IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jfinec/v143y2022i3p1162-1184.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Price revelation from insider trading: Evidence from hacked earnings news

Author

Listed:
  • Akey, Pat
  • Grégoire, Vincent
  • Martineau, Charles

Abstract

From 2010 to 2015, a group of traders illegally accessed earnings information before their public release by hacking several newswire services. We use this scheme as a natural experiment to investigate how informed investors select among private signals and how efficiently financial markets incorporate private information contained in trades into prices. We construct a measure of qualitative information using machine learning and find that the hackers traded on both qualitative and quantitative signals. The hackers’ trading caused 15% more of the earnings news to be incorporated in prices before their public release. Liquidity providers responded to the hackers’ trades by widening spreads.

Suggested Citation

  • Akey, Pat & Grégoire, Vincent & Martineau, Charles, 2022. "Price revelation from insider trading: Evidence from hacked earnings news," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(3), pages 1162-1184.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:143:y:2022:i:3:p:1162-1184
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2021.12.006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304405X21005237
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jfineco.2021.12.006?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. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Meulbroek, Lisa K, 1992. "An Empirical Analysis of Illegal Insider Trading," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(5), pages 1661-1699, December.
    4. Vincent Bogousslavsky, 2016. "Infrequent Rebalancing, Return Autocorrelation, and Seasonality," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(6), pages 2967-3006, December.
    5. Hendershott, Terrence & Livdan, Dmitry & Schürhoff, Norman, 2015. "Are institutions informed about news?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 249-287.
    6. Steven L. Heston & Robert A. Korajczyk & Ronnie Sadka, 2010. "Intraday Patterns in the Cross‐section of Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(4), pages 1369-1407, August.
    7. Ron Kaniel & Shuming Liu & Gideon Saar & Sheridan Titman, 2012. "Individual Investor Trading and Return Patterns around Earnings Announcements," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(2), pages 639-680, April.
    8. Pierre Collin-Dufresne & Vyacheslav Fos, 2015. "Do Prices Reveal the Presence of Informed Trading?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(4), pages 1555-1582, August.
    9. Peter Cziraki & Jasmin Gider, 2021. "The Dollar Profits to Insider Trading [Information networks: evidence from illegal insider trading tips]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 25(5), pages 1547-1580.
    10. Pierre Collin‐Dufresne & Vyacheslav Fos, 2016. "Insider Trading, Stochastic Liquidity, and Equilibrium Prices," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 1441-1475, July.
    11. 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.
    12. Kamiya, Shinichi & Kang, Jun-Koo & Kim, Jungmin & Milidonis, Andreas & Stulz, René M., 2021. "Risk management, firm reputation, and the impact of successful cyberattacks on target firms," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(3), pages 719-749.
    13. Peter Koudijs, 2015. "Those Who Know Most: Insider Trading in Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 123(6), pages 1356-1409.
    14. 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.
    15. Garfinkel, Jon A., 1997. "New evidence on the effects of federal regulations on insider trading: The Insider Trading and Securities Fraud Enforcement Act (ITSFEA)," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 89-111, April.
    16. Collin-Dufresne, Pierre & Fos, Vyacheslav & Muravyev, Dmitry, 2021. "Informed Trading in the Stock Market and Option-Price Discovery," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 56(6), pages 1945-1984, September.
    17. José María Liberti, 2018. "Initiative, Incentives, and Soft Information," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(8), pages 3714-3734, August.
    18. McInish, Thomas H & Wood, Robert A, 1992. "An Analysis of Intraday Patterns in Bid/Ask Spreads for NYSE Stocks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 753-764, June.
    19. Jonathan L. Rogers & Douglas J. Skinner & Sarah L. C. Zechman, 2017. "Run EDGAR Run: SEC Dissemination in a High‐Frequency World," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 459-505, May.
    20. Blankespoor, Elizabeth & deHaan, Ed & Marinovic, Iván, 2020. "Disclosure processing costs, investors’ information choice, and equity market outcomes: A review," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2).
    21. Jose M. Marin & Jacques P. Olivier, 2008. "The Dog That Did Not Bark: Insider Trading and Crashes," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(5), pages 2429-2476, October.
    22. Baruch, Shmuel & Panayides, Marios & Venkataraman, Kumar, 2017. "Informed trading and price discovery before corporate events," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(3), pages 561-588.
    23. Snehal Banerjee & Ilan Kremer, 2010. "Disagreement and Learning: Dynamic Patterns of Trade," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(4), pages 1269-1302, August.
    24. Marcin Kacperczyk & Emiliano S Pagnotta, 2019. "Chasing Private Information," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(12), pages 4997-5047.
    25. Ho, Thomas & Stoll, Hans R., 1981. "Optimal dealer pricing under transactions and return uncertainty," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 47-73, March.
    26. 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.
    27. Joshua Livnat & Richard R. Mendenhall, 2006. "Comparing the Post–Earnings Announcement Drift for Surprises Calculated from Analyst and Time Series Forecasts," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(1), pages 177-205, March.
    28. Vincent Van Kervel & Albert J. Menkveld, 2019. "High‐Frequency Trading around Large Institutional Orders," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 74(3), pages 1091-1137, June.
