IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/joares/v47y2009i5p1317-1348.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring Investors' Opinion Divergence

Author

Listed:
  • JON A. GARFINKEL

Abstract

Numerous proxies for divergence of investors' opinions have been suggested in the empirical accounting and finance literatures. I offer a new proxy constructed from proprietary limit order and market order data. This allows me to capture additional information on investors' private valuations. Proxies from the extant literature, based on publicly available data, do not contain such information. Given my new measure, I ask which of the extant proxies correlates best with it. In my regression analysis, unexplained volume is the best proxy for opinion divergence. Conditioning on various firm‐specific and order‐specific characteristics generally does not change this conclusion. The main exception is the sample of firms without IBES forecast dispersion data, for which bid‐ask spread is the best proxy for opinion divergence. Factor analysis also suggests that unexplained volume is the preferred proxy for opinion divergence.

Suggested Citation

  • Jon A. Garfinkel, 2009. "Measuring Investors' Opinion Divergence," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(5), pages 1317-1348, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:joares:v:47:y:2009:i:5:p:1317-1348
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-679X.2009.00344.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-679X.2009.00344.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1475-679X.2009.00344.x?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. Hee‐Joon Ahn & Kee‐Hong Bae & Kalok Chan, 2001. "Limit Orders, Depth, and Volatility: Evidence from the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 767-788, April.
    2. Shalen, Catherine T, 1993. "Volume, Volatility, and the Dispersion of Beliefs," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(2), pages 405-434.
    3. Crabbe, Leland & Post, Mitchell A, 1994. "The Effect of a Rating Downgrade on Outstanding Commercial Paper," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(1), pages 39-56, March.
    4. Foucault, Thierry, 1998. "Order Flow Composition and Trading Costs in Dynamic Limit Order Markets," CEPR Discussion Papers 1817, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Harrison Hong & Terence Lim & Jeremy C. Stein, 2000. "Bad News Travels Slowly: Size, Analyst Coverage, and the Profitability of Momentum Strategies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(1), pages 265-295, February.
    6. Harrison Hong & Jeremy C. Stein, 1999. "A Unified Theory of Underreaction, Momentum Trading, and Overreaction in Asset Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(6), pages 2143-2184, December.
    7. Hasbrouck, Joel, 1995. "One Security, Many Markets: Determining the Contributions to Price Discovery," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(4), pages 1175-1199, September.
    8. Lin, Hsiou-wei & McNichols, Maureen F., 1998. "Underwriting relationships, analysts' earnings forecasts and investment recommendations," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 101-127, February.
    9. Duarte, Jefferson & Young, Lance, 2009. "Why is PIN priced?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 119-138, February.
    10. Anup Agrawal & Sahiba Chadha & Mark A. Chen, 2006. "Who Is Afraid of Reg FD? The Behavior and Performance of Sell-Side Analysts Following the SEC's Fair Disclosure Rules," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(6), pages 2811-2834, November.
    11. Lee, Charles M C & Mucklow, Belinda & Ready, Mark J, 1993. "Spreads, Depths, and the Impact of Earnings Information: An Intraday Analysis," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(2), pages 345-374.
    12. Amit Goyal & Pedro Santa‐Clara, 2003. "Idiosyncratic Risk Matters!," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(3), pages 975-1007, June.
    13. Beaver, Wh, 1968. "Information Content Of Annual Earnings Announcements," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6, pages 67-92.
    14. Burton Hollifield & Robert A. Miller & Patrik Sandås & Joshua Slive, 2006. "Estimating the Gains from Trade in Limit‐Order Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(6), pages 2753-2804, December.
    15. Patricia M. Dechow & Amy P. Hutton & Richard G. Sloan, 2000. "The Relation between Analysts' Forecasts of Long†Term Earnings Growth and Stock Price Performance Following Equity Offerings," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(1), pages 1-32, March.
    16. Tkac, Paula A., 1999. "A Trading Volume Benchmark: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 34(1), pages 89-114, March.
