I investigate whether firms with higher abnormal trading volume (ATV) around earnings announcements (EAs) outperform those with lower ATV over the short and long terms following the EA. In addition, I address whether any positive relation between ATV around EAs and future firm performance is weaker for firms with a higher proportion of shares held by sophisticated investors. Consistent with theories that attribute ATV around public announcements primarily to differing investor interpretations of the news and that link differential interpretation to future returns, I find that, for several years after an EA, firms in the highest decile of ATV significantly outperform those in the lowest decile. Further, I find that ATV and earnings surprises explain future returns incremental to the three Fama and French (1993) and momentum risk-factors. Next, consistent with the proportion of ATV driven by lack of consensus regarding the price being lower when the presence of rational investors is higher, I document that the level of investor sophistication-a proxy for investor rationality-attenuates the positive relation between ATV and future returns. Taken together, my study lends support to and links two streams of theories from financial economics, and demonstrates that trading volume reactions to EAs provide information about future returns and firm financial performance that cannot be deduced from the price reactions or the magnitudes of earnings surprises. My study also documents that the positive relation between ATV and future firm performance is sensitive to the level of security holdings of sophisticated investors.

The increase in investor diversity over the last 35-40 years (ICI 2014) prompted us to revisit trading volume reactions to earnings announcements and how these reactions vary with firm size. This increase in investor diversity would likely lead to an increase in differences in the precision of pre-announcement information and potentially increase the importance of earnings announcements to resolve investor disagreement. We find that the nature of trading volume reactions to earnings announcements has fundamentally changed over the 35-year time period 1977-2011. There has been a dramatic increase in the magnitude and frequency of volume reactions to earnings announcements over this time period, and this effect is more pronounced in large firms where volume reactions were previously infrequent. The increase in large firms' trading volume reactions is so pronounced that the relation between volume reactions and firm size has turned positive in recent years, thereby reversing Bamber's (1986, 1987) previously documented negative relation. We provide intuition and empirical evidence that our results are attributable to the resolution of differential prior precision among an increasingly diverse set of investors following large firms.

We document a change in the nature of trading volume reactions to quarterly earnings announcements over the time period 1976-2005. Consistent with Landsman and Maydew (2002), we find that the magnitude of abnormal trading volume around quarterly earnings announcements has increased over time and that this increase is greater for large firms than small firms. We show, however, that this trend has reversed the negative relation between firm size and trading volume documented by Bamber (1987). Applying insights from recent trading volume theory, we predict and provide evidence that the increase in abnormal trading volume across time and firm size is due to increases in pre-announcement private information. Specifically, we show that the component of abnormal trading volume associated with price change, which theory suggests reflects pre-announcement private information, is increasing across time and firm size. Our results suggest that investors are motivated to acquire private information prior to earnings announcements about firms that have relatively high quality information environments. Thus, our results have implications for policies aimed at reducing information asymmetry between investors by increasing public disclosure.

Profit from earnings announcements, by taking targeted, short-term option positions explicitly timed to exploit them! Based on rigorous research and huge data sets, this book identifies the specific earnings-announcement trades most likely to yield profits, and teaches how to make these trades—in plain English, with real examples! Trading on Corporate Earnings News is the first practical, hands-on guide to profiting from earnings announcements. Writing for investors and traders at all experience levels, the authors show how to take targeted, short-term option positions that are explicitly timed to exploit the information in companies’ quarterly earnings announcements. They first present powerful findings of cutting-edge studies that have examined market reactions to quarterly earnings announcements, regularities of earnings surprises, and option trading around corporate events. Drawing on enormous data sets, they identify the types of earnings-announcement trades most likely to yield profits, based on the predictable impacts of variables such as firm size, visibility, past performance, analyst coverage, forecast dispersion, volatility, and the impact of restructurings and acquisitions. Next, they provide real examples of individual stocks–and, in some cases, conduct large sample tests–to guide investors in taking advantage of these documented regularities. Finally, they discuss crucial nuances and pitfalls that can powerfully impact performance.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2008 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1.1, EBS European Business School gGmbH (Finance), language: English, abstract: Many authors have already studied about stock price reactions after earnings announcements yet, which is because of the importance of earnings announcements, in particular quarterly earnings announcements, for many investors. However, all major studies concerning this topic deal with long-term scenarios, the stock’s price performance is measured for a time period of at least three quarters. Due to the fact that there are many investors, especially institutional investors such as hedge funds that trade stocks much more frequently, the existing studies are not relevant for them. This paper studies stock price reactions around quarterly earnings announcements for companies listed in Deutscher Aktienindex (DAX) or Midcap DAX (MDAX) with respect to changes of the company’s full-year outlook and of earnings surprise regarding analyst consensus forecast within ten days before and after the announcement date. Hence, this paper aims to analyse short-term reaction to quarterly earnings announcements, which are of relevance for all investors, whose investment strategy is, at least partially, focussing on the short-term performance. The main target group of this analysis are therefore hedge funds and investors that run short-term strategies. Due to the fact that the widespread Event Study Methodology is focused on the long-term, it is irrelevant for this analysis.

Earnings press releases are the primary mechanism by which managers announce quarterly earnings and make other concurrent disclosures to investors and other stakeholders. A largely unexplored element of earnings press releases is the language that managers use throughout the press release, which we argue provides a unifying framework for these disclosures and an opportunity for managers to signal, both directly and more subtly, their expectations about future performance. We analyze the full texts of approximately 23,000 earnings press releases issued between 1998 and 2003 and examine whether the language used in these earnings press releases provides a signal about expected future firm performance and whether the market responds to this signal. Using categories derived from linguistic theory, we count words characterized as optimistic and pessimistic and construct a measure of managers' net optimistic language for each earnings press release. We find that this measure is positively associated with future ROA and generates a significant market response in a short window around the earnings announcement date. We include in our models the earnings surprise as well as other quantifiable, concurrent disclosures identified in prior research as associated with the market's reaction to earnings press releases. Our results support the premise that earnings press release language provides a signal regarding managers' future earnings expectations to the market and that the market responds to this signal. We interpret our evidence to suggest that managers use language in earnings press releases to communicate credible information about expected future firm performance.