    29. Samuel M. Hartzmark & Kelly Shue, 2018. "A Tough Act to Follow: Contrast Effects in Financial Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(4), pages 1567-1613, August.
    30. 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.
    31. Mohammadreza Bolandnazar & Robert J. Jackson & Wei Jiang & Joshua Mitts, 2020. "Trading Against the Random Expiration of Private Information: A Natural Experiment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(1), pages 5-44, February.
    32. Menkveld, Albert J., 2013. "High frequency trading and the new market makers," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 712-740.
    33. Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham & Beverly Hirtle & David O. Lucca, 2016. "Parsing the content of bank supervision," Staff Reports 770, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    34. Patrick Augustin & Menachem Brenner & Marti G. Subrahmanyam, 2019. "Informed Options Trading Prior to Takeover Announcements: Insider Trading?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(12), pages 5697-5720, December.
    35. Gerard Hoberg & Gordon Phillips, 2010. "Product Market Synergies and Competition in Mergers and Acquisitions: A Text-Based Analysis," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(10), pages 3773-3811, October.
    36. Pierre Collin-Dufresne & Vyacheslav Fos, 2013. "Do Prices Reveal the Presence of Informed Trading?," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 13-69, Swiss Finance Institute, revised Sep 2015.
    37. Tim Loughran & Bill Mcdonald, 2011. "When Is a Liability Not a Liability? Textual Analysis, Dictionaries, and 10‐Ks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(1), pages 35-65, February.
    38. 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.
    39. Bruno Biais & Pierre Hillion & Chester Spatt, 1999. "Price Discovery and Learning during the Preopening Period in the Paris Bourse," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(6), pages 1218-1248, December.
    40. Wood, Robert A & McInish, Thomas H & Ord, J Keith, 1985. "An Investigation of Transactions Data for NYSE Stocks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(3), pages 723-739, July.
    41. Pierre Collin‐Dufresne & Vyacheslav Fos, 2016. "Insider Trading, Stochastic Liquidity, and Equilibrium Prices," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84(4), pages 1441-1475, July.
    42. Gustafson, Matthew T. & Ivanov, Ivan T. & Meisenzahl, Ralf R., 2021. "Bank monitoring: Evidence from syndicated loans," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(2), pages 452-477.
    43. Copeland, Thomas E & Galai, Dan, 1983. "Information Effects on the Bid-Ask Spread," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 38(5), pages 1457-1469, December.
    44. Glosten, Lawrence R. & Milgrom, Paul R., 1985. "Bid, ask and transaction prices in a specialist market with heterogeneously informed traders," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 71-100, March.
    45. Hu, Grace Xing & Pan, Jun & Wang, Jiang, 2017. "Early peek advantage? Efficient price discovery with tiered information disclosure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(2), pages 399-421.
    46. Kim, O & Verrecchia, Re, 1991. "Trading Volume And Price Reactions To Public Announcements," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 302-321.
    47. Easley, David & O'Hara, Maureen, 1987. "Price, trade size, and information in securities markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 69-90, September.
    48. Stefano Dellavigna & Joshua M. Pollet, 2009. "Investor Inattention and Friday Earnings Announcements," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(2), pages 709-749, April.
    49. Kyle, Albert S, 1985. "Continuous Auctions and Insider Trading," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1315-1335, November.
    50. Casey Dougal & Joseph Engelberg & Diego García & Christopher A. Parsons, 2012. "Journalists and the Stock Market," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(3), pages 639-679.
    51. Easley, David & O'Hara, Maureen, 1992. "Time and the Process of Security Price Adjustment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 576-605, June.
    52. José María Liberti & Mitchell A Petersen, 2019. "Information: Hard and Soft," The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 8(1), pages 1-41.
    53. Martineau, Charles, 2021. "Rest in Peace Post-Earnings Announcement Drift," SocArXiv z7k3p, Center for Open Science.
    54. Paul C. Tetlock, 2007. "Giving Content to Investor Sentiment: The Role of Media in the Stock Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(3), pages 1139-1168, June.
    55. Jeffrey T. Doyle & Russell J. Lundholm & Mark T. Soliman, 2006. "The Extreme Future Stock Returns Following I/B/E/S Earnings Surprises," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(5), pages 849-887, December.
    56. Hui Zou & Trevor Hastie, 2005. "Addendum: Regularization and variable selection via the elastic net," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 67(5), pages 768-768, November.
    57. Jacob Boudoukh & Ronen Feldman & Shimon Kogan & Matthew Richardson, 2019. "Information, Trading, and Volatility: Evidence from Firm-Specific News," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(3), pages 992-1033.
    58. Hui Zou & Trevor Hastie, 2005. "Regularization and variable selection via the elastic net," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 67(2), pages 301-320, April.
    59. Ahern, Kenneth R., 2017. "Information networks: Evidence from illegal insider trading tips," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(1), pages 26-47.
    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. Fang Liang & Lingshan Du & Zhuo Huang, 2023. "Option pricing with overnight and intraday volatility," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(11), pages 1576-1614, November.
    2. Liu, Xiaojun & Wang, Li & Dai, Yunhao, 2023. "Capital market liberalization and opportunistic insider sales: Evidence from China," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    3. Betzer, André & Gider, Jasmin & Limbach, Peter, 2022. "Do financial advisors matter for M&A pre-announcement returns?," CFR Working Papers 22-03, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).

