Publications
Publications
- September 2013
- Accounting Review
Do Short Sellers Front-Run Insider Sales?
By: Mozaffar N. Khan and Hai Lu
Abstract
We study the behavior of short sellers as informed market participants and examine potential sources of their information. Using a newly available dataset with high-frequency short sales data, we find evidence of significant increases in short sales immediately prior to large insider sales, but not prior to small insider sales. We examine a number of explanations that the increase in short sales is driven by public information, either about the firm or about the impending insider sale. The evidence is inconsistent with these explanations, but is consistent with front-running facilitated by leaked information. The front-running appears to be concentrated in firms with poor accounting quality, suggesting that information about a large insider sale reinforces short sellers' adverse opinion about firm value when accounting quality is poor.
Keywords
Citation
Khan, Mozaffar N., and Hai Lu. "Do Short Sellers Front-Run Insider Sales?" Accounting Review 88, no. 5 (September 2013): 1743–1768.