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Why Do Short Sellers Like Qualitative News?

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  • von Beschwitz, Bastian
  • Chuprinin, Oleg
  • Massa, Massimo

Abstract

Short sellers trade more on days with qualitative news, that is, news containing fewer numbers. We show that this behavior is not informationally motivated but can be explained by short sellers exploiting higher liquidity on such days. We document that liquidity and noise trading increase in the presence of qualitative news, enabling short sellers to better disguise their informed trades. Natural experiments support our findings. Qualitative news has a bigger effect on short sellers’ trading after a decrease in liquidity following the stock’s deletion from the Standard & Poor’s 500 index and a smaller effect when investor attention is distracted by the Olympic Games.

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  • von Beschwitz, Bastian & Chuprinin, Oleg & Massa, Massimo, 2017. "Why Do Short Sellers Like Qualitative News?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(2), pages 645-675, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jfinqa:v:52:y:2017:i:02:p:645-675_00
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    Cited by:

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    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. von Beschwitz, Bastian & Massa, Massimo, 2020. "Biased short: Short sellers' disposition effect and limits to arbitrage," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    4. Dmitri Vinogradov & Yousef Makhlouf, 2017. "Signaling Probabilities in Ambiguity: on the impact of vague news," Working Papers 2017_12, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    5. Chen, Shenglan & Chou, Robin K. & Liu, Xiaoling & Wu, Yuhui, 2020. "Deregulation of short-selling constraints and cost of bank loans: Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    6. 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.
    7. Christophe, Stephen E. & Hsieh, Jim & Lee, Hun, 2024. "Reputation and recency: How do aggressive short sellers assess ESG-Related Information?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).

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