Knowledge that Transforms

We use a novel text classification approach from deep learning to more accurately measure sentiment in a large sample of 10-Ks. In contrast to most prior literature, we find that positive and negative sentiments predict abnormal returns and abnormal trading volume around the 10-K filing date and future firm fundamentals and policies. Our results suggest that the qualitative information contained in corporate annual reports is richer than previously found. Both positive and negative sentiments are informative when measured accurately, but they do not have symmetric implications, suggesting that a net sentiment measure advocated by prior studies would be less informative.

This paper studies the joint effect of borrowing and short-sale constraints under heterogeneous beliefs and risk aversions. Although the constraints never simultaneously bind in equilibrium, interesting economics emerge in the anticipatory effects of potentially future binding constraints. In particular, the risk-free rate and Sharpe ratio experience endogenous jumps at a critical state, where two equilibria coexist. Moreover, a short-sale ban can lead to a lower stock price and higher volatility depending on the relative tightness between the constraints, and tightening the borrowing constraint during a short-sale ban can also make returns more volatile.

We analyze fund managers’ reputation concerns in an equilibrium model, in which we tie together a number of seemingly unrelated phenomena. The model shows that because of reputation concerns, hedge fund managers, especially those with an average reputation, prefer strategies with negatively skewed return distributions. One subtle consequence of this preference is that capital sometimes appears slow moving, leaving profitable investment opportunities unexploited, yet other times appears fast moving, causing large capital relocation and price fluctuations in the absence of fundamental news. More broadly, the analysis demonstrates a limitation of market discipline: fund managers may distort their investments precisely because of market discipline.

We document persistent superior trading performance among a subset of individual investors. Investors classified in the top performance decile in the first half of our sample subsequently earn risk-adjusted returns of about 6% per year. These returns are not confined to stocks in which the investors are likely to have inside information, nor are they driven by illiquid stocks. Our results suggest that skilled individual investors exploit market inefficiencies (or perhaps conditional risk premiums) to earn abnormal profits, above and beyond any profits available from well-known strategies based on size, value, momentum, or earnings announcements. (JEL G11, G14, G40, G51) Received: October 11, 2020 Editorial decision: January 4, 2021 Editor: Jeffrey Pontiff

When short selling is costly, owners of an asset have greater incentive to become informed than nonowners because trading on negative information is easier for them. Thus, information acquisition concentrates among investors owning the asset. A short selling ban restricts selling to only the relatively more informed investors who own the asset, increasing adverse selection but only on the sell side of the market. Price efficiency declines due to less overall information acquisition because a ban magnifies the disincentive to gather information for investors not owning the asset. Empirical evidence from the 2008 U.S. short selling ban is consistent with these theoretical predictions.

Conventional models of production under uncertainty specify that output is produced in fixed proportions across states of nature. I investigate a representation of technology that allows firms to transform output from one state to another. I allow the firm to choose the distribution of its random productivity from a convex set of such distributions described by a limit on a moment of productivity scaled by a natural productivity shock. The model produces a simple discount factor that is linked to productivity and that can be used to price a wide variety of assets, without regard to preferences. Received November 26, 2019; editorial decision May 23, 2020 by Editor Jeffrey Pontiff.

Market prices are noisy signals of economic fundamentals. In a two-period model, we show that if the central bank uses market prices as guidance for intervention, large strategic investors who benefit from high prices would depress market prices to induce a market-supportive intervention. Stronger anticipated interventions lead to deeper price depressions preintervention and sharper price reversals post-intervention. The central bank intervention harms strategic investors even though it is the investors who tried to mislead the central bank. The model predicts a V-shaped price pattern around central bank interventions, consistent with recent evidence.

We document significant persistence in the market timing performance of active individual investors, suggesting that some investors are skilled at timing. Using data on all trades by active Finnish individual investors over almost 15 years, we also show that the net purchases of skilled versus unskilled investors predict monthly market returns. Our results lend credibility to the view that market returns are predictable, without having to specify which variables active investors use to successfully time the market.

This paper considers the puzzle of increased trading volume around information releases through the lens of canonical models of disagreement. I use a unique data set of clicks on news by key finance professionals to simultaneously measure gradual information diffusion and differences of opinion. I find that neither channel subsumes the other and that the two are complementary in generating trading volume around news events. Their relative strengths depend on the characteristics of the underlying information: gradual information diffusion matters more for straightforward news, while differences of opinion play a larger role around textually ambiguous news. (JEL G12, G14, G41, D84) Received January 12, 2020; editorial decision: November 24, 2020 by Editor: Jeffrey Pontiff.

We show there is a much stronger negative, dynamic relation between changes in economic uncertainty and Treasury yields over weaker economic times since at least 1990. We document this economic-state variation in uncertainty-yield dynamics for weekly and monthly change horizons, for nominal yields and real-yield proxies, for multiple economic-state identification methods, and for different economic uncertainty metrics. We present additional findings that suggest short-term fluctuations in precautionary-savings and consumption-smoothing forces are more impactful on interest rate dynamics during weaker economic times, especially relying on surveys of expected economic growth and inflation. Received February 8, 2019; editorial decision August 24, 2020 by Editor Nikolai Roussanov.