When Short Sellers and Corporate Insiders Agree on Stock Pricing

Abstract

The authors propose a strategy that utilizes trading information of both short sellers and corporate insiders. They find that the strategy earns statistically significant and economically meaningful risk-adjusted returns for at least one year, which stems mainly from the information asymmetry between informed and uninformed investors. Based on this finding, they then show that the strategy works best in high information asymmetry environments and during economic expansion periods. The results provide important implications for investment practitioners. Investors interested in high information asymmetry firms can refer to the information on short interest and insider demand when making investment decisions.

Keywords: short interest; insider trading; strategy; information asymmetry