IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/finrev/v54y2019i2p235-264.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Early Movers Advantage? Evidence from Short Selling during After‐Hours on Earnings Announcement Days

Author

Listed:
  • Archana Jain
  • Chinmay Jain
  • Christine X. Jiang

Abstract

We examine short sellers’ after‐hours trading (AHT) following quarterly earnings announcements released outside of the normal trading hours. Our innovation is to use the actual short trades immediately after the announcements. We find that on these earnings announcement days, there is significant shorting activity in AHT relative to shorting activity both during AHT on nonannouncements days and during regular trading sessions around announcements. Short sellers who trade after‐hours on announcement days earn an excess return of 0.82% and 1.40% during before‐market‐open (BMO) and after‐market‐close (AMC)sessions, respectively. The magnitude of these returns increases to 1.48 (3.92%) for BMO (AMC) earnings announcements with negative surprise. We find that the reactive short selling during AHT has information in predicting future returns. Short sellers’ trades have no predictive power if they wait for the market to open to trade during regular hours. In addition, we find that the weighted price contribution during AHT increases with an increase in after‐hours short selling. Overall, our results suggest that short sellers in AHT are informed. Our findings remain robust using alternative holding periods and after controlling for macroeconomic news announcements during BMO sessions.

Suggested Citation

  • Archana Jain & Chinmay Jain & Christine X. Jiang, 2019. "Early Movers Advantage? Evidence from Short Selling during After‐Hours on Earnings Announcement Days," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 54(2), pages 235-264, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:finrev:v:54:y:2019:i:2:p:235-264
    DOI: 10.1111/fire.12174
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/fire.12174
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/fire.12174?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. Jonathan M. Karpoff & Xiaoxia Lou, 2010. "Short Sellers and Financial Misconduct," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(5), pages 1879-1913, October.
    2. Karl B. Diether & Kuan-Hui Lee & Ingrid M. Werner, 2009. "Short-Sale Strategies and Return Predictability," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(2), pages 575-607, February.
    3. Henk Berkman & Cameron Truong, 2009. "Event Day 0? After‐Hours Earnings Announcements," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 71-103, March.
    4. Henk Berkman & Michael D. McKenzie, 2012. "Earnings Announcements: Good News for Institutional Investors and Short Sellers," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 47(1), pages 91-113, February.
    5. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:2:p:681-710 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Jason T. Greene & Susan G. Watts, 1996. "Price Discovery on the NYSE and the NASDAQ: The case of Overnight Daytime News Releases," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 25(1), Spring.
    7. Engelberg, Joseph E. & Reed, Adam V. & Ringgenberg, Matthew C., 2012. "How are shorts informed?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(2), pages 260-278.
    8. Alexander, Gordon J. & Peterson, Mark A. & Beardsley, Xiaoxin Wang, 2014. "The puzzling behavior of short sellers around earnings announcements," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 255-278.
    9. 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.
    10. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:4:p:1845-1876 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Barclay, Michael J. & Hendershott, Terrence, 2008. "A comparison of trading and non-trading mechanisms for price discovery," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 839-849, December.
    12. 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.
    13. McInish, Thomas H. & Van Ness, Bonnie F. & Van Ness, Robert A., 2002. "After-hours trading of NYSE stocks on the regional stock exchanges," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 287-297.
    14. 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.
    15. Ekkehart Boehmer & Juan (Julie) Wu, 2013. "Short Selling and the Price Discovery Process," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(2), pages 287-322.
    16. Senchack, A. J. & Starks, Laura T., 1993. "Short-Sale Restrictions and Market Reaction to Short-Interest Announcements," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(2), pages 177-194, June.
    17. Christophe, Stephen E. & Ferri, Michael G. & Hsieh, Jim, 2010. "Informed trading before analyst downgrades: Evidence from short sellers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 85-106, January.
    18. Barclay, Michael J. & Warner, Jerold B., 1993. "Stealth trading and volatility : Which trades move prices?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 281-305, December.
