerns over systemic risk in the financial industry as a new type of systemic risk emerged – the severe loss of asset value due to illiquidity. The crisis has sparked a large body of research and has led to a number of new quantitative indicators...

Multiple shocks have led regulators and policy makers to put increasing faith in the diagnostic and prophylactic powers of international financial standards, but the nature, appropriateness and normative force of such standards varies. As a standard setter, the International Organization of...

We document that the relative placement of analysts' target price within their subjective distribution of scenario-based valuations for the covered firm (i.e., tilt) is informative to investors. When analysts forecast price appreciation, tilt incrementally predicts ex post valuation errors and...

We find that individual investors who use technical analysis and trade options frequently make poor portfolio decisions, resulting in dramatically lower returns than other investors. The data on which this claim is based consists of transaction records and matched survey responses of a sample of...

Traditional pecking-order theory (POT) cannot explain why good-quality firms issue equity: this is often considered to be an empirical puzzle. We build a model of capital structure that has elements of both asymmetric information and behavioral finance. Firms have private information about their...

Suppose an economy within which rational expectations equilibriums (REE) are predicated on the distribution of ability, and the extent to which economic agents are doubtful (`doubtfulness') as to true realizations of their ability. Let a `societal REE' denote an REE that, simultaneously...

I use classification-based machine-learning methods to decompose 32 anomaly payoffsinto risk exposures and mispricing. The component driven by risk earns statistically insignificantreturns, despite its efficacy in explaining the time-series variation in anomaly payoffs.The mispricing component...