Post-earnings Announcement Drift Research Articles

Foreign Ownership Restriction and Momentum – Evidence from Emerging Markets

AbstractThis study investigates the impact of foreign investors on stock price efficiency and return predictability in emerging markets. It finds that stocks fully investible for foreign investors exhibit stronger price momentum than non‐investible stocks. The difference in momentum effects between stocks with different levels of investibility cannot be fully explained by world market risk, size, turnover, or country‐specific factors. Further tests show that fully investible stocks have no post‐earnings‐announcement drift (PEAD), and their short‐term momentum reverses over a longer horizon. These results show that the stronger momentum of highly investible stocks does not appear to be driven by foreign investors' underreaction to firm‐specific information, but is more likely to be generated by their positive feedback trading.

The puzzling behavior of short sellers around earnings announcements

Abstract We examine the performance of ‘predictive’ and ‘reactive’ short sellers who take relatively large short positions immediately before and after quarterly earnings announcements, respectively. While both types short into advancing markets, it is surprising for reactive shorts since their trades are in stocks that just announced unexpected good news and thus, according to the post-earnings announcement drift anomaly, will subsequently have abnormally high cumulative returns. Nevertheless, we find that for both types of short sellers: (1) subsequent cumulative returns are significantly negatively related to the amount of abnormal short selling, suggesting they are informed, and (2) relative to non-earnings dates, the subsequent returns around earnings announcements are significantly more negative, indicating they appear to be adept at exploiting earnings announcements. Surprisingly, we find that the subsequent returns of reactive short sellers are significantly greater than those of predictive short sellers except for S&P 500 stocks, perhaps due to their greater analyst following. Importantly, we are left with two puzzles. First, reactive shorts would have significantly improved their performance had they based their trades on the size of standardized unexpected earnings (‘SUE’). Second, predictive shorts of Micro stocks would have significantly improved their performance had they simply waited until earnings were announced and then based their trades on SUE.

Post-Split Drift and Post-Earnings Announcement Drift: One Anomaly or Two?

We find that the phenomenon of post-split return drift continues to hold during the 1984–2012 period, but the drift mainly concentrates in the first three months after the announcements. Given the short duration of the drift, we explore whether the post-split drift is partially driven by the post-earnings announcement return drift. The results indicate that splits and earnings surprises are correlated but generate distinct drifts. Exploiting the two distinct drift patterns, our trading strategy generates a monthly value-weighted abnormal return of 1.54% (equivalent to 18.5% per annum) after controlling for size, book-to-market, momentum, and liquidity.

Options trading volume and stock price response to earnings announcements

We examine the effect of options trading volume on the stock price response to earnings announcements over the period 1996–2007. Contrary to prior studies, we find no significant difference in the immediate stock price response to earnings information announcements between firms with listed options and firms without listed options. However, within the sample of firms with listed options, we find that higher options trading volume reduces the immediate stock price response to earnings announcements. This is consistent with evidence that the stock prices of high options trading volume firms have anticipated and pre-empted some earnings information in the pre-announcement period. We also find that abnormal options trading volume around earnings announcements hastens the stock price adjustment to earnings news. We present evidence that post-earnings announcement drift is lower for stocks of firms with high abnormal options trading volume around earnings announcements.

Do XBRL filings enhance informational efficiency? Early evidence from post-earnings announcement drift

In 2009, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) mandated public firms to file their financial statements using eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). The SEC's main motive behind this mandate is that XBRL filings would enhance the informational efficiency in the stock markets by making financial data easier to use and analyze for a broad range of investors. Using a sample from the first wave of mandated XBRL filers, we find a decline in post earnings announcement drift for the good news portfolio in the post-XBRL adoption period. Instead of a drift associated with underreaction, we find that markets overreact to negative earnings surprises for the bad news portfolio during our observation period, which coincides with the financial crisis. We detect limited evidence that XBRL adoption mitigates overreaction, which is another form of market inefficiency. We also find limited evidence that XBRL particularly benefits small investors.

