The returns of stocks are partially driven by changes in their expected cashflow. Using revisions in analyst earnings forecasts, we construct an analyst earnings beta that measures the covariance between the cashflow innovations of an asset and those of the market. A higher analyst earnings beta implies greater sensitivity to marketwide revisions in expected cashflow, and therefore higher systematic risk. Our analyst earnings beta captures exposure to macroeconomic fluctuations and has a positive risk premium that provides a partial explanation for the value premium, size premium, and long-term return reversals. From 1984 to 2005, 55.1% of the return variation across book-to-market, size, and long-term return reversal portfolios is captured by their analyst earnings betas.

We find the disparity between long-term and short-term analyst forecasted earnings growth is a robust predictor of future returns and long-term analyst forecast errors. After adjusting for industry characteristics, stocks whose long-term earnings growth forecasts are far above or far below their implied short-term forecasts for earnings growth have negative and positive subsequent risk-adjusted returns along with downward and upward revisions in long-term forecasted earnings growth, respectively. Additional results indicate that investor inattention toward firm-level changes in long-term earnings growth is responsible for these risk-adjusted returns.

Hedging short gamma exposure requires trading in the direction of price movements, thereby creating price momentum. Using intraday returns on over 60 futures on equities, bonds, commodities, and currencies between 1974 and 2020, we find strong market intraday momentum everywhere. The return during the last 30 minutes before the market close is positively predicted by the return during the rest of the day (from previous market close to the last 30 minutes). The predictive power is economically and statistically highly significant, and reverts over the next days. We provide novel evidence that links market intraday momentum to the gamma hedging demand from market participants such as market makers of options and leveraged ETFs.

The growth rate of industrial electricity usage predicts future stock returns up to 1 year with an R 2 of 9%. High industrial electricity usage today predicts low stock returns in the future, consistent with a countercyclical risk premium. Industrial electricity usage tracks the output of the most cyclical sectors. Our findings bridge a gap between the asset pricing literature and the business cycle literature, which uses industrial electricity usage to gauge production and output in real time. Industrial electricity growth compares favorably with traditional financial variables, and it outperforms Cooper and Priestley’s output gap measure in real time.

We identify Industry-Neutral Self-Financed Informed Trading (INSFIT) as stock trades financed by offsetting, equivalent dollar-denominated stock trades in the same industry. Approximately 37% of short-term mutual fund trading profits can be attributed to these trade pairs. Consistent with informed trading, INSFIT precedes unusually high media coverage for the underlying stocks. The trades underlying INSFIT are also larger as the release of stock-level news becomes more imminent. Both relative valuation and the hedging of industry exposure motivate INSFIT’s industry neutrality. While INSFIT positively impacts fund performance, active fund managers who execute INSFIT more aggressively obtain smaller trading profits per execution.

We test a frog-in-the-pan (FIP) hypothesis that predicts investors are inattentive to information arriving continuously in small amounts. Intuitively, we hypothesize that a series of frequent gradual changes attracts less attention than infrequent dramatic changes. Consistent with the FIP hypothesis, we find that continuous information induces strong persistent return continuation that does not reverse in the long run. Momentum decreases monotonically from 5.94% for stocks with continuous information during their formation period to –2.07% for stocks with discrete information but similar cumulative formation-period returns. Higher media coverage coincides with discrete information and mitigates the stronger momentum following continuous information.

Order flow segmentation prevents direct interactions between U.S. retail and institutional investors. Using the imbalance in observable internalized retail trades, we show wholesalers use retail flow to provide liquidity to institutional investors, especially when liquidity is scarce. Our institutional liquidity cost ( $ ILC $ ) measures average absolute retail trade imbalances, positing that institutions holding stocks with greater such averages more often resort to the expensive wholesaler-provided liquidity. $ ILC $ is correlated with expected institutional price impacts. Unlike existing illiquidity measures, $ ILC $ has economically meaningful relations with institutional holding horizons and yields annualized liquidity premia of 2.7%–3.2% post-2010, even after excluding microcap stocks.

We propose a new and direct measure of investor attention using search frequency in Google (Search Volume Index (SVI)). In a sample of Russell 3000 stocks from 2004 to 2008, we find that SVI (1) is correlated with but different from existing proxies of investor attention; (2) captures investor attention in a more timely fashion and (3) likely measures the attention of retail investors. An increase in SVI predicts higher stock prices in the next 2 weeks and an eventual price reversal within the year. It also contributes to the large first‐day return and long‐run underperformance of IPO stocks.

The SEC requires public companies to disclose material information on Form 8-K within four days of a triggering event. We show that on 8-K event and filing dates, there is significant abnormal attention on Bloomberg terminals, which are a source of information for institutional investors, while traditional media attention tends to be higher on filing days. Significant price discovery occurs on the event date and on the days between that day and the filing date. The traditional media coverage on the filing day appears to attract the attention of retail investors and leads to further price changes in the direction of the pre-filing day price change. Institutional investors exploit this price pressure via opportunistic liquidity provision. Overall, our evidence suggests that the Form 8-K filing may have little direct informational benefit, particularly to retail investors.

We analyze minute‐by‐minute Bloomberg online status and study how the effort provision of executives in public corporations affects firm value. While executives spend most of their time doing other activities, patterns of Bloomberg usage allow us to characterize their work habits as measures of effort provision. We document a positive effect of effort on unexpected earnings and cumulative abnormal returns following earnings announcements, and a reduction in credit default swap spreads. This is robust to using exogenous weather patterns as an instrument. Long‐short, calendar‐time effort portfolios earn significant average daily returns. Finally, we revisit important agency issues from the literature.