Selling Pressure Research Articles

Religious Investor Sentiment, Shariah Compliance Impact, and Theological Risk: Evidence from Bursa Malaysia

This study examines the financial implications of religious restrictions by analyzing how changes in the Shariah compliance status of stocks affect their price and trading volume. Employing the market model in an event study approach and using data from Malaysian firms between 2000 and 2016, the study focuses on 30 announcements from the Security Commission Malaysia’s List of Shariah Compliant Securities (LSCS), resulting in 370 additions and 284 deletions from the compliance list. The findings indicate that the inclusion of stocks in the compliance list generates longterm demand driven by Islamic institutional and Muslim retail investors, leading to a permanent increase in abnormal returns and trading volume. Conversely, the removal of stocks from the compliance list induces short-term negative abnormal returns and increased trading volume, reflecting selling pressure. These results contribute to understanding the financial consequences of religious restrictions, highlighting the influence of Shariah compliance on stock market performance and investor behaviour.

Mergers and acquisitions with private equity intermediation

We develop a search model of mergers and acquisitions (M&A), intermediated by private equity (PE) funds which may face pressure to sell. The selling pressure leads to the development of a secondary buyout (SBO) market, enabling PE funds to bail each other out. Interestingly, an increase in the number of PE funds can improve each fund’s value, because the enhanced benefits of SBOs can prevail over the reduction in value from narrower buy-sell spreads due to more intense competition. We calibrate the model using data for the US middle market and find that PE funds could lose 64% of their valuation without SBOs. Moreover, the increase in the number of funds from 2000 to 2017 contributes to a 48% increase in fund valuation due to the complementarity among funds. Nevertheless, our model predicts that this mechanism might have peaked in 2021, and more PE funds could decrease their value.

Do Chinese carbon-intensive stocks overreact to climate transition risk? Evidence from the COP26 news

We exploit an exogenous event—the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26)—and a short-term event study method to examine whether Chinese stock markets overreact to climate transition risk. The results show that retail investors overreact to COP26 news by depressing the current prices of carbon-intensive stocks below their fundamental values, leading to higher subsequent returns. Institutional investors and corporate insiders implement contrarian trading strategies to reduce the deviations of stock prices from their fundamentals. Our results are consistent with the “salience bias” hypothesis. In addition, carbon-intensive stocks with higher environmental, social, and governance (ESG) composite scores face greater selling pressure due to suspicions of greenwashing. Our findings contribute to understanding the impact of investor structure and behavioural patterns on the pricing efficiency of climate risk.

Foreign institutional ownership stability and stock price crash risk

This study investigates the impact of foreign institutional investors (FIIs) on stock price crash risk in India. Panel regression findings reveal that higher levels of FII holdings, signifying positional trading, exacerbate crash risk. Conversely, increased stability of FII holdings, indicative of active monitoring, diminishes crash risk. Notably, FIIs’ buying interest does not influence crash risk, affirming that their risk mitigation arises from active monitoring and not from curbing selling pressure. Further analysis reveals that FII stability reduces crash risk only when controlling shareholder (i.e., promoter) equity holding is low. This promoter effect is driven by domestic promoters and not foreign promoters.

The Financialization of Coffee, Cocoa and Cotton Value Chains: The Role of Physical Actors

ABSTRACTThe prices of cash crops impact the livelihoods of millions of households in developing countries. While the influence of speculators on global commodity prices determined through derivatives exchanges is extensively discussed, the contribution of hedgers to short‐term changes in futures prices has largely been disregarded in the financialization of commodities discourse over the past two decades. This results in a failure to account for the interconnected activities of increasingly consolidated lead firms within physical global value chains (GVCs) and derivatives markets. This article examines the pricing and hedging strategies of lead firms in the coffee, cocoa and cotton GVCs in relation to their activities on commodity derivatives markets. Based on Open Interest data as an indicator of derivatives markets activity, a measure of buying and selling pressure by trader categories is applied in a Generalized ARCH (GARCH) model. The findings of this article show that hedgers’ activities allow speculators to drive global benchmark prices so that they can benefit through combinations of financial hedging and physical trading strategies. As these practices of lead firms contribute to the transmission of futures prices along GVCs, smallholders and other actors in cash crops in producer countries are exposed to heightened price changes.

