Idiosyncratic Stock Research Articles

Which corporate leaders matter to financial markets?

This article uses market volatility effects to answer the question of which leaders matter to financial markets. We use a unique large dataset of over 22,000 management change announcements from S&P 500 companies together with an augmented Fama and French 5-factor model. Rolling ARCH panel regressions identify how idiosyncratic changes in daily stock price volatility are associated with changes in top corporate officers. We find that changes in CEOs, Presidents, and Chairmen increase daily return volatility by 30%–100% on the date of announcement, while CFOs and COOs may also cause some limited market response. Controlling for these five officers eliminates statistically significant correlations between idiosyncratic stock price volatility and other management change announcements such as CIO, CMO and Vice President. We find no evidence that stock price volatility responds differently to leadership change announcements than to other volatility shocks.

Information flow and investment cash flow sensitivity

ABSTRACT In this paper, we examine whether firms with greater information flow, i.e. which reveal more firm-specific information through their idiosyncratic stock price movements, are associated with lower investment cash flow sensitivity. Using a sample of 450 French non-financial firms over the period 2006–2022, we find results consistent with the idea that greater information flow decreases information asymmetry, thus allowing firms to carry out investments more efficiently as they depend less on the availability of internal cash flows.

Cost uniqueness and information uncertainty

AbstractPrior literature has studied firm uniqueness and its implications for capital market participants by investigating earnings uniqueness. We recognize that cost and revenue uniqueness provide separate insights about firm uniqueness because different forces drive firm‐specific revenues and costs. Cost uniqueness is of special interest because costs are opaque to investors and more complex than revenues. Therefore, we examine how cost uniqueness affects information uncertainty from the perspective of external participants. We find that idiosyncratic stock return volatility increases with cost uniqueness independently and incrementally from revenue uniqueness. We validate these results with several cross‐sectional tests that provide insights into the forces that drive the association between information uncertainty and cost uniqueness. In addition, we find that higher cost uniqueness is associated with finer cost disclosure. Overall, we show that cost uniqueness is an important dimension of cost behavior that is linked to strategic decision‐making and affects uncertainty surrounding firm valuation.

Extremal quantiles and stock price crashes

We employ extreme value theory to identify stock price crashes, featuring low-probability events that produce large, idiosyncratic negative outliers in the conditional distribution. Traditional methods employ approximations under Gaussian assumptions and central moments. This is inherently imprecise and susceptible to misspecifications, especially for tail events. We instead propose new definitions and measures for crash risk based on conditional extremal quantiles (CEQ) of idiosyncratic stock returns. CEQ provide information on quantile-specific impact of covariates, and shed light on prior empirical puzzles and shortcomings in identifying crashes. Additionally, to capture the magnitude of crashes, we provide an expected shortfall analysis of the losses due to crash. Our findings have important implications for a burgeoning literature in financial economics that relies on traditional approximations.

Do derivatives benefit shareholders? Evidence from India

We show that for a sample of 1,882 publicly listed Indian firms and sample period from 2016 to 2021, derivative-usage significantly reduces the idiosyncratic stock return volatility. The negative effect of derivative-usage on idiosyncratic volatility is more pronounced for firms with poor information environment, and financially-constrained and distressed firms. The quality of corporate governance does not influence the relationship between derivative-usage and firm risk. The valuation of derivative-user firms is significantly higher than that of non-derivative-user firms. Overall, using derivatives benefits the firms using them, both in terms of reducing risk and creating value for the shareholders.

Peer performance and short-termism: evidence from green patenting activities

ABSTRACT Theory and empirical evidence suggest short-termism endangers long-term corporate performance and economic growth. However, little is known about whether and how short-termism impacts the environment and society. Exploiting competitors’ idiosyncratic stock performance as an exogenous short-term peer return variation, we document that firms adjust their green innovation productivity downwards in response to higher short-term peer returns. We also document that higher peer short-term performance provides strong incentives for short-termism as firms strategically cut their R&D and SG&A expenditure to boost their short-term performance. Overall, our study documents the negative externalities that near-term returns can impose on competitors’ investment decisions.

