Two Essays on Investors' Attention to Economically Linked Firms
Author | : Mahsa Khoshnoud |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 122 |
Release | : 2017 |
Genre | : |
ISBN | : |
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My second essay investigates how sophisticated investors, such as short sellers, trade on information along the supply chain. Short sellers are known to be generally better informed than common investors. Given the economic linkages that exist between the suppliers and customers, one would expect short sellers to trade on such information. My results indicate that short interest predicts unexpected earnings news, consistent with short sellers extracting information from economic relationships. When I evaluate stock return and short interests in regression analysis, I find strong negative relation between short interest in supplier firm and the future stock returns for the customer firm for the return in the next month. The negative relation persists for twelve months. I find similar results from portfolio approach. I argue that one plausible channel that explains the information content of supplier (customer) firm's short interest for the customer (supplier) firms is short sale constraints on the customer (supplier) firms. My results are consistent with this explanation. Overall, my findings suggest that short sellers play an important role in the price discovery of related firms on supply chain, beyond their direct effects documented previously.