Short selling pressure and tone management: evidence from regulation SHO

We study the causal effect of short selling on managers’ tone during earnings conference calls. Utilising Regulation SHO, a pilot scheme governing short-selling activity, we find that pilot firms with relaxed short-selling constraints use more negative tone. This effect is more pronounced for firms that are easier to short sell, those where managers have an incentive to manipulate tone, and those that engage in less earnings management. Moreover, the negative relationship between tone and future earnings no longer holds for the pilot firms after Reg SHO, suggesting that the tone of conference calls by pilot firms better reflects their future earnings after the regulation. Overall, our findings suggest that short sellers play a corporate governance role in tone management.

Authorised participants as shock absorbers in fixed-income ETFs

This paper uses unique regulatory propriety data to analyse ETF secondary markets from a financial stability perspective. We find that ETF secondary markets are somewhat concentrated, but that a subset of Authorised Participants are active in both primary and secondary markets and act as a buffer between these. Only around a third of the net selling pressure in the secondary market manifests in redemptions in the primary market and this result holds across observed periods of mild market stress. However, the high yield fixed income segment may be more fragile during periods of stress.

Extreme Liquidity Risk and the Cross‐Section of Expected Returns: Evidence from China*

AbstractIn this study, we investigate whether extreme liquidity risk is priced in the China A‐shares market. We find that the market extreme liquidity risk significantly and negatively predicts market returns up to 9 months. In addition, the extreme liquidity risk beta of individual stocks commands a positive monthly premium of 0.75%. Moreover, our findings show that the extreme liquidity risk beta can subsume the tail risk beta in predicting stock returns. Furthermore, our findings show that both the potential selling pressures caused by insiders and by institutional investors significantly and positively influence an individual stock's extreme liquidity risk beta. We also find that the potential selling pressure component of the extreme liquidity risk beta significantly and positively predicts stock returns. Taken together, our evidence demonstrates that a stock's extreme liquidity risk beta provides a channel through which the stock's potential selling pressure caused by both insiders and institutional investors influences its expected return in the China A‐shares market.

Can Short Selling Improve the Quality of Information Disclosure in Clarification Announcements by Firms Faced with Market Rumors?

ABSTRACT Using a sample of clarification announcements by Chinese listed companies and a difference-in-differences approach, this paper discusses the impact of short selling on corporate clarifications. The results show that short selling pressure disciplines managers’ clarification behaviors. Pilot firms are more likely than non-pilot firms to release timely, detailed, and technical clarification announcements, indicating that the ex-ante pressure of short selling improves the quality of information disclosure in clarifications. The results are robust to the use of a propensity score matching sample, the exclusion of extraordinary sample periods, controlling for the category of rumors, and the adoption of the double selection approach. The disciplinary effect of short selling on the quality of information disclosure in clarifications is more significant for companies with higher CEO equity-based incentive ratios, higher stock liquidity, and higher media coverage than for other companies. More intensive short selling activities, implying an increased ex-post threat of short selling, also lead to improvement in the disclosure of clarifications. Additional research shows that the improved disclosure increases stock price informativeness, and short selling enhances this effect.

Why do firms purchase directors and officers liability insurance? – a perspective from short selling threats

This study examines the role of increased short selling threats in firms’ directors and officers liability insurance (D&O insurance) purchase decision against the backdrop of the Chinese deregulation of short sale. Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) research design, we demonstrate a positive effect of short selling threats on firms’ likelihood of purchasing D&O insurance policies after controlling for the known determinants of D&O insurance. We then perform tests to validate the DiD analysis result, including a test of the parallel trend assumption and placebo tests. To shed light on the mechanism through which the effect of short selling takes place, we perform a path analysis. The results reveal that firms’ litigation risk explains the effect of short selling pressure on D&O insurance purchase decision. Further cross-sectional analyses show that the positive effect of short selling threats on D&O insurance is ameliorated when firms have strong internal control or have great analyst coverage.