    17. Kandel, Eugene & Pearson, Neil D, 1995. "Differential Interpretation of Public Signals and Trade in Speculative Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(4), pages 831-872, August.
    18. Danielsen, Bartley R. & Sorescu, Sorin M., 2001. "Why Do Option Introductions Depress Stock Prices? A Study of Diminishing Short Sale Constraints," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 36(4), pages 451-484, December.
    19. Brown, Stephen & Hillegeist, Stephen A. & Lo, Kin, 2004. "Conference calls and information asymmetry," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 343-366, September.
    20. 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.
    21. Vuong, Quang H, 1989. "Likelihood Ratio Tests for Model Selection and Non-nested Hypotheses," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 307-333, March.
    22. Bloomfield, Robert & O'Hara, Maureen & Saar, Gideon, 2005. "The "make or take" decision in an electronic market: Evidence on the evolution of liquidity," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 165-199, January.
    23. Harris, Milton & Raviv, Artur, 1993. "Differences of Opinion Make a Horse Race," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(3), pages 473-506.
    24. Karpoff, Jonathan M., 1987. "The Relation between Price Changes and Trading Volume: A Survey," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(1), pages 109-126, March.
    25. Petersen, Mitchell A. & Fialkowski, David, 1994. "Posted versus effective spreads *1: Good prices or bad quotes?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 269-292, June.
    26. Orie E. Barron & Mary Harris Stanford & Yong Yu, 2009. "Further Evidence on the Relation between Analysts' Forecast Dispersion and Stock Returns," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(2), pages 329-357, June.
    27. John R. Graham & Jennifer L. Koski & Uri Loewenstein, 2006. "Information Flow and Liquidity around Anticipated and Unanticipated Dividend Announcements," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(5), pages 2301-2336, September.
    28. Foucault, Thierry, 1999. "Order flow composition and trading costs in a dynamic limit order market1," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 99-134, May.
    29. George, Thomas J & Kaul, Gautam & Nimalendran, M, 1991. "Estimation of the Bid-Ask Spread and Its Components: A New Approach," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 4(4), pages 623-656.
    30. Lev, B & Ohlson, Ja, 1982. "Market-Based Empirical-Research In Accounting - A Review, Interpretation, And Extension," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20, pages 249-322.
    31. Garfinkel, Jon A. & Nimalendran, M., 2003. "Market Structure and Trader Anonymity: An Analysis of Insider Trading," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(3), pages 591-610, September.
    32. Harris, Lawrence & Hasbrouck, Joel, 1996. "Market vs. Limit Orders: The SuperDOT Evidence on Order Submission Strategy," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 31(2), pages 213-231, June.
    33. Frankel, Jeffrey A & Froot, Kenneth A, 1990. "Chartists, Fundamentalists, and Trading in the Foreign Exchange Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 181-185, May.
    34. William R. Gebhardt & Charles M. C. Lee & Bhaskaran Swaminathan, 2001. "Toward an Implied Cost of Capital," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(1), pages 135-176, June.
    35. Handa, Puneet & Schwartz, Robert & Tiwari, Ashish, 2003. "Quote setting and price formation in an order driven market," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 461-489, August.
    36. Amit Goyal & Pedro Santa-Clara, 2003. "Idiosyncratic Risk Matters!," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(3), pages 975-1008, June.
    37. Bamber, Linda Smith & Barron, Orie E. & Stober, Thomas L., 1999. "Differential Interpretations and Trading Volume," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 34(3), pages 369-386, September.
    38. Healy, Paul M. & Palepu, Krishna G., 2001. "Information asymmetry, corporate disclosure, and the capital markets: A review of the empirical disclosure literature," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-3), pages 405-440, September.
    39. Robert T. Daigler & Marilyn K. Wiley, 1999. "The Impact of Trader Type on the Futures Volatility‐Volume Relation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(6), pages 2297-2316, December.
    40. Michael J. Fleming & Eli M. Remolona, 1999. "Price Formation and Liquidity in the U.S. Treasury Market: The Response to Public Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(5), pages 1901-1915, October.
