IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jfsres/v60y2021i2d10.1007_s10693-020-00341-w.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Firm Opacity and the Clustering of Stock Prices: the Case of Financial Intermediaries

Author

Listed:
  • Ahmed Baig

    (Lahore University of Management Science)

  • Benjamin M. Blau

    (Utah State University)

  • Todd G. Griffith

    (Utah State University)

Abstract

In this study, we develop and test the hypothesis that because of opacity, the stock prices of financial firms will cluster on round fractions more than the stock prices of non-financial firms. Indeed, we find that the stock prices of opaque financial firms round on nickels and quarters more than the stock prices of less opaque non-financial firms. These results are robust to a battery of robustness tests that include measuring clustering at different frequencies, different econometric specifications, and different matched sample techniques. To draw stronger causal inferences, we use the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act as an exogenous shock to the level of transparency in the financial services sector. We find that price clustering decreases more for financial firms than for non-financial firms during the post-SOX regulation period. We also show that, relative to less opaque financial firms, those financial firms that are more opaque experienced the greatest decline in price clustering during the post-SOX period.

Suggested Citation

  • Ahmed Baig & Benjamin M. Blau & Todd G. Griffith, 2021. "Firm Opacity and the Clustering of Stock Prices: the Case of Financial Intermediaries," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 60(2), pages 187-206, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jfsres:v:60:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s10693-020-00341-w
    DOI: 10.1007/s10693-020-00341-w
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10693-020-00341-w
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10693-020-00341-w?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. Huizinga, Harry & Laeven, Luc, 2012. "Bank valuation and accounting discretion during a financial crisis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(3), pages 614-634.
    2. Seth Anderson & T. Randolph Beard & Hyeongwoo Kim & Liliana V. Stern, 2016. "The Short-Run Pricing Behavior of Closed-End Funds: Bond vs. Equity Funds," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 50(3), pages 363-386, December.
    3. Hirtle, Beverly, 2006. "Stock Market Reaction to Financial Statement Certification by Bank Holding Company CEOs," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(5), pages 1263-1291, August.
    4. Flannery, Mark J. & Kwan, Simon H. & Nimalendran, M., 2004. "Market evidence on the opaqueness of banking firms' assets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 419-460, March.
    5. Blau, Benjamin M. & Griffith, Todd G., 2016. "Price clustering and the stability of stock prices," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(10), pages 3933-3942.
    6. Ryan L. Davis & Stephen N. Jurich & Brian S. Roseman & Ethan D. Watson, 2018. "Short-Sale Restrictions and Price Clustering: Evidence from SEC Rule 201," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 54(3), pages 345-367, December.
    7. Blau, Benjamin M. & Brough, Tyler J. & Griffith, Todd G., 2017. "Bank opacity and the efficiency of stock prices," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 32-47.
    8. Laura L. Veldkamp, 2006. "Information Markets and the Comovement of Asset Prices," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(3), pages 823-845.
    9. Chung, Kee H. & Zhang, Hao, 2014. "A simple approximation of intraday spreads using daily data," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 17(C), pages 94-120.
    10. Copeland, Thomas E & Galai, Dan, 1983. "Information Effects on the Bid-Ask Spread," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 38(5), pages 1457-1469, December.
    11. Qi Chen & Itay Goldstein & Wei Jiang, 2007. "Price Informativeness and Investment Sensitivity to Stock Price," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(3), pages 619-650.
    12. 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.
    13. Owain ap Gwilym & Evamena Alibo, 2003. "Decreased price clustering in FTSE100 futures contracts following a transfer from floor to electronic trading," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(7), pages 647-659, July.
    14. Clifford A. Ball & Walter N. Torous & Adrian E. Tschoegl, 1985. "The degree of price resolution: The case of the gold market," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 5(1), pages 29-43, March.
    15. Akhigbe, Aigbe & Martin, Anna D., 2006. "Valuation impact of Sarbanes-Oxley: Evidence from disclosure and governance within the financial services industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 989-1006, March.
    16. Griffith, Todd G. & Roseman, Brian S., 2019. "Making cents of tick sizes: The effect of the 2016 U.S. SEC tick size pilot on limit order book liquidity," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 104-121.
    17. Campbell, Tim S & Kracaw, William A, 1980. "Information Production, Market Signalling, and the Theory of Financial Intermediation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 35(4), pages 863-882, September.
    18. Friedman, Milton, 1977. "Nobel Lecture: Inflation and Unemployment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 451-472, June.
    19. Xiaoyan Ni, Sophie & Pearson, Neil D. & Poteshman, Allen M., 2005. "Stock price clustering on option expiration dates," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 49-87, October.
    20. Itay Goldstein & Alexander Guembel, 2008. "Manipulation and the Allocational Role of Prices," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(1), pages 133-164.
    21. Harold Demsetz, 1968. "The Cost of Transacting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 82(1), pages 33-53.
    22. Harris, Lawrence, 1991. "Stock Price Clustering and Discreteness," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 4(3), pages 389-415.
    23. Andrade, Sandro C. & Bernile, Gennaro & Hood, Frederick M., 2014. "SOX, corporate transparency, and the cost of debt," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 145-165.
    24. David L. Ikenberry & James P. Weston, 2008. "Clustering in US Stock Prices after Decimalisation," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 14(1), pages 30-54, January.
    25. Diamond, Douglas W, 1991. "Monitoring and Reputation: The Choice between Bank Loans and Directly Placed Debt," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(4), pages 689-721, August.
