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The persistent effects of a false news shock

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  • Carlos Carvalho
  • Nicholas Klagge
  • Emanuel Moench

Abstract

In September 2008, a six-year-old article about the 2002 bankruptcy of United Airlines' parent company resurfaced on the Internet and was mistakenly believed to be reporting a new bankruptcy filing by the company. This episode caused the parent company's stock price to drop by as much as 76 percent in just a few minutes, before NASDAQ halted trading. After the "news" had been identified as false, the stock price rebounded, but still ended the day 11.2 percent below the previous close. We use this natural experiment and a simple asset-pricing model to study the aftermath of this false news shock. We find that, after three trading sessions, the company's stock was still trading below the two-standard-deviation confidence band implied by the model and that it returned to within one standard deviation only during the sixth trading session. On the seventh day after the episode, the stock was trading at exactly the level predicted by the asset-pricing model. We also document that the false news shock had a persistent effect on the stock prices of other major airline companies.

Suggested Citation

  • Carlos Carvalho & Nicholas Klagge & Emanuel Moench, 2009. "The persistent effects of a false news shock," Staff Reports 374, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednsr:374
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    Cited by:

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    4. Akyildirim, Erdinc & Corbet, Shaen & O'Connell, John F. & Sensoy, Ahmet, 2021. "The influence of aviation disasters on engine manufacturers: An analysis of financial and reputational contagion risks," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    5. Zhang, Hongwei & Hong, Huojun & Guo, Yaoqi & Yang, Cai, 2022. "Information spillover effects from media coverage to the crude oil, gold, and Bitcoin markets during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from the time and frequency domains," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 267-285.
    6. Germano, Fabrizio & Sobbrio, Francesco, 2020. "Opinion dynamics via search engines (and other algorithmic gatekeepers)," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    7. Noha Alnazzawi & Najlaa Alsaedi & Fahad Alharbi & Najla Alaswad, 2022. "Using Social Media to Detect Fake News Information Related to Product Marketing: The FakeAds Corpus," Data, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-13, April.
    8. Akyildirim, Erdinc & Corbet, Shaen & Efthymiou, Marina & Guiomard, Cathal & O'Connell, John F. & Sensoy, Ahmet, 2020. "The financial market effects of international aviation disasters," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    9. Fedyk, Anastassia & Hodson, James, 2023. "When can the market identify old news?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 149(1), pages 92-113.
    10. Ambrocio, Gene & Hasan, Iftekhar, 2022. "Belief polarization and Covid-19," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 10/2022, Bank of Finland.
    11. Peter Koudijs, 2013. "The boats that did not sail: Asset Price Volatility and Market Efficiency in a Natural Experiment," NBER Working Papers 18831, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Jost, Peter J. & Pünder, Johanna & Schulze-Lohoff, Isabell, 2020. "Fake news - Does perception matter more than the truth?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    13. Saif Ullah & Nadia Massoud & Barry Scholnick, 2014. "The Impact of Fraudulent False Information on Equity Values," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 120(2), pages 219-235, March.
    14. Li, Qian & Wang, Jiamin & Bao, Liang, 2018. "Do institutions trade ahead of false news? Evidence from an emerging market," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 98-113.
    15. Shi, Qi & Ye, Yong & Zhao, Gang, 2023. "Speculation and clarification announcements on stock price fluctuations: Why are rumours plausible and hard to clarify?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 473-487.
    16. Román Alejandro Mendoza Urdiales & Andrés García-Medina & José Antonio Nuñez Mora, 2021. "Measuring information flux between social media and stock prices with Transfer Entropy," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(9), pages 1-19, September.
    17. Aleksanyan, Mark & Danbolt, Jo & Siganos, Antonios & Wu, Betty (H.T.), 2022. "I only fear when I hear: How media affects insider trading in takeover targets," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 318-342.
    18. Ben R. Marshall & Nuttawat Visaltanachoti & Genevieve Cooper, 2014. "Sell the rumour, buy the fact?," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 54(1), pages 237-249, March.

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    Information theory; Stock - Prices;

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