IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/revfin/v24y2020i6p1203-1235..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What Do Short Sellers Know?

Author

Listed:
  • Ekkehart Boehmer
  • Charles M Jones
  • Juan (Julie) Wu
  • Xiaoyan Zhang

Abstract

Using NYSE short-sale order data, we investigate whether short sellers’ informational advantage is related to firm earnings and analyst-related events. With a novel decomposition method, we find that while these fundamental event days constitute only 12% of sample days, they account for over 24% of the overall underperformance of heavily shorted stocks. Importantly, short sellers use both public news and private information to anticipate news regarding earnings and analysts. Shorting’s predictive ability remains significant after controlling for information in analyst actions and displays no reversal patterns, indicating that short sellers know more than analysts, and the nature of their information is long term.

Suggested Citation

  • Ekkehart Boehmer & Charles M Jones & Juan (Julie) Wu & Xiaoyan Zhang, 2020. "What Do Short Sellers Know?," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 24(6), pages 1203-1235.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:revfin:v:24:y:2020:i:6:p:1203-1235.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rof/rfaa008
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jin, Han & Mazouz, Khelifa & Wu, Yuliang & Xu, Bin, 2023. "Can star analysts make superior coverage decisions in poor information environment?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    2. 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.
    3. Brockman, Paul & Luo, Juan & Xu, Limin, 2020. "The impact of short-selling pressure on corporate employee relations," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    4. Greppmair, Stefan & Jank, Stephan & Saffi, Pedro A. C. & Sturgess, Jason, 2024. "Securities lending and information acquisition," Discussion Papers 08/2024, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    5. 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.
    6. Hanauer, Matthias X. & Lesnevski, Pavel & Smajlbegovic, Esad, 2023. "Surprise in short interest," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    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).
    8. Di Maggio, Marco & Franzoni, Francesco & Massa, Massimo & Tubaldi, Roberto, 2024. "Strategic trading as a response to short sellers," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    9. Hsieh, Jim & Ng, Lilian & Wang, Qinghai, 2023. "How informative are insider trades and analyst recommendations?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    10. Fohlin, Caroline & Lu, Zhikun & Zhou, Nan, 2022. "Short sale bans may improve market quality during crises: New evidence from the 2020 Covid," SAFE Working Paper Series 365, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    11. Greppmair, Stefan & Jank, Stephan & Smajlbegovic, Esad, 2023. "On the importance of fiscal space: Evidence from short sellers during the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    12. David Weinbaum & Andrew Fodor & Dmitriy Muravyev & Martijn Cremers, 2023. "Option Trading Activity, News Releases, and Stock Return Predictability," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(8), pages 4810-4827, August.
    13. Onur Bayar & Yini Liu & Juan Mao, 2023. "Shareholder litigation and short selling ahead of private equity placements," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 58(4), pages 833-858, November.
    14. 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).
    15. Lei Chen & Zhi Jin & Xue Yang, 2023. "Short selling and the independence of business‐related analysts: Evidence from an emerging market," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 63(3), pages 3297-3323, September.
    16. Stivers, Chris & Sun, Licheng & Saha, Sounak, 2024. "Abnormal stock returns and shorting around securities class action lawsuits: The role of pre-filing news releases," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    17. Arseny Gorbenko & Marcin Kacperczyk, 2023. "Short Interest and Aggregate Stock Returns: International Evidence," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 13(4), pages 691-733.
    18. Huang, Lixin & Li, Wei & Wang, Hong & Wu, Liansheng, 2022. "Stock dividend and analyst optimistic bias in earnings forecast," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 643-659.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Short selling; Firm fundamentals news; Private information; Return decomposition; Analysts;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors

    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:oup:revfin:v:24:y:2020:i:6:p:1203-1235.. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eufaaea.html .

    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.