I examine the role of sell-side security analysts in financial markets. The first essay addresses the stylized fact that investors' reaction to stock recommendations is often incomplete so that there is a predictable post-recommendation drift. I investigate whether investor inattention contributes to this drift by using turnover as a proxy for attention. I find that the recommendation drift of firms with low prior turnover is more than double in magnitude compared to that of firms with high prior turnover. Volume reactions around the recommendation show that investors fail to react promptly to recommendations issued on low attention stocks. Together, the evidence suggests that investor inattention is a plausible explanation for investors’ underreaction to stock recommendations.
The second essay studies conflict of interests in analyst research. Analyst research is alleged to be biased because analysts’ employers underwrite securities for the firms covered. I argue that this analyst affiliation bias should be strongest for firms with a desire to over-inflate stock prices. Using stock recommendations data, I find that the analyst affiliation bias is on average pervasive across all firms in the bull-market years of 1994-2000. In the regulatory reform years of 2001-2006, only poorly governed firms, firms whose CEO wealth is highly sensitive to stock price, and negative prior return firms continue to exhibit the affiliation bias while the bias mostly disappears for all other firms. Examining the market’s reaction around stock recommendations shows that the market does not sufficiently discount the fact that affiliated analyst optimism is more serious for some firms.
The third essay investigates the market’s response to trends and reversals in earnings surprises where earnings surprises are defined as firms’ reported earnings less analysts’ consensus forecasts. Trends are defined as consecutive same-signed earnings surprises while reversals occur when the sign of the most recent surprise differs from the prior surprises. I find significantly stronger return drift following trends than reversals. In comparison to reversals, trends are associated with greater predictability in subsequent analyst forecast revisions. These results are inconsistent with representativeness and conservatism causing return drift and could be consistent with the gambler’s fallacy in Rabin (2002).