    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. Akey, Pat & Grégoire, Vincent & Martineau, Charles, 2021. "Price Revelation from Insider Trading: Evidence from Hacked Earnings News," SocArXiv qe6tu, Center for Open Science.
    2. Baruch, Shmuel & Panayides, Marios & Venkataraman, Kumar, 2017. "Informed trading and price discovery before corporate events," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(3), pages 561-588.
    3. Rzayev, Khaladdin & Ibikunle, Gbenga, 2019. "A state-space modeling of the information content of trading volume," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 46(C).
    4. Martineau, Charles, 2021. "Rest in Peace Post-Earnings Announcement Drift," SocArXiv z7k3p, Center for Open Science.
    5. Corey Garriot & Ryan Riordan, 2020. "Trading on Long-term Information," Staff Working Papers 20-20, Bank of Canada.
    6. Blankespoor, Elizabeth & deHaan, Ed & Marinovic, Iván, 2020. "Disclosure processing costs, investors’ information choice, and equity market outcomes: A review," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2).
    7. Joel Peress & Daniel Schmidt, 2020. "Glued to the TV: Distracted Noise Traders and Stock Market Liquidity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(2), pages 1083-1133, April.
    8. Aziz Simsir, Serif & Simsek, Koray D., 2022. "The market impact of private information before corporate Announcements: Evidence from Turkey," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    9. Ryu, Doojin & Yang, Heejin & Yu, Jinyoung, 2022. "Insider trading and information asymmetry: Evidence from the Korea Exchange," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(PA).
    10. Chakravarty, Sugato & Harris, Fredreck H. deB. & Wood, Roger A., 2001. "Do Bid-Ask Spreads or Bid and Ask Depths Convey New Information First?," Purdue University Economics Working Papers 1149, Purdue University, Department of Economics.
    11. Acheson, Graeme G. & Coyle, Christopher & Turner, John D., 2018. "Prices and informed trading: Evidence from an early stock market," QUCEH Working Paper Series 2018-05, Queen's University Belfast, Queen's University Centre for Economic History.
    12. Péter Kondor & Gábor Pintér, 2022. "Clients' Connections: Measuring the Role of Private Information in Decentralized Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(1), pages 505-544, February.
    13. Jun (Tony) Ruan & Tongshu Ma, 2017. "Bid-Ask Spread, Quoted Depths, and Unexpected Duration Between Trades," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 51(3), pages 385-436, June.
    14. 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.
    15. Tyler R. Henry, 2019. "Security price formation and informed trading with constrained short selling," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 123-151, July.
    16. Vo, Minh T., 2007. "Limit orders and the intraday behavior of market liquidity: Evidence from the Toronto stock exchange," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 379-396, March.
    17. Goodhart, Charles A. E. & O'Hara, Maureen, 1997. "High frequency data in financial markets: Issues and applications," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 4(2-3), pages 73-114, June.
    18. Pascual, Roberto, 1999. "How does liquidity behave? A multidimensional analysis of NYSE stocks," DEE - Working Papers. Business Economics. WB 6433, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía de la Empresa.
    19. Mazza, Paolo, 2015. "Price dynamics and market liquidity: An intraday event study on Euronext," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 139-153.
    20. 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, January-A.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Cyber risks; Earnings announcements; Hard and soft information; Informed trading; Liquidity; Machine learning; Market microstructure; Price discovery;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • 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:eee:jfinec:v:143:y:2022:i:3:p:1162-1184. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505576 .

    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.