Knowledge that Transforms

This study investigates the anomalous findings of the previous insider trading studies that any investor can earn abnormal profits by reading the Official Summary. Availability of abnormal profits to insiders, availability of abnormal profits to outsiders who imitate insiders, determinants of insiders' predictive ability, and effect of insider trading on costs of trading for other investors are examined by using approximately 60,000 insider sale and purchase transactions from 1975 to 1981. Implications for market efficiency and evaluation of abnormal profits to active trading strategies are discussed.

This study focuses on the ex-dividend stock price decline implicit within the valuation of American call options on dividend-paying stocks. The Roll (1977) American call option pricing formula and the observed structure of CBOE call option transaction prices are used to infer the expected ex-dividend stock price decline as a proportion of the amount of the dividend. The relative decline is shown to be not meaningfully different from one, confirming some recent evidence from studies which examined stock prices in the days surrounding ex-dividend.

This paper reviews the theory and evidence on the process by which corporations raise debt and equity capital and the associated effects on security prices. Findings from related transactions are used to test hypotheses about the stock price patterns accompanying announcements of security offerings. Various contractual alternatives employed in security issues are examined; for example, rights or underwritten offers, negotiated or competitive bid, best efforts or firm commitment contracts, and shelf or traditional registration. Finally, incentives for underpricing new issues are analyzed.

This paper contains a test of a new aspect of the informational content of dividend; namely, is there information in the timing of the announcements? The empirical evidence indicates that the market expects ‘bad news’ to be delivered late and that these expectations are confirmed. Mean excess returns of stock prices around late announcements are, depending on the assumed returns generating process, either significantly negative or insignificant while significantly positive around the entire population of announcements. Moreover, the proportion and magnitude of dividend reductions associated with late announcements are significantly larger than in the complete universe of announcements.

This study examines common stock price adjustments to announcements of underwritten common stock offerings. On average, a negative stock price change is observed, which is larger for industrials than for public utilities. Combination primary-secondary stock offerings and dual stock-bond offerings exhibit similar negative announcement effects. Combination offerings involving decreases in management shareholdings exhibit significantly larger negative announcement effects. Cross-sectional analysis of stock announcement returns indicates a positive relationship to firms' leverage changes, and a negative relationship to prior stock returns and (for industrials) to decreases in management shareholdings.

The evidence in this paper suggests that downgrades by both Moody's and Standard and Poor's are associated with negative abnormal stock returns in the two-day window beginning the day of the press release by the rating agency. Significant negative abnormal performance can still be detected after eliminating observations containing obvious concurrent (potentially contaminating) news releases. There is little evidence of abnormal performance on announcement of an upgrade. Significant abnormal returns are associated with announcements of additions to the Standard and Poor's Credit Watch List, if either a potential downgrade or a potential upgrade is indicated.

This paper examines call behavior of corporate issuers of non-convertible bonds. Evidence from a sample of 102 calls indicates that the market value of the called bonds is usually below the call price at the time of the announcement. The stock price reactions to call announcements are positively related to the direction of the change in leverage. When the call relaxes restrictive covenants, the firm on average pays a larger premium to call debt. The premium is a minimum estimate of the potential opportunity costs of restrictive covenants.

This study investigates the effect on stock prices of seasoned equity offerings. The results demonstrate that the announcement of equity offerings reduces stock prices significantly. For industrial issues, regression results indicate that announcement day price reduction is significantly and negatively related to the size of the equity offering. The results appear not to be explained by changes in capital structure associated with the equity offerings. The findings are consistent both with the hypothesis that equity issues are viewed by investors as negative signals and with the hypothesis that there is a downward sloping demand for a firm's shares.

Several predetermined variables that reflect levels of bond and stock prices appear to predict returns on common stocks of firms of various sizes, long-term bonds of various default risks, and default-free bonds of various maturities. The returns on small-firm stocks and low-grade bonds are more highly correlated in January than in the rest of the year with previous levels of asset prices, especially prices of small-firm stocks. Seasonality is found in several conditional risk measures, but such seasonality is unlikely to explain, and in some cases is opposite to, the seasonal found in mean returns.

This paper analyzes how access to deposit insurance affects the common stock returns of financial institutions during periods of financial distress. During periods of distress the definition of insolvency used by insuring agencies may be modified to avoid a substantial number of bank failures. These modifications can increase the value of future deposit guarantees and affect the behavior of stock returns of banks and S&Ls. This hypothesis is examined using S&L data for the 1976 through 1983 period. Modification of insolvency rules applied to S&Ls appears to have reduced significantly the co-movement of S&L stock returns with S&L portfolio holdings.