    19. Charles Cao & Eric Ghysels & Frank Hatheway, 2000. "Price Discovery without Trading: Evidence from the Nasdaq Preopening," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(3), pages 1339-1365, June.
    20. Ball, R & Brown, P, 1968. "Empirical Evaluation Of Accounting Income Numbers," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(2), pages 159-178.
    21. 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.
    22. 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.
    23. 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.
    24. Roni Michaely & Amir Rubin & Alexander Vedrashko, 2014. "Corporate Governance and the Timing of Earnings Announcements," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 18(6), pages 2003-2044.
    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. Sandro Brunelli & Francesco Venuti & Thomas Niederkofler & Camilla Falivena, 2024. "Financial distress, auditors’ going concern modification (GCM) and investors’ reaction in a concentrated ownership environment: new evidence from the Italian stock market," International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 21(2), pages 313-339, June.
    2. Júlio Lobão & Maria Eva Jerke, 2020. "Short-term Overreaction in American Depository Receipts," Scientific Annals of Economics and Business (continues Analele Stiintifice), Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, vol. 67(4), pages 423-435, 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. 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.
    2. Massa, Massimo & Qian, Wenlan & Xu, Weibiao & Zhang, Hong, 2015. "Competition of the informed: Does the presence of short sellers affect insider selling?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(2), pages 268-288.
    3. Xiao, Xijuan & Yamamoto, Ryuichi, 2024. "Overnight earnings announcements and preopening price discovery," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    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. Blau, Benjamin M. & DeLisle, Jared R. & Price, S. McKay, 2015. "Do sophisticated investors interpret earnings conference call tone differently than investors at large? Evidence from short sales," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 203-219.
    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. Blau, Benjamin M. & Smith, Jason M., 2014. "Autocorrelation in daily short-sale volume," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 31-41.
    8. Benjamin Blau & Chip Wade, 2013. "Comparing the information in short sales and put options," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 567-583, October.
    9. Charles M. Jones & Adam V. Reed & William Waller, 2016. "Revealing Shorts An Examination of Large Short Position Disclosures," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(12), pages 3278-3320.
    10. Alexander, Gordon J. & Peterson, Mark A. & Beardsley, Xiaoxin Wang, 2014. "The puzzling behavior of short sellers around earnings announcements," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 255-278.
    11. Kahraman, Bige & Pachare, Salil, 2018. "Show us your shorts!," CEPR Discussion Papers 12658, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Xu Guo & Chunchi Wu, 2022. "Short Selling Activity and Effects on Financial Markets and Corporate Decisions," Springer Books, in: Cheng-Few Lee & Alice C. Lee (ed.), Encyclopedia of Finance, edition 0, chapter 98, pages 2313-2340, Springer.
    13. Moshirian, Fariborz & Nguyen, Huong Giang (Lily) & Pham, Peter Kien, 2012. "Overnight public information, order placement, and price discovery during the pre-opening period," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 2837-2851.
    14. Eunju Lee, 2016. "Short selling and market mispricing," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 797-833, October.
    15. Blau, Benjamin M. & Tew, Philip L., 2014. "Short sales and class-action lawsuits," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 79-100.
    16. Hanauer, Matthias X. & Lesnevski, Pavel & Smajlbegovic, Esad, 2023. "Surprise in short interest," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    17. Blau, Benjamin M. & Pinegar, J. Michael, 2013. "Are short sellers incrementally informed prior to earnings announcements?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 142-155.
    18. Jiang, Haiyan & Chen, Jun, 2019. "Short selling and financial reporting quality: Evidence from Chinese AH shares," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 118-130.
    19. Lin, Chih-Yung & Bui, Dien Giau & Lin, Tse-Chun, 2020. "Do short sellers exploit risky business models of banks? Evidence from two banking crises," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 46(C).
    20. 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.

    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:finrev:v:54:y:2019:i:2:p:235-264. 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: https://edirc.repec.org/data/efaaaea.html .

    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.