Strategic distortions in analyst forecasts in the presence of short-term institutional investors

Pawel Tomasz Bilinski, Douglas Cumming, Lars Helge Hass, Konstantinos Stathopoulos, Martin Walker

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)
44 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

We document that analysts cater to short-term investors by issuing optimistic target prices. Catering dominates among analysts at brokers without an investment banking arm as they face lower reputational cost. The market does not see through the analyst catering activity and their forecasts lead to temporary stock overpricing that short-term institutional investors exploit to offload their holdings to retail traders. We also report evidence consistent with catering brokers being rewarded with more future trades channelled through them. Our study identifies a new source of conflicts of interest in analyst research originating from the ownership composition of a stock.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)305-341
Number of pages37
JournalAccounting and Business Research
Volume49
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 28 Feb 2019

Keywords

  • target prices
  • earnings forecasts
  • strategic distortions
  • short-term investors

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