Asset Pricing with Cohort‐Based Trading in MBS Markets

ABSTRACTAgency mortgage‐backed securities (MBSs) with diverse characteristics are traded in parallel through individualized specified pool (SP) contracts and standardized to‐be‐announced (TBA) contracts with delivery flexibility. This parallel trading environment generates distinctive effects on MBS pricing and trading: (i) Although cheapest‐to‐deliver (CTD) issues are present in TBA trading and absent from SP trading by design, MBS heterogeneity associated with CTD discounts affects SP yields positively, with the effect stronger for lower‐value SPs; (ii) high selling pressure amplifies the effects of MBS heterogeneity on SP yields; and (iii) greater MBS heterogeneity dampens SP and TBA trading activities but increases their ratio.

Mutual Fund Illiquidity and Stock Price Fragility: A Study Based on Chinese Mutual Funds

From the perspective of Chinese equity fund shareholding, the authors study the economic consequences of institutional investors’ shareholding illiquidity. They use the stock holding data of Chinese mutual funds to verify that the illiquidity of mutual funds’ stock holding brings fragility to individual stock returns. Specifically, to meet investor redeeming requirement, illiquid fund managers are forced to fire-sale assets. The selling pressure created by this behavior causes the stock to be traded at a price lower than its true value, increasing the stock price collapse risk. Finally, using COVID-19 case data in China, the authors design a quasi-natural experiment confirming the conclusion in this article.

Corporate decisions in times of war: Evidence from the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Despite sanctions and public demand for companies to exit the Russian market due to its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, several firms chose to keep their businesses operating in Russia. We investigate the financial market reaction to announcements of companies remaining in Russia during the eventful two weeks following the invasion. Our findings show that a portfolio of remainers underperforms the leavers and the market benchmark. Investors impose a significant market penalty on the remainers. There is evidence of higher trading volume and selling pressure on remainers, suggesting equity markets are acutely sensitive to corporate decisions in times of political conflict.

Net-Zero Carbon Portfolio Alignment

We outline a simple and robust methodology to align portfolios with a science-based, carbon budget consistent with maintaining a temperature rise below 1.5 °C with 83% probability. We show how to keep the tracking error at a negligible level. This approach works for both passive and active managers. It also establishes an exit roadmap for carbon-intensive corporates, thereby generating a form of competition to decarbonize within each sector. We also discuss four sources of risks: uncertainty around a rapidly shrinking carbon budget, time impacts on decarbonization rates, implementation risk due to market-wide selling pressure, and uncertainty about taxes on polluting companies.

Credit rating announcement and bond liquidity: the case of emerging bond markets

PurposeThis study examines the effect of the informational content of local credit rating announcements in emerging markets on the liquidity of their bond markets. This study analyses the liquidity of bonds in various emerging bond markets using a sample of nine countries: Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Hungary, Poland, Spain, Turkey, Hong Kong and Greece. The sample includes daily data on sovereign bonds that go from July 2009 to July 2017. The main focus is on the period before and after the sovereign debt crisis. This study notes that the bond liquidity is affected due to the sign of the rating granted by the rating agencies for each country.Design/methodology/approachThis study aims to question the sources of liquidity problem of sovereign bonds issued by the emerging countries. The study’s database consists of daily data of all nine emerging countries for the period from July 2009 to July 2017. Panel data were collected from the Datastream database.FindingsThis study first directly tests the information content of bond ratings announcements and their effect on bond market liquidity. Next, the impact of rating changes on sovereign bond liquidity around the rating announcements is studied. Rating changes can affect sovereign bond's price, trading and liquidity around the announcement date. In particular the rating changes that move the bonds out of the investment grade category can elicit selling pressure or even fire sale of the fallen angels.Originality/valueThis research aims to present data on the prices of sovereign bonds that react to changes in credit rating by studying the price movements around the announcement of changes in credit rating. The literature is very rich in studies on credit rating changes on stocks and corporate bonds, but this study is perhaps the first attempt on sovereign bonds.

