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Journal of Accounting and Economics Vol. 51 No. 3 2011

Understanding analysts' use of stock returns and other analysts' revisions when forecasting earnings

Michael B. Clement1; Jeffrey Hales2; Yanfeng Xue3

1 The University of Texas at Austin · 2 Georgia Institute of Technology · 3 George Washington University

Abstract

We investigate analysts' use of stock returns and other analysts' forecast revisions in revising their own forecasts after an earnings announcement. We find that analysts respond more strongly to these signals when the signals are more informative about future earnings changes. Although analysts underreact to these signals on average, we find that analysts who are most sensitive to signal informativeness achieve superior forecast accuracy relative to their peers and have a greater influence on the market. The results suggest that the ability to extract information from the actions of others serves as one source of analyst expertise.

DOI
10.1016/j.jacceco.2010.11.001
Volume
51
Issue
3
Pages
279-299
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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