The profitability, costs and systematic risk of the post-earnings-announcement-drift trading strategy

This paper re-examines the profitability of the post-earnings-announcement-drift (PEAD) trading strategy using a practical simulation approach that aligns with a fund manager’s investment perspective. It allows us to calculate the break-even transaction costs of following a PEAD strategy, and permits the explicit incorporation of transaction costs. Using US data from 1974 to 2007, we show that the traditional event-study method understates the risk and overstates the abnormal return of the PEAD strategy. Accounting for transaction costs in a practical simulation framework, we show there is no abnormal return (alpha) from the PEAD strategy in multi-factor asset pricing regression analyses. These results are robust to sub-period analyses and alternative transaction cost measures. The effects of intraday timing and information risk on the PEAD strategy are also explored. Overall, our study shows that the practical aspects of implementing the PEAD strategy are vitally important to evaluating the risk and return of the strategy. We provide a practical, analytical tool that can be directly adopted by fund managers to study the PEAD strategy with their institutional parameters of transaction costs and market timing.

The Effect of Increased Financial Disclosure on Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift: Worldwide Evidence

We investigate whether and how an exogenous and unprecedented improvement in the quality of non-U.S. firms’ financial reporting affects post-earnings-announcement drift (PEAD). We find that PEAD declines after the information shock, and the decrease is more pronounced among firms with fewer concurrent earnings announcements, higher institutional holdings, and lower limits-to-arbitrage, and in countries with stronger enforcement. In addition, the decrease in PEAD is primarily driven by firms with greater changes in financial reporting, and an increase in analyst forecast accuracy, institutional ownership, and liquidity. Taken together, these findings support the mispricing explanation of PEAD in an international setting.

Market uncertainty, market sentiment, and the post-earnings announcement drift

Post-earnings announcement drift (PEAD) which was first identified over 40 years ago seems to be as much alive today as it ever was. Numerous attempts have been made to explain its continued existence. In this paper we provide evidence to support a new explanation: that the PEAD is a reflection of the level of market uncertainty and sentiment that prevails during the post-announcement period. The overriding conclusion from our analysis is that both uncertainty and sentiment play a central role in determining investor behaviour and it is this behaviour that ultimately determines the pricing that is observed in financial markets.

Objective estimation versus subjective perceptions of earnings patterns and post‐earnings‐announcement drift

AbstractWe investigate how the market's subjective estimates of autocorrelation in quarterly earnings vary with objective time‐series estimates. Our results suggest that investors increasingly underestimate the correlation as the autocorrelation level increases, and as a result, the post‐earnings‐announcement drift (PEAD) increases with the level of autocorrelation. We further show that the ability of autocorrelation to explain variation in the PEAD is robust to alternative explanations based on risk and institutional factors. Additional analysis indicates that the market's inefficiency in assessing the existence and magnitude of autocorrelation (and the related impact on PEAD) is inversely related to the richness of the information environment.

Underreaction or Risk? Expected Earnings and the Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift

This paper studies competing explanations for the Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift (PEAD) anomaly. We decompose analyst-forecast error into a component predictable by prior stock returns and a surprise component, with the predictable component interpreted as expected earnings. Under the investment-based asset-pricing explanation for PEAD, both components are related to future earnings and thus to expected returns. In contrast, under the investor underreaction explanation, PEAD is driven only by the surprise component. We find that purging the expected earnings component reduces PEAD profits by up to 54%, which suggests that a substantial part of the PEAD is consistent with investment-based asset pricing.

Information Shockwave

We examine the role of investors' beliefs in determining the post earnings announcement drift (PEAD). Specifically, we propose a technique to estimate the belief parameters of the informed and uninformed investors, based on which we define the uninformed investors' information acceptance ratio (IAR). We demonstrate that IAR is a key factor determining the length of PEAD. IAR also explains the post announcement returns and the risk increases. Furthermore, we show that the earnings announcements contain both the hard and soft information. The hard information reduces uncertainty, whereas the soft information enhances uncertainty. And the latter effect dominates the former.

