Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) Form 8‐K filings provide a venue where managers release information to the market as a whole that they designate as being material . Using this setting, we study trading patterns immediately prior to the public disclosure of material information. We offer three main results. First, using both intraday and daily trading data, we find abnormal trading volume of 21 percent (13 percent) in the hour (day) prior to the public disclosure, respectively. Second, we find that this pre‐disclosure abnormal trading volume is concentrated in firms that are smaller, have more growth opportunities, issue fewer voluntary disclosures, and have weaker external monitoring. Finally, we find that this pre‐disclosure volume is concentrated in subsamples in which the information relates to a firm's material contracts, a firm holds investor/analyst conferences, and there is insider trading activity in a firm's shares. Our results do not concentrate in a small number of firms or industries, and do not appear to be explained by the form through which managers first release the material information (e.g., Form 8‐K, press release, website posting, or social media). Our results are also robust to controlling for the firm's other filings and peer filings that occur around the disclosure. Overall, the trading patterns we document may show that, inconsistent with the spirit of Reg FD, a subset of investors trade on information managers deem material prior to its broad, public release.

We use a novel data set to examine the across‐time consistency and across‐firm comparability of firms' non‐GAAP earnings disclosures. Given widespread concern about non‐GAAP reporting among regulators, standard setters, the investor community, and academics, our investigation provides timely evidence on how managers' deviations from their own non‐GAAP disclosure history, or the reporting of industry peers, affects how well earnings inform on firm performance. We begin by identifying firms that change their non‐GAAP earnings definition from one year to the next. These deviations are uncommon, but when managers change the items they exclude in calculating non‐GAAP earnings, the changes generally enhance the information in earnings about firms' core performance. We also examine whether non‐GAAP earnings are more comparable than GAAP earnings and find that firms' non‐GAAP adjustments result in greater earnings comparability. Finally, we examine instances in which firms deviate from common sector‐wide definitions of non‐GAAP earnings. We find that these deviations also result in earnings metrics that better represent firms' core operations. Overall, our results suggest that when managers vary their non‐GAAP calculations, either across time or across firms, the resulting non‐GAAP metrics generally enhance the information in earnings about firms' ongoing performance. Thus, our analysis helps mitigate concerns about why managers might vary their non‐GAAP reporting calculations.