IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/joares/v60y2022i1p261-297.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How is Earnings News Transmitted to Stock Prices?

Author

Listed:
  • Vincent Grégoire
  • Charles Martineau

Abstract

We examine the speed and mechanism of the price discovery process following earnings announcements in the after‐hours market, a very illiquid trading environment. Prices reflect earnings surprises mostly through changes in quotes rather than through trades. Following positive announcement surprises, ask prices adjust quickly while bid prices are slower to adjust, and vice versa for negative surprises. Returns computed from trade prices underestimate the speed and magnitude of price reactions following announcements relative to returns computed from quotes. These findings emphasize the importance of using quotes and not trade prices when examining intraday price discovery. Because firm announcements such as earnings generally occur in the after‐hours market, using quotes is crucial as trading is sparse. We further illustrate the importance of quotes when examining the price discovery process around analyst recommendation revisions.

Suggested Citation

  • Vincent Grégoire & Charles Martineau, 2022. "How is Earnings News Transmitted to Stock Prices?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(1), pages 261-297, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:joares:v:60:y:2022:i:1:p:261-297
    DOI: 10.1111/1475-679X.12394
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-679X.12394
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1475-679X.12394?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chan, Louis K. C. & Karceski, Jason & Lakonishok, Josef, 2007. "Analysts' Conflicts of Interest and Biases in Earnings Forecasts," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(4), pages 893-913, December.
    2. Bidisha Chakrabarty & Kenneth W. Shaw, 2008. "Hidden Liquidity: Order Exposure Strategies Around Earnings Announcements," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(9‐10), pages 1220-1244, November.
    3. Michael J. Barclay & Terrence Hendershott, 2004. "Liquidity Externalities and Adverse Selection: Evidence from Trading after Hours," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 59(2), pages 681-710, April.
    4. Alex Boulatov & Thomas J. George, 2013. "Hidden and Displayed Liquidity in Securities Markets with Informed Liquidity Providers," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(8), pages 2096-2137.
    5. Jonathan L. Rogers & Douglas J. Skinner & Sarah L. C. Zechman, 2016. "The role of the media in disseminating insider-trading news," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 711-739, September.
    6. Jiang, Christine X. & Likitapiwat, Tanakorn & McInish, Thomas H., 2012. "Information Content of Earnings Announcements: Evidence from After-Hours Trading," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(6), pages 1303-1330, December.
    7. Kyle, Albert S, 1985. "Continuous Auctions and Insider Trading," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1315-1335, November.
    8. S. P. Kothari & Susan Shu & Peter D. Wysocki, 2009. "Do Managers Withhold Bad News?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 241-276, March.
    9. Augustin Landier & Julien Sauvagnat & David Sraer & David Thesmar, 2013. "Bottom-Up Corporate Governance," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 17(1), pages 161-201.
    10. Craig W. Holden & Stacey Jacobsen, 2014. "Liquidity Measurement Problems in Fast, Competitive Markets: Expensive and Cheap Solutions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(4), pages 1747-1785, August.
    11. AltInkIlIç, Oya & Hansen, Robert S., 2009. "On the information role of stock recommendation revisions," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 17-36, October.
    12. Albert J. Menkveld & Marius A. Zoican, 2017. "Need for Speed? Exchange Latency and Liquidity," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(4), pages 1188-1228.
    13. Comerton-Forde, Carole & Grégoire, Vincent & Zhong, Zhuo, 2019. "Inverted fee structures, tick size, and market quality," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 141-164.
    14. Bidisha Chakrabarty & Kenneth W. Shaw, 2008. "Hidden Liquidity: Order Exposure Strategies Around Earnings Announcements," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(9-10), pages 1220-1244.
    15. Torben G. Andersen & Tim Bollerslev & Francis X. Diebold & Clara Vega, 2003. "Micro Effects of Macro Announcements: Real-Time Price Discovery in Foreign Exchange," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 38-62, March.
