Russell Jame

Company Name Fluency, Investor Recognition, and Firm Value

Research from psychology suggests that people evaluate fluent stimuli more favorably than similar information that is harder to process. Consistent with fluency affecting investment decisions, we find that companies with short, easy to pronounce names have higher breadth of ownership, greater share turnover, lower transaction price impacts, and higher valuation ratios. Corporate name changes increase fluency on average, and fluency-improving name changes are associated with increases in breadth of ownership, liquidity, and firm value. Name fluency also affects other investment decisions, with fluently named closed-end funds trading at smaller discounts and fluent mutual funds attracting greater fund flows.

Broker-Hosted Investor Conferences

Broker-hosted investor conferences are invitation-only events that allow select clients to interact with firm management. We find that firms that attend investor conferences tend to have high intangible assets, consistent with greater demand for management access among hard-to-value firms. Using a sample of institutional transactions, we find that investor conferences have a significant effect on broker revenues in the days following the event, and the effect is larger when conference disclosures are more informative, which suggests investors reward brokers for facilitating informative disclosures. Our results indicate that brokerage research extends beyond the distribution of published reports and establish investor conferences as a distinct research service.

The Value of Crowdsourced Earnings Forecasts

Crowdsourcing—when a task normally performed by employees is outsourced to a large network of people via an open call—is making inroads into the investment research industry. We shed light on this new phenomenon by examining the value of crowdsourced earnings forecasts. Our sample includes 51,012 forecasts provided by Estimize, an open platform that solicits and reports forecasts from over 3,000 contributors. We find that Estimize forecasts are incrementally useful in forecasting earnings and measuring the markets expectations of earnings. Our results are stronger when the number of Estimize contributors is larger, consistent with the benefits of crowdsourcing increasing with the size of the crowd. Finally, Estimize consensus revisions generate significant two-day size-adjusted returns. The combined evidence suggests that crowdsourced forecasts are a useful supplementary source of information in capital markets.Recent research has begun to question the importance of forecasts to sell-side analysts. Prior research established the co-existence of longer horizon optimism and short-term pessimism in sell-side forecasts. These factors motivate us to explore a new phenomenon – crowdsourcing, as an alternative source of forecasts. We obtain revenue and earnings forecasts from estimize, an entity which crowdsources and distributes these forecasts online. We find the estimize forecasts are, on average, as accurate as the sell-side. Further, although our results show the estimize forecasts to be relatively more optimistic, on average, and particularly in short horizons, our analysis suggest it is at least partially explained by the extreme pessimism of the sell-side’s final forecasts. Our market test confirms support for the superiority of estimize’s short-term forecasts. Our results provide support for the value of crowdsourced forecasts. JEL Classification: G28; G29; M41; M43

How Skilled are Hedge Funds? Evidence from Their Daily Trades

We examine the trading skill of hedge funds using transaction-level data. After accounting for trading commissions, we find no evidence that the trades of the average hedge fund outperform across holding periods ranging from one month to one year. However, bootstrap simulations indicate that the trading skill of the top 10% of hedge funds cannot be explained by luck. Similarly, we find that the performance of top hedge funds persists and much of this persistence stems from intra-quarter trading skill. Skilled hedge funds tend to be short-term contrarians and their profits are largely concentrated in smaller, more illiquid stocks. Our findings suggest that while the average hedge fund is unskilled, there are a small minority of skilled funds who persistently create value through liquidity provision.

Liquidity Provision and the Cross-Section of Hedge Fund Returns

I investigate whether hedge funds that supply liquidity earn superior returns. Using transaction data, I find that hedge funds following short-term contrarian strategies (i.e., liquidity-suppliers) earn significantly higher returns on their equity trades and holdings. Similarly, using commercial databases, I find that hedge funds with greater exposure to a liquidity-provision factor earn significantly higher excess returns and Sharpe ratios. The superior performance of liquidity-supplying hedge funds arises from strategies that are more complex than mechanical short-term reversal strategies. For example, among stocks with similar past returns, liquidity-supplying funds are more likely to trade against stocks heavily traded by constrained mutual funds and less likely to trade against stocks heavily traded from unconstrained mutual funds. The outperformance of liquidity-supplying funds is also concentrated in periods of low funding liquidity, suggesting that less-binding financial constraints contribute to their superior returns.

It Pays to Be Extraverted: Executive Personality and Career Outcomes

Psychology research identifies extraversion as the personality trait most closely associated with leadership emergence. We examine executive extraversion, as measured by speech patterns during conference calls, and find extraverts experience significant career benefits. Controlling for executive and firm characteristics, including firm fixed effects, we find that extraverted CEOs and CFOs earn 6-9 percent higher salaries. Moreover, extraverted CEOs are less likely to experience job turnover, have longer tenures, serve on more outside boards, and hold directorships at larger firms, and extraverted CFOs are more likely to be promoted to CEO. Executive extraversion is also linked with firm outcomes. Analyzing a sample of manager transitions, we find that increases in CEO extraversion are associated with improvements in investor recognition and sales growth. Further, extraverted CEOs are associated with higher acquisition announcement returns. Our findings highlight the role of personality traits in explaining executive career and firm outcomes.

Pension Fund Trading and Stock Returns

Managers investing on behalf of pension plan sponsors (i.e. pension funds) face greater fiduciary responsibilities and more stringent investment mandates than mutual funds. These constraints may reduce the information content of pension fund trading. Consistent with this view, we find that the stocks most heavily bought by pension funds subsequently significantly underperform the stocks most heavily sold by pension funds. We find no such pattern for mutual funds. Moreover, we identify a subset of managers who trade on behalf of both pension plan sponsors and other clients (e.g. retail investors), and we find that their trading on behalf of plan sponsors is significantly less informative than their trading for other clients.

Pension Fund Herding and Stock Returns

Pension funds have greater fiduciary responsibilities than mutual funds and are also more severely punished for poor performance. Thus pension funds may find it particularly risky to deviate from peers. Consistent with this view, we find that pension funds herd and that their herding negatively forecasts stock returns. In contrast, we find no evidence that herding by mutual funds or investment advisors leads to price reversals. Moreover, we identify managers who trade on behalf of both pension plan sponsors and other clients and find their trading on behalf of plan sponsors is significantly less informative than their other trading.

Does Crowdsourced Research Discipline Sell-Side Analysts?

We examine whether increased competition stemming from technological innovation disciplines sell-side analysts. We document a decline in short-term forecast bias for firms added to Estimize, an open platform that crowdsources short-term earnings forecasts, relative to matched control firms; this decline is greater when (1) existing sell-side competition is smaller, (2) earnings uncertainty is higher, and (3) Estimize coverage is less biased and more accurate. We also document an increase in short-term forecast accuracy and representativeness. Finally, we find no change in bias for longer-horizon forecasts or recommendations, suggesting competition from Estimize rather than broad economic forces drives our results.

Search Costs and Revealed Preferences for Idiosyncratic Volatility

We use capital flows into and out of mutual funds to infer investors’ preferences towards idiosyncratic volatility (IV). We find investors are more likely to both purchase and redeem funds with high IV. This pattern is concentrated among funds in the top quintile of IV, and it is stronger among retail investors, non-incumbent investors, and funds with lower visibility. Our results suggest that search costs contribute to investors’ preference for IV when making trading decisions. Our findings that IV can result in increased visibility and liquidity may also help explain the puzzling negative relationship between IV and equity returns.