IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbfina/v54y2015icp87-103.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Which financial stocks did short sellers target in the subprime crisis?

Author

Listed:
  • Hasan, Iftekhar
  • Massoud, Nadia
  • Saunders, Anthony
  • Song, Keke

Abstract

Tracing the SEC ban on the short selling of financial stocks in September 2008, this paper investigates whether such selling activity before the 2008 short ban reflected financial companies’ risk exposure in the subprime crisis. Evidence suggests that short sellers sold short stocks that had the greatest asset and insolvency risk exposures, and that the short selling of financial firms’ stocks was not significantly greater than that of non-financial firms after we match them on firm size and insolvency risk. When the short ban was in effect, the market quality of financial stocks without subprime assets exposure had deteriorated to a larger degree than that of financial companies with subprime assets exposure. The findings imply that such a regulation may mute the market disciplining effects of investors and may also be seen as a counterweight to any perceived macro or systemic risk reduction benefits resulting from such a ban.

Suggested Citation

  • Hasan, Iftekhar & Massoud, Nadia & Saunders, Anthony & Song, Keke, 2015. "Which financial stocks did short sellers target in the subprime crisis?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 87-103.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:54:y:2015:i:c:p:87-103
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2014.12.021
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378426614004026
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbankfin.2014.12.021?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lucy Huajing Chen & Heibatollah Sami, 2008. "Trading Volume Reaction to the Earnings Reconciliation from IAS to U. S. GAAP," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 25(1), pages 15-53, March.
    2. Karl B. Diether & Kuan-Hui Lee & Ingrid M. Werner, 2009. "Short-Sale Strategies and Return Predictability," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(2), pages 575-607, February.
    3. Stephen E. Christophe & Michael G. Ferri & James J. Angel, 2004. "Short-Selling Prior to Earnings Announcements," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 59(4), pages 1845-1876, August.
    4. Hemang Desai & K. Ramesh & S. Ramu Thiagarajan & Bala V. Balachandran, 2002. "An Investigation of the Informational Role of Short Interest in the Nasdaq Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(5), pages 2263-2287, October.
    5. Markus K. Brunnermeier, 2009. "Deciphering the Liquidity and Credit Crunch 2007-2008," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(1), pages 77-100, Winter.
    6. Goswami, Gautam & Tan, Sinan & Waisman, Maya, 2014. "Understanding the cross-section of the U.S. housing bubble: The roles of lending, transaction costs, and rent growth," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 15(C), pages 76-90.
    7. Alessandro Beber & Marco Pagano, 2013. "Short-Selling Bans Around the World: Evidence from the 2007–09 Crisis," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(1), pages 343-381, February.
    8. Louis Gagnon & Jonathan Witmer, 2009. "Short Changed? The Market's Reaction to the Short Sale Ban of 2008," Staff Working Papers 09-23, Bank of Canada.
    9. Asquith, Paul & Pathak, Parag A. & Ritter, Jay R., 2005. "Short interest, institutional ownership, and stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 243-276, November.
    10. Ekkehart Boehmer & Charles M. Jones & Xiaoyan Zhang, 2008. "Which Shorts Are Informed?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(2), pages 491-527, April.
    11. Grundy, Bruce D. & Lim, Bryan & Verwijmeren, Patrick, 2012. "Do option markets undo restrictions on short sales? Evidence from the 2008 short-sale ban," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(2), pages 331-348.
    12. Diamond, Douglas W. & Verrecchia, Robert E., 1987. "Constraints on short-selling and asset price adjustment to private information," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 277-311, June.
    13. Robert Battalio & Paul Schultz, 2011. "Regulatory Uncertainty and Market Liquidity: The 2008 Short Sale Ban's Impact on Equity Option Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(6), pages 2013-2053, December.
    14. Acharya, Viral V. & Johnson, Timothy C., 2007. "Insider trading in credit derivatives," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 110-141, April.
    15. Boehme, Rodney D. & Danielsen, Bartley R. & Sorescu, Sorin M., 2006. "Short-Sale Constraints, Differences of Opinion, and Overvaluation," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 41(2), pages 455-487, June.
    16. Adam C. Kolasinski & Adam Reed & Jacob R. Thornock, 2013. "Can Short Restrictions Actually Increase Informed Short Selling?," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 42(1), pages 155-181, March.
    17. Ekkehart Boehmer & Charles M. Jones & Xiaoyan Zhang, 2013. "Shackling Short Sellers: The 2008 Shorting Ban," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(6), pages 1363-1400.
    18. Ekkehart Boehmer & Juan (Julie) Wu, 2013. "Short Selling and the Price Discovery Process," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(2), pages 287-322.
    19. Jon A. Garfinkel & Jonathan Sokobin, 2006. "Volume, Opinion Divergence, and Returns: A Study of Post–Earnings Announcement Drift," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(1), pages 85-112, March.