    16. Daniel Bradley & Jonathan Clarke & Suzanne Lee & Chayawat Ornthanalai, 2014. "Are Analysts’ Recommendations Informative? Intraday Evidence on the Impact of Time Stamp Delays," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(2), pages 645-673, April.
    17. Glosten, Lawrence R. & Milgrom, Paul R., 1985. "Bid, ask and transaction prices in a specialist market with heterogeneously informed traders," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 71-100, March.
    18. Ron Kaniel & Hong Liu, 2006. "So What Orders Do Informed Traders Use?," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(4), pages 1867-1914, July.
    19. Jonathan L. Rogers & Douglas J. Skinner & Sarah L. C. Zechman, 2017. "Run EDGAR Run: SEC Dissemination in a High‐Frequency World," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 459-505, May.
    20. Bessembinder, Hendrik & Panayides, Marios & Venkataraman, Kumar, 2009. "Hidden liquidity: An analysis of order exposure strategies in electronic stock markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(3), pages 361-383, December.
    21. Stoll, Hans R. & Whaley, Robert E., 1983. "Transaction costs and the small firm effect," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 57-79, June.
    22. Maureen O'Hara & Chen Yao & Mao Ye, 2014. "What's Not There: Odd Lots and Market Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(5), pages 2199-2236, October.
    23. Michael J. Barclay, 2003. "Price Discovery and Trading After Hours," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(4), pages 1041-1073.
    24. Walther, BR, 1997. "Investor sophistication and market earnings expectations," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(2), pages 157-179.
    25. Alan Crane & Kevin Crotty, 2020. "How Skilled Are Security Analysts?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(3), pages 1629-1675, June.
    26. Francis, J & Pagach, D & Stephan, J, 1992. "The Stock-Market Response To Earnings Announcements Released During Trading Versus Nontrading Periods," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(2), pages 165-184.
    27. Chakrabarty, Bidisha & Pascual, Roberto & Shkilko, Andriy, 2015. "Evaluating trade classification algorithms: Bulk volume classification versus the tick rule and the Lee-Ready algorithm," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 52-79.
    28. Hoffmann, Peter, 2014. "A dynamic limit order market with fast and slow traders," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(1), pages 156-169.
    29. Goettler, Ronald L. & Parlour, Christine A. & Rajan, Uday, 2009. "Informed traders and limit order markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 67-87, July.
    30. Eric Budish & Peter Cramton & John Shim, 2015. "Editor's Choice The High-Frequency Trading Arms Race: Frequent Batch Auctions as a Market Design Response," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(4), pages 1547-1621.
    31. Joshua Livnat & Richard R. Mendenhall, 2006. "Comparing the Post–Earnings Announcement Drift for Surprises Calculated from Analyst and Time Series Forecasts," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(1), pages 177-205, March.
    32. Robert Bloomfield & Maureen O'Hara & Gideon Saar, 2015. "Hidden Liquidity: Some New Light on Dark Trading," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(5), pages 2227-2274, October.
    33. Roll, Richard, 1984. "A Simple Implicit Measure of the Effective Bid-Ask Spread in an Efficient Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(4), pages 1127-1139, September.
    34. Edward Xuejun Li & K. Ramesh & Min Shen & Joanna Shuang Wu, 2015. "Do Analyst Stock Recommendations Piggyback on Recent Corporate News? An Analysis of Regular‐Hour and After‐Hours Revisions," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(4), pages 821-861, September.
    35. Brolley, Michael & Malinova, Katya, 2021. "Informed liquidity provision in a limit order market," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    36. Travis L. Johnson & Eric C. So, 2018. "Asymmetric Trading Costs Prior to Earnings Announcements: Implications for Price Discovery and Returns," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(1), pages 217-263, March.
    37. John C. Driscoll & Aart C. Kraay, 1998. "Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimation With Spatially Dependent Panel Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(4), pages 549-560, November.
    38. Richard C. Green & Dan Li & Norman Schürhoff, 2010. "Price Discovery in Illiquid Markets: Do Financial Asset Prices Rise Faster Than They Fall?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(5), pages 1669-1702, October.
    39. Lee, Charles M C & Mucklow, Belinda & Ready, Mark J, 1993. "Spreads, Depths, and the Impact of Earnings Information: An Intraday Analysis," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(2), pages 345-374.
