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Journal of Corporate Finance Vol. 72 2022

Short seller attention

Rui Dai1; Lilian Ng2; Nataliya S. Zaiats3,4

1 University of Pennsylvania · 2 York University · 3 Boston University · 4 Suffolk University

Abstract

This paper exploits the complex information setting of customer-supplier links to assess revealed short-seller attention. Results suggest that short sellers are attentive to the news of corporate customers to short their suppliers’ stocks. This short selling behavior strengthens with co-attention, as proxied by same-day downloads of both customer and supplier SEC disclosure documents by the same investor. Our findings indicate that such short sales predict negative future returns on suppliers’ stocks, suggesting that sophisticated investors trade profitably by focusing their attention on a complicated information setting.

DOI
10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2021.102149
Volume
72
Pages
102149
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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