The Influence of ESG Ratings On Idiosyncratic Stock Risk: The Unrated, the Good, the Bad, and the Sinners

This study analyzes whether stocks of companies with environmental social governance (ESG) rating show lower idiosyncratic risk. The main analysis covers 898,757 company-month observations of US stocks in the period from 1991 to 2018 and controls for stocks’ exposure to liquidity, mispricing, innovations in volatility risk, investor sentiment, and analysts’ forecast divergence. The main finding is that the receipt of an ESG rating decreases idiosyncratic stock risk. The effect is stronger for stocks that receive a higher ESG rating. Nevertheless, even when companies receive a lower ESG rating, they show significantly lower idiosyncratic risk than stocks without an ESG rating. Furthermore, stocks subject to a negative screen show lower idiosyncratic risk during recessions than comparable stocks with an ESG rating but without a negative screen. The results support the notion that the receipt of an ESG rating decreases uncertainty regarding future stock risk and return and show that ESG ratings and negative screens individually influence stock risk and, therefore, should be considered separately.

Product personalization focus in the pharmaceutical industry and shareholder wealth: The roles of marketing capability and financial leverage

Personalized medicine is an integral part of a pharmaceutical firm’s product offerings. However, the implications of product personalization on shareholder wealth, with both positive and negative forces at play, remain unclear. This research evaluates how personalization focus by pharmaceutical firms affects their stock returns and idiosyncratic stock risk. It further examines the roles of marketing capability and financial leverage in these relationships. Results, based on a unique secondary data set, reveal that personalization focus has a nonlinear effect on shareholder wealth. Personalization focus is seen to increase (decrease) stock returns (idiosyncratic risk) but only up to a point, beyond which it decreases (increases) returns (risk). Marketing capability and financial leverage are observed to play complex roles in these relationships between personalization on stock returns and idiosyncratic risk but only when personalization focus is low or high. This study draws on these findings to illustrate research and managerial implications.

A Critique of the Agency Theory Viewpoint of Stock Price Crash Risk: The Opacity and Overinvestment Channels

AbstractThis study documents a puzzling historical trend in crash risk for US‐listed firms: between 1950 and 2019, the firm‐year occurrences of idiosyncratic stock price crashes rose from 5.5% to an astonishing 27%. The vastness of the literature notoriously attributes crashes to agency reasons, i.e. self‐interested executives who strategically camouflage bad news via the financial reporting opacity and overinvestment channels. Nonetheless, we document that the opacity– and overinvestment–crash relations are non‐significant, especially in the period following the enforcement of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act. The statistically non‐significant relations are also witnessed in tests that account for the effect of equity‐based compensation incentives and corporate governance functions. Overall, this study criticizes the efficacy of opacity and overinvestment as channels in explaining crash risk. Our conclusions offer avenues for future research to pursue in rationalizing the puzzling surge in stock price crashes.

Idiosyncrasy as a Leading Indicator

AbstractDisequilibrating macro shocks affect different firms’ prospects differently, increasing idiosyncratic variation in forward-looking stock returns before affecting economic growth. Consistent with most such shocks from 1947 to 2020 enhancing productivity, increased idiosyncratic stock return variation forecasts next-quarter real GDP growth, industrial production growth, and consumption growth both in-sample and out-of-sample. These effects persist after controlling for other leading economic indicators.

Product market competition and stock return dependence

We model the spillover effect between competing firms’ daily idiosyncratic stock returns, using spatial econometric techniques. Contagion effect from rival firms dominates competitive effect, and the net effect is larger from negative return shocks of rival firms than from positive ones. The net effect is strong for firms in product markets with low concentration and high product market fluidity.

