IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/rqfnac/v47y2016i3d10.1007_s11156-015-0521-5.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Short selling and market mispricing

Author

Listed:
  • Eunju Lee

    (University of Massachusetts Lowell)

Abstract

We provide evidence on short sellers’ exploitation of temporary mispricing in the equity market. Using a mispricing indicator that measures deviations from a stock’s fundamental value, we find higher levels of short selling for temporarily overvalued stocks. The result is robust to controlling for short sale constraints and illiquidity, and it is more pronounced when short sale constraints do not bind and stocks are illiquid. We also find that informed short sellers are able to distinguish temporary overpricing from upward return momentum. However, when fundamental news is released, short sellers focus on exploiting negative fundamental changes rather than temporary overpricing. Short sellers contribute to market quality by correcting overpricing quickly over time, but they do not destabilize the market.

Suggested Citation

  • Eunju Lee, 2016. "Short selling and market mispricing," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 797-833, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:rqfnac:v:47:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1007_s11156-015-0521-5
    DOI: 10.1007/s11156-015-0521-5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11156-015-0521-5
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11156-015-0521-5?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. Carl Chen & Peter Lung & F. Wang, 2009. "Mispricing and the cross-section of stock returns," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 32(4), pages 317-349, May.
    2. Jun Pan & Allen M. Poteshman, 2006. "The Information in Option Volume for Future Stock Prices," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(3), pages 871-908.
    3. So, Raymond W & Tse, Yiuman, 2001. "A Note on International Portfolio Diversification with Short Selling," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 311-321, June.
    4. Jonathan M. Karpoff & Xiaoxia Lou, 2010. "Short Sellers and Financial Misconduct," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(5), pages 1879-1913, October.
    5. Honghui Chen & Vijay Singal, 2003. "Role of Speculative Short Sales in Price Formation: The Case of the Weekend Effect," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(2), pages 685-705, April.
    6. 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.
    7. Michael J. Brennan & Ashley W. Wang, 2010. "The Mispricing Return Premium," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(9), pages 3437-3468.
    8. Bernard, Victor L. & Thomas, Jacob K., 1990. "Evidence that stock prices do not fully reflect the implications of current earnings for future earnings," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 305-340, December.
    9. Tarun Chordia & Richard Roll & Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, 2001. "Market Liquidity and Trading Activity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 501-530, April.
    10. Bessembinder, Hendrik, 2003. "Issues in assessing trade execution costs," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 233-257, May.
    11. 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.
    12. 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.
    13. repec:bla:jfinan:v:58:y:2003:i:2:p:685-706 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Ball, R & Brown, P, 1968. "Empirical Evaluation Of Accounting Income Numbers," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(2), pages 159-178.
    15. Schultz, Paul & Shive, Sophie, 2010. "Mispricing of dual-class shares: Profit opportunities, arbitrage, and trading," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(3), pages 524-549, December.
    16. 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.
    17. Khil, Jaeuk & Lee, Bong-Soo, 2002. "A Time-Series Model of Stock Returns with a Positive Short-Term Correlation and a Negative Long-Term Correlation," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 18(4), pages 381-404, June.
    18. Ellis, Katrina & Michaely, Roni & O'Hara, Maureen, 2000. "The Accuracy of Trade Classification Rules: Evidence from Nasdaq," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 35(4), pages 529-551, December.
    19. John Y. Campbell, Robert J. Shiller, 1988. "The Dividend-Price Ratio and Expectations of Future Dividends and Discount Factors," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 1(3), pages 195-228.
    20. David Hirshleifer & Siew Hong Teoh & Jeff Jiewei Yu, 2011. "Short Arbitrage, Return Asymmetry, and the Accrual Anomaly," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(7), pages 2429-2461.
    21. Rhodes-Kropf, Matthew & Robinson, David T. & Viswanathan, S., 2005. "Valuation waves and merger activity: The empirical evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 561-603, September.
    22. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:4:p:1845-1876 is not listed on IDEAS
    23. 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.
    24. Hasbrouck, Joel, 1993. "Assessing the Quality of a Security Market: A New Approach to Transaction-Cost Measurement," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(1), pages 191-212.
    25. Peterson, Mark & Sirri, Erik, 2003. "Evaluation of the biases in execution cost estimation using trade and quote data," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 259-280, May.
    26. John Y. Campbell & Tuomo Vuolteenaho, 2004. "Bad Beta, Good Beta," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1249-1275, December.
    27. Chakrabarty, Bidisha & Moulton, Pamela C., 2012. "Earnings announcements and attention constraints: The role of market design," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 612-634.
    28. Asher Curtis & Neil L. Fargher, 2014. "Does Short Selling Amplify Price Declines or Align Stocks with Their Fundamental Values?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(9), pages 2324-2340, September.
    29. 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.
    30. Wu, Chunchi & Li, Qiang & Weii, K C John, 1996. "Incomplete-Information Capital Market Equilibrium with Heterogeneous Expectations and Short Sale Restrictions," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 119-136, September.
    31. Goyenko, Ruslan Y. & Holden, Craig W. & Trzcinka, Charles A., 2009. "Do liquidity measures measure liquidity?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(2), pages 153-181, May.
    32. Edward Sun & Timm Kruse & Min-Teh Yu, 2014. "High frequency trading, liquidity, and execution cost," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 223(1), pages 403-432, December.
    33. Boehmer, Ekkehart & Huszar, Zsuzsa R. & Jordan, Bradford D., 2010. "The good news in short interest," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 80-97, April.
    34. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:2:p:431-465 is not listed on IDEAS
    35. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:3:p:1235-1258 is not listed on IDEAS
    36. 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.
    37. Tyler R. Henry & Jennifer L. Koski, 2010. "Short Selling Around Seasoned Equity Offerings," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(12), pages 4389-4418, December.
    38. Hendershott, Terrence & Moulton, Pamela C., 2011. "Automation, speed, and stock market quality: The NYSE's Hybrid," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 568-604, November.
    39. 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.
    40. Chan, Louis K C & Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Lakonishok, Josef, 1996. "Momentum Strategies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(5), pages 1681-1713, December.
    41. Poterba, James M. & Summers, Lawrence H., 1988. "Mean reversion in stock prices : Evidence and Implications," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 27-59, October.
    42. Tarun Chordia, 2005. "An Empirical Analysis of Stock and Bond Market Liquidity," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(1), pages 85-129.
    43. Lee, Charles M C & Ready, Mark J, 1991. "Inferring Trade Direction from Intraday Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(2), pages 733-746, June.
    44. Bart Frijns & Qiang Lai & Alireza Tourani-Rad, 2014. "Institutional Trading and Stock Returns: Evidence from China," Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies (RPBFMP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 17(01), pages 1-26.
    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. Xiaoming Zhang & Chunyan Wei & Stefano Zedda, 2019. "Analysis of China Commercial Banks’ Systemic Risk Sustainability through the Leave-One-Out Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-15, December.
    2. Jorida Papakroni, 2018. "The dispersion anomaly and analyst recommendations," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 50(3), pages 861-896, April.
    3. In-Mu Haw & Wenming Wang & Wenlan Zhang & Xu Zhang, 2022. "Capturing the straw in the wind: do short sellers trade on customer information?," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 58(4), pages 1363-1394, May.

