Does Information Intensity Matter for Stock Returns? Evidence from Form 8-K Filings

This paper identifies an important source of variation in U.S. firms’ material information flows: their Form 8-K filing frequency. Exploiting cross-sectional variation in this novel proxy for information intensity, this paper finds that firms with higher information intensity experience lower future returns and lower future volatilities. The marginal return impact is higher at low levels of information intensity and high levels of prior volatility. On average, an information-intensity-based long-short portfolio generates a return spread of 4.3% per year. After adjusting for the Fama–French three factors and the momentum factor, the abnormal return remains 4.4% per year. These novel findings suggest that, because of the dynamic nature of information arrival, the frequency/quantity of information is an important source affecting the information environment and stock returns of public companies. These findings are consistent with the predictions of a broad class of noisy rational expectations equilibrium models and estimation risk models, and they highlight the importance of learning in financial markets with incomplete information.