Cluster Analysis on PEAD Using SUE Model with Quarterly Data

The paper constructs SUE model with Quarterly Report Data of the A-share listed companies for the first time, to analyze Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift (PEAD) with a higher data frequency. A further cluster analysis is made to examine PEAD phenomenon under different market caps and report periods. The study finds that large cap stocks show stronger PEAD than the small cap. It also firstly finds that PEAD on Q1 is more obvious than others. These findings have practical significance for the investment management decisions and the quantitative trading financial products developments.

Analysis of the post-earnings announcement drift anomaly on the JSE

ABSTRACTThe post-earnings announcement drift anomaly has been widely researched and confirmed for several markets around the world. This paper investigates the relationship between the earnings surprise as reflected by the price change immediately after the earnings announcement and the subsequent price drift over the next 120 days, called the PEAD effect. Evidence obtained for JSE listed shares over the period from 1991 to 2010 indicates that the PEAD effect is present, that its magnitude is statistically significant and that it exists independently of the size, value and momentum effects. The results indicate that after the initial reaction to the announcement, it is not until about the 20th to 40th trading day after the announcement that the share price starts drifting in the same direction as the initial reaction. Contrary to previous research that confirmed the overreaction phenomenon on the JSE for the period 1975–1989 (Bhana, 1995), the market therefore seems not to over-or under-react to the earnings information, but to receive confirmation in the two months following the announcement that is in line with the announcement -in the case of a positive surprise this confirmation may be indicative of better future prospects and that the higher than expected earnings might persist.

Does Differential Sensitivity to Aggregate Earnings Shocks Drive Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift?

This paper finds that returns to the post-earnings-announcement drift (PEAD) strategy result from differential sensitivity of individual stock returns to aggregate earnings shocks. Larger negative aggregate earnings shocks are associated with higher PEAD returns, because stocks in the PEAD’s sell portfolio are more sensitive to aggregate earnings shocks than those in the buy portfolio. Such differential sensitivity to aggregate earnings shocks drives a significant portion of PEAD returns. During the 1985 to 2009 sample period, investors were on average negatively surprised by aggregate earnings shocks, leading to average positive returns to the PEAD strategy. Further analysis suggests that macroeconomic shocks (that work through aggregate earnings shocks) explain the variation in PEAD returns.

Drift or Jump: What Drives Post-Earnings Announcement Stock Returns?

One of the contentious issues regarding the post-earnings announcement drift (PEAD) is whether the abnormal stock return is driven by investors’ delayed reaction to earnings information or by unexpected information shocks subsequent to earnings announcement. In this paper, we disentangle unexpected large changes in stock prices, known as jumps, from total stock returns. Although on average jump occurs only once per firm quarter, it accounts for up to 40% of the return differential between top and bottom SUE deciles. This is evidence that a significant part of PAED is driven by unexpected information shocks. Nevertheless, the drift component still explains at least 50% of the variation of anomalous PEAD returns. The findings suggest that PEAD cannot be entirely attributed to investors’ delayed reaction to earnings information, but neither can the hypothesis be ruled out. In particular, we find that delayed reaction is more pronounced following positive earnings surprises.

What Can We Learn from the Option Market About the Post-Earnings Announcement Drift?

The Post-Earnings Announcement Drift (PEAD) anomaly refers to the tendency of stock prices to continue drifting in the same direction as earnings surprises well through the subsequent earnings announcements; ignoring the autocorrelations in extreme earnings surprises across adjacent quarters. Currently, the two major competing theories to explain PEAD are: the risk premium hypothesis (RPH), which argues that the anomaly exists only because risk has been measured improperly; and, the under-reaction (behavioral) hypothesis (URH), which assumes investors do not completely utilize the auto-correlations of earnings surprises. We test the former (RPH) by using a finer metric for risk than used in prior research, namely, the change in implied volatilities obtained from options prices immediately before and after the earnings announcements. Inconsistent with the predictions of RPH: (1) we do not find a positive correlation between the implied volatility changes and earnings surprises; and (2) we find that implied volatilities (risk) actually decrease most after the earnings announcements for firms with the most positive earnings surprises. Using volatility based option trading strategies (straddles), we examine if option traders have a similar URH bias to those of equity traders. We find that option straddles based on extreme earnings surprises in the prior quarter are not more profitable than straddles on mild earnings surprises, indicating that option traders already incorporate the prior earnings surprise in option prices.

