In a sample of U.S. stocks, higher stock lending fees predict significantly lower excess returns beyond shorting demand and loan supply. This relation is stronger after October 2008 which is likely attributable to a regime shift in the lending market with the onset of the Global Financial...

Using proprietary data on millions of trades by retail investors, we provide the first large-scale evidence that retail short selling predicts negative stock returns. A portfolio that mimics weekly retail shorting earns an annualized risk-adjusted return of 9%. The predictive ability of retail...

Recent research finds that investors, broadly defined, react to the linguistic tone of quarterly earnings conference calls; there is a positive relation between firms' stock returns and call tone (a measure of “sentiment” related word tabulations). However, this type of soft information can...

In a dynamic trading model, investors with heterogeneous beliefs have an option to sell the stock now and buy it back later. Due to this repurchase option and the risk aversion of investors, it is possible for the stock price to be lower than the lowest valuation among investors even when the...

We exploit quasi-exogenous variation in passive ownership around the Russell 1000/2000 cutoff to explore the causal effects of passive ownership on the securities lending market. We find that passive ownership causes an increase in lendable supply and short interest, while lending fees remain...