Analyst coverage and types of institutional investors

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between institutional holdings and analyst coverage in the context of the heterogeneous nature of institutional investors.Design/methodology/approachSimilar to prior studies (e.g. Ke and Ramalingegowda; Ramalingegowda and Yu), this paper obtains institutional investors' trading classifications (transient, dedicated, and quasi‐indexing) from Brian Bushee directly. To examine the hypotheses, the paper uses a two‐step instrumental variable approach demonstrated in O'Brien and Bhushan to mitigate the simultaneity relationship between the change in analyst coverage and the change in the number of heterogeneous institutional investors.FindingsThe findings suggest that such relations are different among transient, dedicated, and quasi‐indexing institutional investors. Specifically, there are three major results. First, a change to the number of analyst coverage has the lowest impact on the change in the number of dedicated institutional investors. Second, a change in the number of transient institutional investors has a higher impact on change in analyst coverage than those for change in the number of dedicated and quasi‐indexing institutional investors. Third, changes to analysts' buy or sell recommendations have the least impact on the change in the number of dedicated institutions, relative to transient and quasi‐indexing institutions.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings suggest that institutional investors are not homogeneous. Research studies on institutional investors need to disentangle the differences among different types of institutions.Originality/valueThe paper provides a comprehensive study on different institutional investors and analyst coverage. The findings show the complex nature of the interaction between institutional investors and analyst coverage.