    26. David F. Babbel & Craig Merrill, 2005. "Real and Illusory Value Creation by Insurance Companies," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 72(1), pages 1-22, March.
    27. Diamond, Douglas W, 1989. "Reputation Acquisition in Debt Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(4), pages 828-862, August.
    28. Amihud, Yakov, 2002. "Illiquidity and stock returns: cross-section and time-series effects," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 31-56, January.
    29. M. F. M. Osborne, 1962. "Periodic Structure in the Brownian Motion of Stock Prices," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 10(3), pages 345-379, June.
    30. Jones, Jeffrey S. & Lee, Wayne Y. & Yeager, Timothy J., 2012. "Opaque banks, price discovery, and financial instability," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 383-408.
    31. Sassan Alizadeh & Michael W. Brandt & Francis X. Diebold, 2002. "Range‐Based Estimation of Stochastic Volatility Models," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(3), pages 1047-1091, June.
    32. ap Gwilym, Owain & Clare, Andrew & Thomas, Stephen, 1998. "Price clustering and bid-ask spreads in international bond futures," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 8(3-4), pages 377-391, December.
    33. Fama, Eugene F, 1970. "Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 383-417, May.
    34. Sopranzetti, Ben J. & Datar, Vinay, 2002. "Price clustering in foreign exchange spot markets," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 411-417, October.
    35. Alexander, Gordon J. & Peterson, Mark A., 2007. "An analysis of trade-size clustering and its relation to stealth trading," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 435-471, May.
    36. Berlin, Mitchell & Loeys, Jan, 1988. " Bond Covenants and Delegated Monitoring," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 43(2), pages 397-412, June.
    37. Kyle, Albert S, 1985. "Continuous Auctions and Insider Trading," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1315-1335, November.
    38. Tao Zhang & Larry A. Cox & Robert A. Van Ness, 2009. "Adverse Selection and the Opaqueness of Insurers," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 76(2), pages 295-321, June.
    39. L. Colquitt & Robert Hoyt & Kathleen McCullough, 2006. "The Impact of Asbestos and Environmental Reserves Increases on Shareholder Wealth," North American Actuarial Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(3), pages 17-31.
    40. Donald P. Morgan, 2002. "Rating Banks: Risk and Uncertainty in an Opaque Industry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 874-888, September.
    41. Bessembinder, Hendrik, 2003. "Trade Execution Costs and Market Quality after Decimalization," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(4), pages 747-777, December.
    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. Blau, Benjamin M. & Brough, Tyler J. & Griffith, Todd G., 2017. "Bank opacity and the efficiency of stock prices," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 32-47.
    2. Tao Zhang & Larry A. Cox & Robert A. Van Ness, 2009. "Adverse Selection and the Opaqueness of Insurers," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 76(2), pages 295-321, June.
    3. Benjamin M. Blau & Todd G. Griffith & Ryan J. Whitby, 2020. "Opacity and the comovement in the stock prices of banks," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 60(4), pages 3557-3580, December.
    4. Baig , Ahmed & Blau , Ben & Hao, Jie, 2020. "Accounting Information Quality and the Clustering of Stock Prices," American Business Review, Pompea College of Business, University of New Haven, vol. 23(2), pages 182-210, November.
    5. Baig, Ahmed S. & Sabah, Nasim, 2020. "Does short selling affect the clustering of stock prices?," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 270-277.
    6. Flannery, Mark J. & Kwan, Simon H. & Nimalendran, Mahendrarajah, 2013. "The 2007–2009 financial crisis and bank opaqueness," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 55-84.
    7. Ahmed S. Baig & Benjamin M. Blau & R. Jared DeLisle, 2022. "Does mutual fund ownership reduce stock price clustering? Evidence from active and index funds," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 58(2), pages 615-647, February.
    8. Baig, Ahmed S. & Blau, Benjamin M. & Whitby, Ryan J., 2019. "Price clustering and economic freedom: The case of cross-listed securities," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 1-12.
    9. Vladim'ir Hol'y & Petra Tomanov'a, 2021. "Modeling Price Clustering in High-Frequency Prices," Papers 2102.12112, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2021.
    10. Abedifar, Pejman & Bouslah, Kais & Qamhieh Hashem, Shatha & Song, Liang, 2020. "How informative are stock prices of Islamic Banks?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    11. Blau, Benjamin M. & Griffith, Todd G., 2016. "Price clustering and the stability of stock prices," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(10), pages 3933-3942.
    12. Abedifar, Pejman & Bouslah, Kais & Zheng, Yeliangzi, 2021. "Stock price synchronicity and price informativeness: Evidence from a regulatory change in the U.S. banking industry," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 40(C).
    13. Du, Brian & Fung, Scott, 2018. "Directional information effects of options trading: Evidence from the banking industry," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 149-168.
    14. Lof, Matthijs & van Bommel, Jos, 2023. "Asymmetric information and the distribution of trading volume," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    15. Robert Brooks & Edwyna Harris & Yovina Joymungul, 2013. "Price clustering in Australian water markets," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(6), pages 677-685, February.
    16. Gunther Capelle-Blancard & Mo Chaudhury, 2007. "Price clustering in the CAC 40 index options market," Post-Print halshs-00265668, HAL.
    17. 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).
    18. Jagjeev Dosanjh, 2017. "Exchange Initiatives and Market Efficiency: Evidence from the Australian Securities Exchange," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 1-2017.
    19. Kozubovska, Mariolia, 2017. "The effect of US bank holding companies’ exposure to asset-backed commercial paper conduits on the information opacity and systemic risk," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(PA), pages 530-545.
    20. Giuliano Iannotta & Simon H. Kwan, 2013. "The Impact of Reserves Practices on Bank Opacity," Working Paper Series 2013-35, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

    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:kap:jfsres:v:60:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s10693-020-00341-w. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.