    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. 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).
    3. Hanauer, Matthias X. & Lesnevski, Pavel & Smajlbegovic, Esad, 2023. "Surprise in short interest," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    4. 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.
    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. Callen, Jeffrey L. & Fang, Xiaohua, 2015. "Short interest and stock price crash risk," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 181-194.
    7. Lee, Eunju & Piqueira, Natalia, 2017. "Short selling around the 52-week and historical highs," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 75-101.
    8. Wang, Xue & Yan, Xuemin (Sterling) & Zheng, Lingling, 2020. "Shorting flows, public disclosure, and market efficiency," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(1), pages 191-212.
    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. 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.
    11. 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.
    12. Kahraman, Bige & Pachare, Salil, 2018. "Show us your shorts!," CEPR Discussion Papers 12658, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Mazouz, Khelifa & Wu, Yuliang, 2022. "Why do firm fundamentals predict returns? Evidence from short selling activity," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    14. Hu, Ting & Chi, Yanzhe, 2019. "Can short selling activity predict the future returns of non-shortable peer firms?," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 165-185.
    15. 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.
    16. 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.
    17. Xufeng Liu & Die Wan, 2022. "Does short‐selling affect mutual fund shareholdings? Evidence from China," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(S1), pages 1887-1923, April.
    18. Feng, Xunan & Chan, Kam C., 2016. "Information advantage, short sales, and stock returns: Evidence from short selling reform in China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 131-142.
    19. Liu, Tingting & Wu, Juan (Julie), 2014. "Merger arbitrage short selling and price pressure," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 36-54.
    20. Wang, Yuchen & Wang, Xiaoming, 2023. "Economic policy uncertainty and information intermediary: The case of short seller," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Short selling; Mispricing; Fundamental value; Market quality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

    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:kap:rqfnac:v:47:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1007_s11156-015-0521-5. 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://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.