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Days To Cover And Stock Returns, Harrison G. Hong, Frank Weikai Li, Sophie X. Ni, Jose A. Scheinkman, Philip Yan
Days To Cover And Stock Returns, Harrison G. Hong, Frank Weikai Li, Sophie X. Ni, Jose A. Scheinkman, Philip Yan
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
A crowded trade emerges when speculators' positions are large relative to the asset's liquidity, making exit difficult. We study this problem of recent regulatory concern by focusing on short-selling. We show that days to cover (DTC), the ratio of short interest to trading volume, measures the costliness of exiting crowded trades. Crowding is an important concern as short-sellers avoid illiquid stocks, which we establish using an instrumental-variables strategy involving staggered stock market decimalization reforms. Arbitrageurs require a premium to enter into such trades as a strategy shorting high DTC stocks and buying low DTC stocks generates a 1.2% monthly return. …