"Evening News: Informativeness from the time-of-day insider trades are disclosed"
Using Form 4 timestamps scraped from EDGAR, we examine whether the intraday timing of insider trading disclosure signals trade informativeness. Supporting a strategic disclosure interpretation, we document that sales are significantly more often disclosed in the evening, particularly among higher level insiders. Evening disclosed trades better predict earnings surprises and stock returns. Evening disclosure is particularly effective at identifying informed selling, with the signal’s value decaying over time. Leveraging insider trading coverage by Dow Jones and the signatory of the filing, we propose both improvements in information dissemination and corporate governance as channels which mitigate the value of strategic disclosure.
Presented at theFinancial Management Association Annual Meeting (2025); Southwestern Finance Association Annual Meeting (2025); University of Kansas (2024)
"Inferring corporate insiders’ beliefs about firm value from tax withholding elections" (with Tom Kubick and Jide Wintoki)
Exploiting tax withholding elections around equity compensation transactions, we find that transactions involving withholding for taxes predict annualized next month returns that are 4% – 8% lower than other transactions. The informativeness of tax withholding elections is stronger in the presence of greater information asymmetry and following personal tax rate changes. Tax withholding elections are more likely to occur in blackout trading periods than sales and are more predictive of earnings announcement surprises. Insiders eventually sued by the SEC change their tax withholding elections more frequently, and the informativeness of withholding is lower in the year of an SEC enforcement action.
Revise & Resubmit at The Journal of Accounting Research
Presented at the University of North Carolina Tax Symposium (2025); Midwest Finance Association Annual Meeting (2025); Eastern Finance Association Annual Meeting (2025); Southwestern Finance Association Annual Meeting (2025); Southern Finance Association Annual Meeting (2024); Silicon Prairie Finance Conference (2024)
University of Kansas, School of Business Best Paper Award (2024)
"AI and the Transmission of Economic Expectations?" (with Will Bazley, Yosef Bonaparte, and Carina Cuculiza)
We experimentally examine whether artificial intelligence-generated information about aggregate risk influences households’ economic expectations and behavior. Randomly assigning recession forecasts from artificial intelligence (AI) models and professionals, we exogenously shift individuals’ beliefs. Participants update their recession expectations in response to AI forecasts, placing similar weight on them as on professional forecasts. Households extrapolate their AI-influenced recession beliefs to other dimensions of their macroeconomic and microeconomic outlooks. These belief updates also affect their consumption allocation decisions. Our findings indicate that households perceive AI-generated macroeconomic information signals as credible and behaviorally relevant.
"Corporate Insiders as Value Investors" (with Felix Meschke and Jide Wintoki)
Insider trades are often predictive of a firm's future outcomes, largely due to insiders having access to privileged firm information. We propose a novel classification strategy to distinguish trades that are more or less likely to convey significant, unpriced information about the firm. Utilizing a recent asset pricing method developed by Bartram and Grinblatt (2018), our approach compares insider trading decisions to those an external value investor might make. We find that insider trades and share repurchases that align with this value investor’s recommendation do not predict future firm performance, while those in the opposite direction predict earnings surprises and reflect changes in Return on Assets (ROA). Our classification of insider transactions can be easily applied to a broad range of public companies and allows market participants to extract less noisy information about firms’ quality from insider trades.
Presented at the Financial Management Association Annual Meeting (2024); University of Kansas; Financial Management Association Annual Meeting (2023)
University of Kansas John O. Tollefson Best Paper Award (2024)
"Trade as I say, Not as I do: Management Rhetoric and Insider Stock Sales" (with Justin Balthrop and Jonathan Bitting)
In recent years, company filings have featured a notable rise in anti-short selling rhetoric. This paper investigates whether changes in such language help explain fluctuations in abnormal insider equity sales. Despite disclosures suggesting an artificially suppressed stock price, we estimate a 70% increase in the probability of an insider sale following the use of certain buzzwords in public company filings, a result that contrasts with established theory. These insider sales often precede significant stock price declines and correlate with future accounting restatements, suggesting potential private information and timing effects. Additionally, we provide evidence that this rhetoric influences retail investors, who engage in increased discussion and purchases of a firm's stock after it employs anti-short selling language.
Presented at the Financial Management Association Annual Meeting (2025)