The stock market tips

We investigate the influence of public companies on their local economies through the spending of their employees on local goods and services. Using the taxicab industry in New York City as a laboratory, we find that tips paid for taxis taken near firms’ headquarters are higher on the days the firms’ stock returns are higher. This effect is short-lived, is stronger for firms offering greater stock-based compensation, and varies across industries. In addition, tipping increases gradually following the initial public offerings (IPOs) of firms, and this increase becomes significant at the end of the IPO lock-up period. Idiosyncratic stock returns are more strongly associated with tipping than are aggregate stock market or industry returns, suggesting that the increase in tipping with stock returns is due to firm-level factors. The number of taxis taken near firms’ headquarters, too, increases with their stock returns. Additional tests suggest that these findings are non-spurious.

Idiosyncratic volatility, turnover and the cross-section of stock returns: evidence from the Korean stock market

PurposeThe authors aim to understand the driving forces behind the idiosyncratic volatility puzzle in the Korean stock market. The authors study the Korean stock market because previous works report a strong idiosyncratic volatility puzzle in Korea, and the market for the exchange-traded funds (ETFs) including low volatility ETFs has experienced drastic growth in Korea.Design/methodology/approachUsing common stocks listed either on KOSPI or KOSDAQ over the period 1997–2016, the authors estimate idiosyncratic volatility using the Fama–French three-factor model. In addition, based on prior literature, the authors use turnover as a proxy for overvaluation. The authors then study the role of turnover in understanding the idiosyncratic volatility puzzle in Korea.FindingsThe authors find that turnover is highly associated with idiosyncratic volatility. Turnover is extremely large among firms with high idiosyncratic volatility and the puzzle disappears after we control for turnover, meaning that turnover subsumes the explanatory power of idiosyncratic volatility for equity returns. The authors also find underperformance of stocks with high turnover and high idiosyncratic volatility exclusively during earnings announcement periods. Overall, our finding implies that the puzzle arises since high idiosyncratic volatility stocks due to high turnover are overvalued and experience correction afterwards.Originality/valueLiterature has suggested explanations based on lottery preferences of investors and market frictions behind the idiosyncratic volatility puzzle. What makes our study distinct from previous work is that we find the role of turnover in understanding the idiosyncratic volatility puzzle using turnover measure as a proxy for overvaluation in the Korean stock market.

The pass-through of uncertainty shocks to households

Using new employer-employee matched data, this paper investigates the impact of uncertainty, as measured by idiosyncratic stock market volatility, on individual outcomes. We find that firms provide at best partial insurance to their workers. Increased firm-level uncertainty reduces total compensation, especially variable pay, and workers reduce their durable goods consumption in response. Such shocks also lead to greater financial fragility among lower-income earners. Constructing a new county-level uncertainty shock, we find that local uncertainty shocks reduce county-level durable consumption. Taken together, these findings show that uncertainty shocks can significantly affect local economic activity through households’ consumption and savings decisions.

The Effect of COVID-19 on the Relationship between Idiosyncratic Volatility and Expected Stock Returns

This study examines the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the relationship between idiosyncratic volatility and expected stock returns. Using daily stock return data in the US market from the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP), we estimate monthly idiosyncratic volatility and investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic at the portfolio and firm level. The results of portfolio analysis and cross-sectional regression show that the relationship between idiosyncratic volatility and subsequent stock returns switches from negative to positive during the pandemic period. Furthermore, we find that the relationship is robust to skewness for the “before the pandemic” and “after pandemic” periods. On the contrary, when we control for the one-month return reversal, the effect of idiosyncratic volatility on the subsequent stock returns becomes insignificant in both periods. Therefore, the short-term return reversal effect is the underlying reason for the relationship switching from negative to positive in the pandemic period. Our results are beneficial for investors and researchers.

The CDS market reaction to loan renegotiation announcements

This paper investigates the impact of loan renegotiations on firms’ credit risk using the CDS market as a measure of credit risk. Using a sample of public US firms for 2010–2017, we document a significant decrease in CDS spreads and returns that we interpret as evidence of a certification effect. The finding suggests that the loan renegotiations are on average beneficial for the firm. The strongest reactions are for material amendments such as line of credit amount or tranche amount. Additionally, we find negative stock market returns, although barely statistically significant. Moreover, we identify an anticipation effect of up to 30 days before the announcement date on the CDS market, possibly due to informed trading by CDS banks of their speculative-rated borrowers’ CDS contracts. Finally, we show that firm-specific CDS returns lead idiosyncratic stock returns, especially around the announcement date and for speculative-rated firms.