    20. Miller, Edward M, 1977. "Risk, Uncertainty, and Divergence of Opinion," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(4), pages 1151-1168, September.
    21. Darwin Choi & Mila Getmansky & Brian Henderson & Heather Tookes, 2010. "Convertible Bond Arbitrageurs as Suppliers of Capital," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(6), pages 2492-2522, June.
    22. Dechow, Patricia M. & Hutton, Amy P. & Meulbroek, Lisa & Sloan, Richard G., 2001. "Short-sellers, fundamental analysis, and stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 77-106, July.
    23. Robert Connolly & Chris Stivers, 2005. "Macroeconomic News, Stock Turnover, And Volatility Clustering In Daily Stock Returns," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 28(2), pages 235-259, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Hasan, Iftekhar & Massoud, Nadia & Saunders, Anthony & Song, Keke, 2015. "Which financial stocks did short sellers target in the subprime crisis?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 87-103.
    2. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2015_003 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Charles M. Jones & Adam V. Reed & William Waller, 2016. "Revealing Shorts An Examination of Large Short Position Disclosures," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(12), pages 3278-3320.
    4. Hackney, John & Henry, Tyler R. & Koski, Jennifer L., 2020. "Arbitrage vs. informed short selling: Evidence from convertible bond issuers," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    5. Shyu, Yih-Wen & Chan, Kam C. & Liang, Hsin-Yu, 2018. "Spillovers of price efficiency and informed trading from short sales to margin purchases in absence of uptick rule," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 163-183.
    6. Comerton-Forde, Carole & Jones, Charles M. & Putniņš, Tālis J., 2016. "Shorting at close range: A tale of two types," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(3), pages 546-568.
    7. Paulo Pereira da Silva, 2016. "Did Investors Seeking Short Exposure Move to the CDS Market after the 2011 Short-Sale Bans in European Financial Stocks?," Czech Journal of Economics and Finance (Finance a uver), Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, vol. 66(4), pages 322-353, August.
    8. Hasan, Iftekhar & Massoud, Nadia & Saunders, Anthony & Song, Keke, 2015. "Which financial stocks did short sellers target in the subprime crisis?," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 3/2015, Bank of Finland.
    9. Fellner, Gerlinde & Theissen, Erik, 2014. "Short sale constraints, divergence of opinion and asset prices: Evidence from the laboratory," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 113-127.
    10. Jank, Stephan & Roling, Christoph & Smajlbegovic, Esad, 2021. "Flying under the radar: The effects of short-sale disclosure rules on investor behavior and stock prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(1), pages 209-233.
    11. R. Jared DeLisle & Bong Soo Lee & Nathan Mauck, 2016. "The dynamic relation between options trading, short selling, and aggregate stock returns," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 645-671, October.
    12. Haiyan Jiang & Ahsan Habib & Mostafa Monzur Hasan, 2022. "Short Selling: A Review of the Literature and Implications for Future Research," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 1-31, January.
    13. Bohl, Martin T. & Klein, Arne C. & Siklos, Pierre L., 2014. "Short-selling bans and institutional investors' herding behaviour: Evidence from the global financial crisis," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 262-269.
    14. Blau, Benjamin M. & Tew, Philip L., 2014. "Short sales and class-action lawsuits," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 79-100.
    15. Comerton-Forde, Carole & Do, Binh Huu & Gray, Philip & Manton, Tom, 2016. "Assessing the information content of short-selling metrics using daily disclosures," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 188-204.
    16. Wang, Yuchen & Wang, Xiaoming, 2023. "Economic policy uncertainty and information intermediary: The case of short seller," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    17. Nishiotis, George P. & Rompolis, Leonidas S., 2019. "Put-call parity violations and return predictability: Evidence from the 2008 short sale ban," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 276-297.
    18. Stratmann, Thomas & Welborn, John W., 2016. "Informed short selling, fails-to-deliver, and abnormal returns," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(PA), pages 81-102.
    19. Fotak, Veljko & Raman, Vikas & Yadav, Pradeep K., 2014. "Fails-to-deliver, short selling, and market quality," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(3), pages 493-516.
    20. Bohl, Martin T. & Klein, Arne C. & Siklos, Pierre L., 2013. "Are short sellers positive feedback traders? Evidence from the global financial crisis," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 337-346.
    21. Chen, Yong & Da, Zhi & Huang, Dayong, 2022. "Short selling efficiency," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 387-408.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Short selling; Subprime assets; Financial crisis; Short-sale ban; CDS spread;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • G33 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Bankruptcy; Liquidation

    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:eee:jbfina:v:54:y:2015:i:c:p:87-103. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbf .

    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.