scholarly journals Rest in Peace Post-Earnings Announcement Drift

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Martineau

This paper revisits price formation following earnings announcements. In modern financial markets, stock prices fully reflect earnings surprises on the announcement date, leading to the disappearance of post-earnings announcement drifts (PEAD). For large stocks, PEAD have been non-existent since 2006 but has only disappeared recently for microcap stocks. PEAD remain a prevalent area of study in finance and accounting despite having largely disappeared. This paper concludes with a set of recommendations for researchers who conduct such studies to better assess the existence of PEAD and suggests future research avenues to examine price formation following earnings news.

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 536-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda H. Chen ◽  
Wei Huang ◽  
George J. Jiang

We examine the role of institutional investors underlying post–earnings-announcement drift (PEAD). Our results show that while institutional investors generally herd on earnings news, such correlated trading among institutions does not eliminate or reduce market underreaction to earnings surprises. Instead, PEAD is significant only in the subsample of stocks where institutions herd in the same direction as earnings surprises. In fact, institutional herding is also positively related to next-quarter earnings announcement returns. We provide evidence that institutional herding on or against earnings news is largely driven by firm characteristics, particularly past firm performance and stock returns. In addition, we find that relative to nontransient institutions, transient institutions have a stronger tendency to herd on earnings information. Finally, based on long-run stock returns, we show that when institutions herd on earnings surprises, institutional trading represents a gradual process of incorporating information into stock prices. However, when institutions herd against earnings surprises, institutional trading slows down stock price discovery.


2011 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin C. Ayers ◽  
Oliver Zhen Li ◽  
P. Eric Yeung

ABSTRACT: We examine whether the two distinct post-earnings-announcement drifts associated with seasonal random-walk-based and analyst-based earnings surprises are attributable to the trading activities of distinct sets of investors. We predict and find that small (large) traders continue to trade in the direction of seasonal random-walk-based (analyst-based) earnings surprises after earnings announcements. We also find that when small (large) traders react more thoroughly to seasonal random-walk- (analyst-) based earnings surprises at the earnings announcements, the respective drift attenuates. Further evidence suggests that delayed small trades associated with random-walk-based surprises are consistent with small traders’ failure to understand time-series properties of earnings, whereas delayed large trades associated with analyst-based surprises are more consistent with a longer price discovery process. We also find that the analyst-based drift has declined in recent years.


2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (6) ◽  
pp. 2587-2617 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chao Gao ◽  
Yuhang Xing ◽  
Xiaoyan Zhang

Straddles on individual stocks generally earn negative and significant returns. However, average at-the-money straddles from 3 days before an earnings announcement to the announcement date yield a highly significant 3.34% return. The positive returns on straddles indicate that investors underestimate the magnitude of uncertainty around earnings announcements. We find that positive straddle returns are more pronounced for smaller firms and firms with higher volatility, higher kurtosis, more volatile past earnings surprises, and less trading volume/higher transaction costs. This suggests that when firm signals are noisy, and/or when it is costlier to trade, investors underestimate the uncertainty associated with earnings announcements.


1996 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morton Pincus ◽  
Charles E. Wasley

We examine the behavior of stock prices at the time of post-1974–75 LIFO adoption announcements. We exploit recent theoretical and empirical developments in the LIFO adoption literature in an attempt to resolve some of the mixed findings in Hand (1993). We study LIFO adoptions announced prior to as well as at the time of annual earnings announcements. Previous research has mostly centered on 1974–75 adoptions made at the time of annual earnings announcements. Our study of LIFO adoptions announced prior to annual earnings announcement dates enables us to provide evidence on whether the early announcement of a LIFO adoption is used by firms to signal positive information about earnings growth. Collectively, our results suggest that in explaining the market response to LIFO adoption announcements, extant models of the LIFO adoption decision do not fully capture the richness of differing inflationary environments or of alternative disclosure times.


2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (03) ◽  
pp. 1550019 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Forbes ◽  
George Giannopoulos

This paper presents evidence regarding the post-earnings announcement drift (PEAD) anomaly for the Greek market in the years 2000–2006 (covering earnings announcements in the years 2001–2007). The impact of the introduction of International Financial Reporting Standards on the size and prevalence of the PEAD anomaly is examined. Unlike recent evidence for the US market we find PEAD to be alive and well, and of growing importance in our Greek sample. It may be the adoption of international financial reporting standards (IFRS) has served to reduce earnings predictability in Greece and thus enhance PEAD in the Athens stock exchange (ASE) market. This contrasts strongly with US evidence that the post-earnings-announcement drift anomaly is now waning as more efficient markets and smarter, fundamentals-based, traders arbitrage its impact on stock prices.


Author(s):  
Hsin-I Chou ◽  
Mingyi Li ◽  
Xiangkang Yin ◽  
Jing Zhao

Abstract Institutional demand for a stock before its earnings announcement is negatively related to subsequent returns. The relation is not attributable to the price pressure of institutional demand and is stronger for stocks with higher information asymmetry and/or greater valuation difficulty. These findings support the notion that overconfident institutions misprice stocks. Following announcements, institutions’ behavior exhibits the outcome-dependent feature of self-attribution bias. Whether they become more overconfident and delay their mispricing correction depends on whether earnings news confirms their preannouncement trades. This behavioral bias also offers a new explanation for the well-known post-earnings-announcement drift.


2012 ◽  
Vol 87 (5) ◽  
pp. 1791-1818 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Zhang

ABSTRACT I examine the effect of ex ante management forecast accuracy on the post-earnings-announcement drift when management forecasts about next quarter's earnings are bundled with current quarter's earnings announcements. I build a composite measure of ex ante management forecast accuracy that takes into account forecast ability, forecast difficulty, and forecast environment. The results show that the bundled forecasts with higher ex ante accuracy mitigate investors' under-reaction to current earnings and reduce the magnitude of the post-earnings-announcement drift. Data Availability: The data used in this paper are available from the sources listed in the text.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document