Post-Earnings Announcement Bond Price Reaction

This study examines the bond pricing behaviour over a 30-day interval subsequent to earnings announcements in the sample period of 2002 – 2010. Our results report a significant and positive relation between bond returns and earnings surprises over the 30-day post-earnings announcement period. In addition, we find that this post-earnings announcement drift is mainly driven by negative earnings news. Bond prices do not exhibit a significant response to positive earnings news. This evidence is consistent with the bond asymmetric payoff function according to Black and Scholes (1973). Furthermore, we examine the impact of bond riskiness on bond price reaction to earnings announcements. We find evidence of a stronger reaction from riskier (speculative-grade) bonds to earnings announcements over the 60-day interval.

Do funds follow post-earnings announcement drift?

We show that actively managed US hedge funds, on average, trade on the post-earnings announcement drift anomaly more aggressively than mutual funds. Both mutual and hedge funds that actively trade on drift anomaly face higher arbitrage risk. However, arbitrage risk reduces mutual funds’ willingness to buy high-SUE stocks with high return volatility, but not hedge funds.

Aggregate Earnings News and Stock Market Returns: The Good, the Bad and the State-Dependent

In this study we examine the stock market’s reaction to aggregate earnings news. Prior research shows that, in contrast to individual-firm earnings, a) stock markets’ response to aggregate earnings surprise is negative, consistent with aggregate earnings news being predominantly informative about discount-rate rather than cash-flows and b) stock market returns are unrelated to past earnings, thus, finding no evidence of the post-earnings announcement drift. We show that the information content of aggregate earnings news is state-dependent. Using Markov switching mixture of distributions framework we find that the effect of aggregate earnings news on stock market can be either positive or negative, depending on the state of the economy. In one state aggregate earnings surprise is positively related to the innovations in discount-rate, while in other it is positively (inversely) related to the cash-flow (discount-rate) news. After controlling for the state of the economy we do find evidence of the post-earnings announcement drift. The probability of economy being in the “pure” discount-rate state is higher following positive shocks to the term-spread and aggregate money supply, as well as during the periods of high interest rates and high market P/E multiples. Finally, we document significant cross-sectional variation in the response of size and book-to market sorted portfolios to the aggregate earnings news in both economic states. Overall, our results suggest that to understand the stock market’s reaction to aggregate earnings news one must take into account its state-dependent nature.

Information, uncertainty, and behavioral effects: Evidence from abnormal returns around real estate investment trust earnings announcements

In this study, we examine the influence of real estate market sentiment, market-level uncertainty, and REIT-level uncertainty on cumulative abnormal earnings announcement returns over the 1995–2009 time period. We first document the relative coverage of analysts' earnings forecasts on U.S. REITs, as well as REITs from several countries (i.e., Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Japan, the Netherlands, and UK). We show that coverage outside of the U.S. is limited, and we consequently focus our analysis on U.S. REITs. We find strong evidence that earnings announcements contain pricing relevant information, with positive (negative) earnings surprises relative to analysts' forecasts resulting in significantly positive (negative) abnormal returns around the announcement date. Consistent with the findings from the broader equity market literature, we find limited evidence of a pre-announcement drift in the cumulative abnormal returns. However, in sharp contrast to the existing equity literature, we find no evidence of a post-earnings announcement drift in our aggregate sample or when the sample is restricted to the largest negative surprises. We find evidence of a post-earnings announcement drift for only the largest positive earnings surprises. These results are consistent with REIT returns more quickly impounding information relative to the broader equity market, in part because of the parallel private real estate market and because of the U.S. REIT structure and information environment. Finally, in our conditional regression analysis of cumulative abnormal returns, we find that real estate investor sentiment, market-wide uncertainty, and firm-level uncertainty significantly affect the magnitude of abnormal announcement returns and also influence the effect of unexpected earnings on abnormal returns.