Regional Peer Effects of Corporate Tax Avoidance.

This study empirically demonstrates significant regional peer effects due to tax avoidance. We used peer companies’ idiosyncratic stock returns as an instrumental variable to address potential endogeneity problems. The heterogeneity analysis indicates that for companies with a stronger intensity of regional tax collection and management, a higher degree of informatization, and companies with a low management shareholding ratio, the regional peer effects of enterprise tax avoidance are more significant. Finally, we determined that the managers’ information learning, reputation consideration, and information communication are key mechanisms propagating peer effects. The conclusions of this paper enrich and expand the peer effect theory of corporate tax avoidance, thereby providing a theoretical basis and empirical evidence for tax authorities in supervising corporate tax avoidance.

Policy uncertainty and peer effects: Evidence from corporate investment in China

This study investigates whether economic policy uncertainty (EPU) magnifies peer effects in corporate investment in China and the economic mechanisms through which EPU may act upon this property. We examine this relationship by analysing a large sample of publicly listed companies in China for the period of 2009–2019, adopting the peer-firm-average idiosyncratic stock return to capture exogenous variations in peer firms’ investment activities. We demonstrate that peer effects are stronger when EPU is increasing in intensity. We also find that high EPU magnifies peer effects by decreasing the accuracy of firms’ signals regarding their investment opportunities, asymmetrically impacting their capacity to acquire information and exacerbating managers’ career concerns. We further show that increased EPU magnifies peer effects only for underinvesting firms, causing underinvestment to persist and retarding recovery from an economic downturn. Our investigation provides original evidence of how EPU influences corporate investment decisions through peer effects, contributing to the continuing debate on the role of EPU and corporate investment efficiency by establishing that the adoption of consistent and transparent economic policies optimize returns on a company’s investments, especially during an economic downturn.

Tax aggressiveness and idiosyncratic volatility

This study finds that aggressive tax strategies adopted by a firm affect idiosyncratic stock return volatility. Aggressive tax strategies, which I measure as tax paid by a firm divided by pretax income (adjusted for special items), are associated with higher levels of idiosyncratic stock volatility. Uncertainty associated with tax strategies may result due to several factors, such as penalties, fines, and additional tax payments if particular tax strategies are disallowed by taxation authorities, or if there are changes in tax rules. Such uncertainty affects the future cash flows of a firm and is reflected in more volatile stock returns. Financial constraints, corporate governance mechanisms, and information environments surrounding a firm influence the relation between idiosyncratic volatility and effective tax rates.

Research on the Relationship between Trade Volatility, Property Rights and New Energy Stock Returns under the Background of New Energy Industry Development

The research on the relationship between risk and return of new energy stocks is the focus of financial research. Related research focuses more on the relationship between idiosyncratic fluctuation risk and stock returns. In the Chinese stock market, some Chinese investors clearly prefer stocks with high risk characteristics, which leads to overvalued stocks. However, the short-selling restrictions in the Chinese stock market and the heterogeneity of investors have also led to a significant negative correlation between idiosyncratic volatility and cross-sectional yield. There are many studies on the relationship between idiosyncratic volatility and stock returns, but no consistent conclusions have been drawn, and there is a lack of relevant research on new energy stocks. Therefore. This paper collates the data of 70 listed companies in the new energy and new energy automobile industry from 2017 to 2019, tracks the stock returns of sample companies for 3 years (36 months), and conducts in-depth research on the relationship between idiosyncratic fluctuation risks and new energy stock returns. To further verify and supplement the risk-return relationship of China's new energy stock market and provide a certain basis for the company's decision-making behaviour.