Who Underreacts to Cash-Flow News? Evidence from Trading between Individuals and Institutions

Abstract

A large body of literature suggests that firm-level stock prices "underreact" to news about future cash flows. We estimate a vector autoregession to examine the joint behavior of returns, cash-flow news, and trading between individuals and institutions. Our main finding is that institutions buy shares from individuals in response to good cash-flow news, thus exploiting the underreaction phenomenon. Institutions are not simply following price momentum strategies: When price goes up in the absence of positive cash-flow news, institutions sell shares to individuals. The response of institutional ownership to cash-flow news is weaker for small stocks. Since small stocks also exhibit the strongest underreaction patterns, this finding is consistent with institutions facing exogenous constraints in trading small stocks.

Keywords: Underreaction, Overreaction, Cash-flow news, Expected returns, Individuals, Institutions, Trading

JEL Classification: G12, G14, M41