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To Trade or Not to Trade: The Strategic Trading of Insiders around News Announcements

Author

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  • Adriana Korczak
  • Piotr Korczak
  • Meziane Lasfer

Abstract

We argue that insiders' decisions to trade in short windows before news announcements are likely to result from a trade-off between the incentives to capitalize on the foreknowledge of the disclosure and the risk of regulatory scrutiny and lost reputation. We provide evidence that insider buying is driven by the trade-off, while selling is primarily influenced by the deterring effect of the regulatory and reputation risks. We show that insiders strategically choose the amount of shares bought ahead of good news announcements. They increase their purchases as the price impact of the news goes up, but we find that the amount of shares purchased levels off as the news becomes extreme. In contrast, we find that the probability of insider selling significantly decreases with the price impact of the forthcoming bad news. To further support our arguments on the importance of incentives and disincentives to trade, we show that the strategic trading is mainly observed in the most price-sensitive groups of news announcements, it is clearly pronounced for best informed executives (CEOs), and that trading patterns change with changes in regulations, and insiders with higher reputation at risk limit their trading ahead of bad news.

Suggested Citation

  • Adriana Korczak & Piotr Korczak & Meziane Lasfer, 2009. "To Trade or Not to Trade: The Strategic Trading of Insiders around News Announcements," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 09/613, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    • Handle: RePEc:bri:uobdis:09/613
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Lambe, Brendan J., 2016. "An unreliable canary: Insider trading, the cash flow hypothesis and the financial crisis," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 151-158.
    2. Madura, Jeff & Marciniak, Marek, 2014. "Bidder country characteristics and informed trading in U.S. targets," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 256-284.
    3. Borisova, Ginka & Yadav, Pradeep K., 2015. "Government ownership, informed trading, and private information," CFR Working Papers 15-13, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    4. Michael Buchner & Tobias A. Jopp, 2019. "Full steam ahead: Insider knowledge, stock trading and the nationalization of the railways in Prussia around 1879," Working Papers 0151, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    5. Iuliia Brushko & Stephen P. Ferris & Jan Hanousek & Jiri Tresl, 2020. "Intra-Industry Transfer of Information Inferred From Trading Volume," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp663, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    6. Fabio Braggion & Lyndon Moore, 2013. "How insiders traded before rules," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(4), pages 565-584, June.
    7. Borisova, Ginka & Yadav, Pradeep K., 2015. "Government ownership, informed trading, and private information," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 196-211.
    8. Ian Tonks, 2010. "Discussion of To Trade or Not To Trade: The Strategic Trading of Insiders around News Announcements," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(3‐4), pages 408-421, April.
    9. Semih Tartaroglu & Michael Imhof, 2017. "Insider trading and response to earnings announcements: the impact of accelerated disclosure requirements," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 315-336, August.
    10. Millicent Chang & Xiaolin Qian & Jing Yu & Yvonne See, 2017. "Does director trading change the information environment?," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 42(2), pages 205-229, May.
    11. Rachel E. Gordon, 2021. "Are outside director trades informative? Evidence from acquiring firms," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 21(2), pages 447-477, June.
    12. Hsuan-Chi Chen & Sheng-Syan Chen & Chia-Wei Huang & John D. Schatzberg, 2014. "Insider Trading and Firm Performance Following Open Market Share Repurchase Announcements," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(1-2), pages 156-184, January.
    13. Jonathan A. Batten & Igor Lončarski & Peter G. Szilagyi, 2018. "When Kamay Met Hill: Organisational Ethics in Practice," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 147(4), pages 779-792, February.
    14. Liyi Zheng, 2020. "The type of corporate announcements and its implication on trading behaviour," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 60(S1), pages 629-659, April.
    15. Hsieh, Jim & Ng, Lilian & Wang, Qinghai, 2023. "How informative are insider trades and analyst recommendations?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    insider trading; private information; information disclosure; regulation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • K22 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Business and Securities Law

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