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Short Sellers And Insider Trading Profitability: A Natural Experiment, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng, Ting Luo, Heng Yue
Short Sellers And Insider Trading Profitability: A Natural Experiment, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng, Ting Luo, Heng Yue
Research Collection School Of Accountancy
We examine the impact of short sellers on insider trading profitability using a natural experiment of a pilot program which relaxed short-selling constraints for randomly selected pilot stocks. We find that pilot firms experienced a significant decrease in insider trading profitability during the pilot program. The results are more pronounced for the pilot firms with poor information quality, and for the pilot firms without corporate restrictions on insider trading. Our evidence suggests that short sellers serve an important market disciplinary role by reducing insider trading profitability.
Insider Sales Under The Threat Of Short Sellers: New Hypothesis And New Tests, Kemin Wang, Rencheng Wang, K. C. John Wei, Bohui Zhang, Yi Zhou
Insider Sales Under The Threat Of Short Sellers: New Hypothesis And New Tests, Kemin Wang, Rencheng Wang, K. C. John Wei, Bohui Zhang, Yi Zhou
Research Collection School Of Accountancy
Using the Regulation SHO program as a quasi-experiment, we document that the threat of short selling has a negative effect on the volume of opportunistic insider selling and a positive effect on its profitability for each transaction. These effects are stronger among firms with higher litigation risk, greater media coverage, and executives who have more of their firms' stock-related holdings. We further find robust evidence when we extend the analyses to short selling deregulations in the Chinese and Hong Kong stock exchanges. Overall, our findings suggest that short sellers play a disciplinary role in opportunistic insider selling.