    41. Abarbanell, Jeffery S. & Lanen, William N. & Verrecchia, Robert E., 1995. "Analysts' forecasts as proxies for investor beliefs in empirical research," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 31-60, July.
    42. Doukas, John A. & Kim, Chansog (Francis) & Pantzalis, Christos, 2006. "Divergence of Opinion and Equity Returns," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 41(3), pages 573-606, September.
    43. Albert Wang, F., 1998. "Strategic trading, asymmetric information and heterogeneous prior beliefs," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 1(3-4), pages 321-352, September.
    44. John Core & Wayne Guay, 2002. "Estimating the Value of Employee Stock Option Portfolios and Their Sensitivities to Price and Volatility," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(3), pages 613-630, 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. 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.
    2. Roberto Pascual & David Veredas, 2010. "Does the Open Limit Order Book Matter in Explaining Informational Volatility?," Journal of Financial Econometrics, Oxford University Press, vol. 8(1), pages 57-87, Winter.
    3. Sheng, Xuguang (Simon) & Thevenot, Maya, 2015. "Quantifying differential interpretation of public information using financial analysts’ earnings forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 515-530.
    4. Xuguang Sheng & Maya Thevenot, 2013. "Differential Interpretation of Public Information: Estimation and Inference," Working Papers 2013-03, American University, Department of Economics.
    5. PASCUAL, Roberto & VEREDAS, David, 2006. "Does the open limit order book matter in explaining long run volatility ?," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2006110, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    6. Asani Sarkar & Robert A. Schwartz, 2009. "Market Sidedness: Insights into Motives for Trade Initiation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(1), pages 375-423, February.
    7. Ingrid Lo & Stephen Sapp, 2011. "Belief Dispersion and Order Submission Strategies in the Foreign Exchange Market," Staff Working Papers 11-8, Bank of Canada.
    8. Ramnath, Sundaresh & Rock, Steve & Shane, Philip, 2008. "The financial analyst forecasting literature: A taxonomy with suggestions for further research," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 34-75.
    9. Duong, Huu Nhan & Kalev, Petko S., 2013. "Anonymity and order submissions," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 101-118.
    10. Jeffrey R. Black & Pankaj K. Jain & Wei Sun, 2023. "Trade-time clustering," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 60(3), pages 1209-1242, April.
    11. Kothari, S.P. & Weber, Joseph & Frankel, Richard M., 2002. "Determinants of the Informativeness of Analyst Research," Working papers 4243-02, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    12. Danny Lo, 2015. "Essays in Market Microstructure and Investor Trading," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 4-2015.
    13. Murphy Jun Jie Lee, 2013. "The Microstructure of Trading Processes on the Singapore Exchange," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 2-2013.
    14. Danny Lo, 2015. "Essays in Market Microstructure and Investor Trading," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 22, July-Dece.
    15. Perotti, Pietro, 2010. "Order aggressiveness as a metric to assess the usefulness of accounting information," The International Journal of Accounting, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 306-333, September.
    16. Roberto Pascual & David Veredas, 2009. "What pieces of limit order book information matter in explaining order choice by patient and impatient traders?," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(5), pages 527-545.
    17. Murphy Jun Jie Lee, 2013. "The Microstructure of Trading Processes on the Singapore Exchange," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 4, July-Dece.
    18. Biais, Bruno & Glosten, Larry & Spatt, Chester, 2005. "Market microstructure: A survey of microfoundations, empirical results, and policy implications," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 217-264, May.
    19. Alessandro Beber & Cecilia Caglio, 2005. "Order Submission Strategies and Information: Empirical Evidence from the NYSE," FAME Research Paper Series rp146, International Center for Financial Asset Management and Engineering.
    20. Menkhoff, Lukas & Osler, Carol L. & Schmeling, Maik, 2010. "Limit-order submission strategies under asymmetric information," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(11), pages 2665-2677, November.

    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:47:y:2009:i:5:p:1317-1348. 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.