Evidence that Analyst Following and Institutional Ownership Accelerate the Pricing of Future Earnings

Abstract

This paper presents evidence that prices of firms followed by sell-side analysts and favored by institutional investors incorporate future earnings earlier than prices of other firms. We conduct two sets of empirical tests: the first examines coefficients from regressions of returns on lead, contemporaneous, and lag earnings changes; the second compares the timing of monthly abnormal returns from earnings-based zero-investment portfolios. In both sets of tests, the results for analysts and institutions are incremental to each other. In addition, neither the analyst price lead nor the institutional price lead is due to price leads increasing with firm size.