Analyzing a panel of earnings announcers from 1998–2022, we document that the aggregate market return on quarterly earnings announcement dates is positively associated with the announcing firm’s subsequent three-day abnormal returns. This phenomenon is strongest for firms with extreme earnings surprises and dissipates by day seven, indicating a short-lived delay in incorporating the aggregate news. We also document a sluggish return response to same-day macro news disclosures, especially when earnings surprises are extreme. Effects strengthen when investors exert more effort in acquiring announcing firm information, measured by SEC EDGAR filing downloads, when macronews has a larger impact on a firm’s stock returns, when firms are smaller, and when investors’ attention and processing capacity are more constrained, proxied by retail trading. Overall, the findings support the notion that investors have finite information processing capacity and that intensive efforts to acquire firm earnings news delay the incorporation of macroeconomic news into prices.

We investigate whether U.S. House representatives and their staff seek financial information from constituent firms to inform their legislative decisions. We exploit shifts in U.S. congressional districts (i.e., the reconfiguration of federal district lines or redistricting) that introduce new constituent firms to legislators’ districts. To the extent that legislators and their staff collect and rely on firms’ financial statement information, we expect that a change in representation as a result of redistricting will result in a significant and observable change in searches for information about new constituent firms. Our evidence supports this prediction. We also find that the timing of searching coincides with legislators’ roll call votes, particularly ahead of more controversial bills and for bills lobbied by sample firms. Finally, we find that new constituent firms respond to increased information demands after a redistricting event by supplying more policy-relevant disclosures and increasing lobbying.

In the presence of sentiment fluctuations, arbitrageurs may engage in different strategies leading to dispersed sentiment exposures. We find that hedge funds in the top decile ranked by sentiment beta outperform those in the bottom decile by 0.59% per month on a risk‐adjusted basis, with the spread being larger among skilled funds. We also find that about 10% of hedge funds have sentiment timing skill that positively correlates with fund sentiment beta and contributes to fund performance. Our findings show that skilled hedge funds can earn high returns by predicting and exploiting sentiment changes rather than betting against mispricing.