The Influence of Analysts, Institutional Investors, and Insiders on the Incorporation of Market, Industry, and Firm-Specific Information into Stock Prices

Author(s):  
Joseph D. Piotroski ◽  
Darren T. Roulstone
2004 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 1119-1151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph D. Piotroski ◽  
Darren T. Roulstone

We investigate the extent to which the trading and trade-generating activities of three informed market participants—financial analysts, institutional investors, and insiders—influence the relative amount of firm-specific, industry-level, and market-level information impounded into stock prices, as measured by stock return synchronicity. We find that stock return synchronicity is positively associated with analyst forecasting activities, consistent with analysts increasing the amount of industry-level information in prices through intra-industry information transfers. In contrast, stock return synchronicity is inversely related to insider trades, consistent with these transactions conveying firm-specific information. Supplemental tests show that insider and institutional trading accelerate the incorporation of the firm-specific component of future earnings news into prices alone, while analyst forecasting activity accelerates both the industry and firm-specific component of future earnings news. Our results suggest that all three parties influence the firm's information environment, but the type of price-relevant information conveyed by their activities depends on each party's relative information advantage.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
LUCAS N. C. VASCONCELOS ◽  
ORLEANS S. MARTINS

ABSTRACT Purpose: This paper analyses the viability of stock trading as a mechanism to promote corporate governance, addressing its effects on abnormal returns, information, and firm performance. Originality/value: The study indicates that competition among institutional investors is important to raise stock price efficiency. Policies that allow capital inflow, increase in liquidity, and a link between managers’ salaries and stock performance are beneficial to reinforce the stock market efficiency. Design/methodology/approach: Hypotheses testing using panel data regressions of 233 stocks between December 2009 to December 2017 from Thomson Eikon, Economatica and ComDinheiro. Findings: The results indicate that the number of institutional investors is not related to abnormal returns. On the other hand, the number of institutional investors increases the amount of firm-specific information into stock prices, rising stock market price efficiency. This relationship is stronger among the preferred stocks (PN), but this mechanism is still not valid to increase firms’ operational performance. Despite the possible increase in stock price efficiency, the investors cannot adopt such a mechanism to exercise governance if there is no remuneration linked to performance.


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haiyan Jiang ◽  
Donghua Zhou ◽  
Joseph H. Zhang

SYNOPSIS Against the backdrop of the Chinese Directive 40 (China's Reg FD) issued in 2007 as an attempt to curb insider trading and to level the information playing field, this study investigates whether analysts' private information acquisition influences the extent to which firm-specific information is impounded into stock prices, i.e., stock price synchronicity, and how the restrictions on selective disclosures imposed by Directive 40 have shaped the relationship between analyst information acquisition and synchronicity. Using a pre-Directive 40 sample, we show that synchronicity is negatively related to analysts' private information acquisition, which provides support for the “information advantage” argument of analysts' information production. However, the ability of analysts' private information acquisition in improving firm-specific information incorporated into stock price is mitigated post-Directive 40 due to a restriction on selective disclosures and/or private communication. Moreover, we find that this regulatory impact varies for firms being followed by affiliated analysts versus non-affiliated analysts. JEL Classifications: G14; G15; G17; G18.


2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (12) ◽  
pp. 1332-1347 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Kent Baker ◽  
Imad Jabbouri

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how Moroccan institutional investors view dividend policy. It discusses the importance these investors attach to the dividend policy of their investee firms, how much influence they exercise in shaping investee firms’ dividend policies, their reactions to changes in dividends, and their views on various explanations for paying dividends. Design/methodology/approach A mail survey provides a respondent and firm profile and responses to 28 questions involving various explanations for paying dividends and 30 questions on different dividend issues. Findings Institutional investors attach substantial importance to dividend policy and prefer high dividend payments. Although liquidity needs are a major driver, taxes play little role in shaping dividend preferences. Respondents agree with multiple explanations for paying dividends giving the strongest support to catering, bird-in-the-hand, life cycle, signaling, and agency theories. Research limitations/implications Despite a high response rate, the number of respondents limits partitioning the sample and testing for significant differences between different groups. Practical implications The lack of communication between Casablanca Stock Exchange (CSE) listed firms and institutional investors may depress stock prices and increase volatility. The results suggest agency problems and a weak governance environment at the CSE. Originality/value This study documents the importance that institutional investors place on dividend policy, their reactions to changes in their investees’ dividend policy, and the methods used to influence these firms. It extends previous research by reporting the level of support Moroccan institutional investors give to various explanations for paying dividends.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 100
Author(s):  
Imen Lamiri ◽  
Adel Boubaker