Mutual Fund Liquidity Transformation and Reverse Flight to Liquidity

Abstract We identify fixed-income mutual funds as an important contributor to the unusually high selling pressure in liquid asset markets during the COVID-19 crisis. We show that mutual funds experienced pronounced investor outflows amplified by their liquidity transformation. In meeting redemptions, funds followed a pecking order by first selling their liquid assets, including Treasuries and high-quality corporate bonds, which generated the most concentrated selling pressure in these markets. Overall, the estimated price impact of mutual funds was sizable at a third of the increase in Treasury yields and a quarter of the increase in corporate bond yields during the COVID-19 crisis.

Fund Closure Risks of Open-End Real Estate Funds

Over the past decades, numerous open-end real estate funds (OEREFs) in several countries became unable to maintain the liquidity provision and had to suspend the redemption of fund shares. This paper examines OEREF closures in Germany, the world’s largest OEREF market. We find that funds with a larger share of institutional investors had a higher closure probability. This is consistent with the assertion that well-informed investors are able to move more quickly and decisively and therefore trigger additional selling pressure in times of financial turmoil. In contrast, economies of scope appear to prevent closures. In detail, older funds and those sold through physical bank branch networks are less likely to close. Among the factors beyond the control of fund managers are negative spillover-effects resulting from closures of other OEREFs.

Factors Affecting Salesforce Unethical Behavior: Evidence from Life Insurance Industry

As a service-providing business that deals with the customers directly, the progress of the life insurance industry depends highly on the behavior of the salesforce. Unethical salesforce behavior can be attributed as one of the prominent reasons for the life insurance lower penetration rate and higher lapse rate prevail in Sri Lanka. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to identify the factors affecting salesforce unethical behavior in life insurance industry. To investigate the factors, 152 life insurance agents in Badulla district were surveyed. Quantitative research design along with snowball sampling were employed to collect the data. Using multiple regression analysis, results indicate that selling pressure and competitive intensity have a significant positive relationship with salesforce unethical behavior. Thus, practitioners and regulators are suggested to reduce sales pressure by means of reducing sales targets and discouraging anti-competitive behavior via code of conduct and provision of guidelines for fair competition.

Short‐selling pressure and year‐over‐year MD&A modifications

AbstractUsing the SEC's Regulation SHO as a natural experiment, we examine the effect of an increase in short selling pressure on the year‐over‐year modification of management discussion and analysis (MD&A) section of firms' 10‐K reports. We find that the elevated threat of short selling, resulting from the removal of short‐sale constraint, causes the randomly selected pilot firms to modify the MD&A section less relative to the previous year than non‐pilot firms during the Regulation SHO period (2005–2007). Moreover, cross‐sectional analyses indicate that this effect is pronounced in firms with moderately good news; firms that increase investment or equity issuance; larger or overvalued firms; and firms with conservative managers, financial stability, and opaque information environments.

The effects of mutual fund decarbonization on stock prices and carbon emissions

This study seeks to determine whether mutual fund decarbonization affects the stock prices of divested firms and contributes to the reduction of these firms’ carbon emissions. Using a new methodology to identify equity mutual funds’ decarbonization trades, we calculate a metric of decarbonization selling pressure (DSP) on stocks. Controlling for endogeneity and selection bias, we find that high DSP sustainably pressures stock prices downwards. Furthermore, we find that divested firms experiencing a stock price decline subsequently reduce their carbon emissions compared to non-divested firms. This finding is consistent with theoretical predictions. Various tested alternative explanations, such as shareholder intervention and financial selling pressure, cannot diminish these results. Overall, our findings support the divestment movement's hope that a critical mass of investors is able to reduce carbon emissions. Short presentationEnglish version: https://youtu.be/dorMMn2BBn4, German version: https://youtu.be/i3r30iRbtI8.