Abstract
Corporations often transact in their own mispriced stock. This activity, known as equity market timing, can generate substantial profits and increase the long-term stock price. We challenge a closely related popular view that market timing always benefits firm shareholders. Opportunistic financing maneuvers by a firm can negatively affect its uninformed stock owners because of adverse selection and the change in the firm's short-term price, whereas the long-term returns do not accumulate to departing stockholders. The negative effect of market timing on stockholders increases with the share turnover. Furthermore, the effect of timing is asymmetric: shareholders prefer that the firm corrects underpricing rather than overpricing. Our theory can be used to better interpret the observed stock issuance and repurchase activities of firms.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 3542-3560 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | Management Science |
Volume | 66 |
Issue number | 8 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 2020 |
Keywords
- Asymmetric information
- Market timing
- Rational expectations
- Repurchases
- Share issuance
- Share turnover
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Strategy and Management
- Management Science and Operations Research