<p>This article explores the informational role of three essential modern financial markets actors such IFRS norms, the Big”4” and the financial analysts for a panel of emergent and developed countries during the period from 2001 to 2010. We hypothesis that these mechanisms help improving the quality of specific information incorporated into stock prices measured by the stock price synchronicity (SPS). The main result is that both financial analyst’s coverage and IFRS adoption's effects seem to be stronger for emerging than developed markets. The results also show a negative relationship between auditors’ opinion and coefficient of determination (R<sup>2</sup>).</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 829-857 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hua Feng ◽  
Ahsan Habib ◽  
Gao liang Tian

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between aggressive tax planning and stock price synchronicity. Design/methodology/approach Employing the special institutional background of China, this study constructs tax aggressiveness and stock price synchronicity measures for a large sample of Chinese stocks spanning the period 2003–2015. The authors employ OLS regression as the baseline methodology, and a fixed effect model, the Fama–Macbeth method and GMM as sensitivity checks. Matched samples and difference-in-difference analyses are used to control for endogeneity. Findings The authors find a significant and positive association between aggressive tax planning and stock price synchronicity. Because material information about risky tax transactions tends to be hidden in various tax accruals accounts, aggressive tax strategies make financial statements less transparent, thereby, increasing information asymmetry and decreasing stock price informativeness. The authors also find that the firms engaging in aggressive tax planning exhibit relatively high corporate opacity. In addition, the authors find that improvements in the tax enforcement regime, ownership status and high-quality auditors all constrain the adverse effects of tax aggressiveness. Practical implications This study has important practical implications for China’s regulators, who are striving to reduce the tax burden of enterprises. It also helps investors to consider investment decisions more appropriately from a taxation perspective. Originality/value First, this paper contributes to the stock price efficiency literature by identifying the effect of a hitherto unexamined factor, namely, firm-level aggressive tax planning, on the efficiency of stock prices. Second, this study provides further empirical evidence to support the agency view of tax aggressiveness, and the informational interpretation of stock price synchronicity. Third, this study helps us better understand the effects of firm-level tax policy on firm-specific information capitalization in an environment where overall country-level investor protection is relatively weak.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-130
Author(s):  
Mihaela Brodocianu ◽  
Ovidiu Stoica

AbstractDuring the last decades, institutional investors have been the main players, both in developed as well as in emerging stock markets. Thus, their investment behavior was analyzed at the national or international level, in order to assess if institutional investors herd, increase stock return volatility, affect market efficiency and liquidity, influence the corporate governance, or destabilize stock prices. This paper studies the behavior of the institutional investors on the Romanian stock market, a European frontier market that struggles to attain the status of emerging market. We examine if the disclosure level generates any herding behavior for institutional investors. In emerging markets, the lack of transparency affects the degree of investments in a listed company, as long as insider trading is pushed to the limit of the legal line. For this study, we used financial information from the companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange for the period 2010-2014. The findings highlight that there is a certain herding behavior among institutional investors in Romania.


2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donghua Zhou ◽  
Yujie Zhao ◽  
Philip T Lin ◽  
Bin Li ◽  
Adrian (Waikong) Cheung

We study the relationship between stock price synchronicity and information disclosure of firms listed in the Chinese stock market, using hand-collected data on firms’ official microblogging content in Sina Weibo, a popular microblogging service in China. We find that after controlling for the impact of traditional media, the number of Weibo tweets is related negatively to stock price synchronicity, indicating that stock prices incorporate firm-specific information disclosed in the firm’s official Weibo. Number of microblogging fans can strengthen this negative relationship. Our result is robust to alternative measures of stock price synchronicity, microblogging information disclosure, and to endogeneity issues. JEL Classification: G14, G15


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