Stock Option Exercise, Earnings Management, and Abnormal Stock Returns

Author(s):  
Irfan Safdar
Author(s):  
Alireza Daneshfar ◽  
Mohammad J. Saei

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">This study examines the association between stock prices and discretionary accruals in different stock market cycles and presents evidence about the discrepancy in prior research that investors were able to identify earnings management in some cases, but not in some other cases. We argue that investors&rsquo; reaction to the true nature of EPS changes may be different in different market cycles. We suggests that investors pay less attention to the nature of EPS changes in an optimistic cycle, and are more critical in neutral and pessimistic cycles. Therefore, investors are more likely to detect and count for any earnings management in a neutral or pessimistic cycle than in an optimistic cycle. Using the U.S. quarterly data from July 01, 1997 to June 29, 2001, three market cycles were identified: optimistic, neutral and pessimistic. The test results indicated that the association between discretionary accruals and abnormal stock returns were insignificant in the neutral market cycle, significant and positive in the optimistic cycle and significant and negative in the pessimistic cycle. These findings indicate that investors tend to ignore the income-increasing effect of discretionary accruals on EPS changes in an optimistic market. The finding suggests that a more delegate and technical analysis of EPS changes is required when earnings information is used for stock pricing. It also suggests that a consideration of market cycle effect on investors&rsquo; use of EPS could improve the earnings-based ratio analysis. The findings propose that researchers interested in investigating the association between stock prices and earnings management should control for the effect of the market cycle during which their samples are drawn. </span></span></p>


Author(s):  
Alireza Daneshfar ◽  
Daniel Zeghal ◽  
Mohammad J. Saei

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">This study examines the association between stock prices and discretionary accruals in different stock market cycles. The study presents evidence for a discrepancy in prior research and shows that investors are able to identify earnings management only in some cases. We argue that investors&rsquo; reaction to the true nature of EPS varies in different market cycles. We suggests that investors pay less attention to the nature of EPS changes in an optimistic cycles, and are more critical in neutral or pessimistic cycles. Therefore, investors are more likely to detect and count for any earnings management in the neutral or pessimistic cycle than in the optimistic cycle. The test results indicated that the association between discretionary accruals and abnormal stock returns were insignificant in the neutral market cycle, significant and positive in the optimistic cycle and significant and negative in the pessimistic cycle. These findings indicate that investors tend to ignore the income-increasing effect of discretionary accruals on EPS changes in an optimistic market. The findings suggest that researchers investigating the association between stock prices and earnings management should control for the type of the market cycle from which their samples are drawn. </span></span></p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hussein Hasan ◽  
Hudaa Nadhim Khalbas ◽  
Farqad Mohammed Bakr AL Saadi

The aim of this research is to study the market reaction to the change of the managing director and how this change affects the abnormal returns of the shares. The research is based on the information published by the companies listed on the Iraq Stock Exchange, and 35 companies were selected for the period from 2015 to 2019. The results of the hypothesis test for this study show that there is a negative and significant relationship between the change of the managing director and abnormal stock returns. On the other hand, investors undervalue stock prices when changing CEOs. As a result, the stock returns are less than expected.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Yvonne Nagel ◽  
Stephan Fuhrmann ◽  
Thomas W. Guenther

Purpose The usefulness of risk disclosures (RDs) to support equity investors’ investment decisions is highly discussed. As prior research criticizes the extensive aggregation of risk information in existing empirical research, this paper aims to provide an attempt to identify disaggregated risk information associated with cumulative abnormal stock returns (CARs). Design/methodology/approach The sample consists of 2,558 RDs of companies listed in the S&P 500 index. The RDs were filed within 10 K filings between 2011 and 2017. First, this study automatically extracted 35,685 key phrases that occurred in a maximum of 1.5% of the RDs. Second, this study performed stepwise regressions of these key phrases and identified 67 (78) key phrases that show positive (negative) associations with CARs. Findings The paper finds that investors seem to value most the more common key phrases just below the 1.5% rarest key phrase threshold and business-related key phrases from RDs. Furthermore, investors seem to perceive key phrases that contain words indicating uncertainty (impacts) as a negative (positive) rather than a positive (negative) signal. Research limitations/implications The research approach faces limitations mainly due to the selection of the included key phrases, the focus on CARs and the methodological choice of the stepwise regression analysis. Originality/value The study reveals the potential for companies to increase the information value of their RDs for equity investors by providing tailored information within RDs instead of universal phrases. In addition, the research indicates that the tailored RDs encouraged by the SEC contain relevant information for investors. Furthermore, the results may guide the attention of equity investors to relevant text passages whose deeper analysis might be useful with regard to investors’ capital market decisions.


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