    40. ., 2013. "Multinational corporations as partners in global governance," Chapters, in: The Political Power of the Business Corporation, chapter 7, pages 147-176, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Laurent Bouton & Aniol Llorente-Saguer & Antonin Macé & Adam Meirowitz & Shaoting Pi & Dimitrios Xefteris, 2022. "Public Information as a Source of Disagreement Among Shareholders," NBER Working Papers 30757, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Sun-Keun Yoo & Se-Hak Chun, 2023. "The Effects of Corporate Financial Disclosure on Stock Prices: A Case Study of Korea’s Compulsory Preliminary Earnings Announcements," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 16(12), pages 1-9, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Baruch, Shmuel & Panayides, Marios & Venkataraman, Kumar, 2017. "Informed trading and price discovery before corporate events," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(3), pages 561-588.
    2. Bellia, Mario & Pelizzon, Loriana & Subrahmanyam, Marti & Uno, Jun & Yuferova, Darya, 2017. "Coming early to the party," SAFE Working Paper Series 182, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
      • Mario Bellia & Loriana Pelizzon & Marti G. Subrahmanyam & Jun Uno & Darya Yuferova, 2020. "Coming early to the party," Working Papers 2020:11, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    3. Akey, Pat & Grégoire, Vincent & Martineau, Charles, 2022. "Price revelation from insider trading: Evidence from hacked earnings news," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(3), pages 1162-1184.
    4. Abad, David & Pascual, Roberto, 2015. "The friction-free weighted price contribution," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 226-239.
    5. Roberto Riccò & Barbara Rindi & Duane J. Seppi, 2020. "Information, Liquidity, and Dynamic Limit Order Markets," Working Papers 660, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    6. Comerton-Forde, Carole & Putniņš, Tālis J., 2015. "Dark trading and price discovery," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 70-92.
    7. Akey, Pat & Grégoire, Vincent & Martineau, Charles, 2021. "Price Revelation from Insider Trading: Evidence from Hacked Earnings News," SocArXiv qe6tu, Center for Open Science.
    8. Marvin Wee & Joey W. Yang, 2016. "The Evolution of Informed Liquidity Provision: Evidence from an Order†driven Market," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 22(5), pages 882-915, November.
    9. Nilabhra Bhattacharya & Bidisha Chakrabarty & Xu (Frank) Wang, 2020. "High-frequency traders and price informativeness during earnings announcements," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 1156-1199, September.
    10. Blankespoor, Elizabeth & deHaan, Ed & Marinovic, Iván, 2020. "Disclosure processing costs, investors’ information choice, and equity market outcomes: A review," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2).
    11. Li, Sida & Wang, Xin & Ye, Mao, 2021. "Who provides liquidity, and when?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(3), pages 968-980.
    12. Justin Cox, 2020. "Market fragmentation and post-earnings announcement drift," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 44(3), pages 587-610, July.
    13. Qiu, Jiaping & Yu, Fan, 2012. "Endogenous liquidity in credit derivatives," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(3), pages 611-631.
    14. Thierry Foucault & Roman Kozhan & Wing Wah Tham, 2017. "Toxic Arbitrage," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(4), pages 1053-1094.
    15. Sida Li & Xin Wang & Mao Ye, 2019. "Who Provides Liquidity, and When?," NBER Working Papers 25972, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Markus Baldauf & Joshua Mollner, 2020. "High‐Frequency Trading and Market Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(3), pages 1495-1526, June.
    17. Brolley, Michael & Malinova, Katya, 2021. "Informed liquidity provision in a limit order market," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    18. Hörner, Johannes & Lovo, Stefano & Tomala, Tristan, 2018. "Belief-free price formation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(2), pages 342-365.
    19. Amiram, Dan & Owens, Edward & Rozenbaum, Oded, 2016. "Do information releases increase or decrease information asymmetry? New evidence from analyst forecast announcements," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 121-138.
    20. Zhou, Hao & Kalev, Petko S., 2019. "Algorithmic and high frequency trading in Asia-Pacific, now and the future," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 186-207.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:joares:v:60:y:2022:i:1:p:261-297. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-8456 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.