Many research papers have investigated capital market reactions to corporate earnings announcements. When a company announces its earnings for the year (or half year), what is the impact on the share prices. And these studies are referred to as event studies. Event studies examines the impact on the share prices around the time when accounting or earnings information are released. However, the challenging part to it is to ensure that there are no other events happening around the same time which may also have an impact on the share price. (Deegan, 2014)
Modern finance theory has proved that there is a relationship between accounting earnings and share prices, the study has proven that the higher the expected future earnings, the higher the
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It suggested that people use information cues to make decisions about future events. The issue of how and whether information cues are used in decision making is very important to accounting professions. The model was being used as an analytical framework and the basis for most judgement studies: prediction and evaluation (Slideshare.net) In 1970, Paul and Virgil found that earnings and sales information were always obtained by financial analysts to predict financial returns on particular shares. This investigation was further agreed by Mear and Firth in 1987. Furthermore, there was also studies on addressing whether decision makers will make different decisions if relevant information are provided with the within the financial statements. A loan officer can make different judgments about an entity’s ability to repay a loan depending on if the accounting professions include footnote that provides details on liability account on the statement. Another disclosure issues that Stallman (1969) found that providing information about industry segments can reduce decision maker’s reliance on past share prices when they make choices to select particular securities. Therefore, knowing what and how information will be used by readers will help the accounting professions to determine what and how to present relevant information in a financial report, and this will …show more content…
There are three main heuristics that are often employed in decision making. The first one is Representativeness: People’s judgement will be determined by similarities. The bias for this implication is that individuals typically ignore the base rate of the population and source reliability, and it often overstates the number of cases categorised together. The second one is Availability: it asses the probability judgement of an event which can easily come to mind. For example, the probability might be overstated on a plane crash as a result of remembering a number of highly publicised crashes events. In addition, Moser (1989) found that assessments on the probability of a company’s future earnings would influenced by the order of the information provided to the subject. The third one is Anchoring and Adjustment: the probability judgements regarding the occurrence of events. Studies have found that auditors will place more weight on the evidence received most
One of the first published works on this topic is titled, Availability: A Heuristic for Judging Frequency and Probability. Written by Kahneman and his long-time colleague Amos Tversky, this article highlights their initial conclusions about errors in our decision making. This paper explored a judgmental heuristic where a person assesses the frequency of classes or probability of events by way of availability (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). In other words, how easy relevant instances to come to mind. They suggested a large contributor is our reliance on the availability heuristic, which is judging a situation based off of examples from a similar situation (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). For example, assume you enjoy shopping at Costco and you have gone to the same Costco once a week for the last 10 years. Therefore, you are extremely familiar with the general layout of that specific store. However, you are on vacation and visit the Costco in your vacation spot for the first time. You arrive and, in a search for produce, you walk to the location it would be in the store you are familiar with. In the new store it may or may not be in the same
Investors in the stock market judge earnings growth against two figures: the average industry earnings and the estimated earnings for the company. If analysts predict earnings to be above the industry average, a company’s stock price will usually rise. If companies report earnings higher than predicted, stock price will typically rise even more.
Price to Earnings ratio (P/E ratio) also called earnings multiple of a stock refers to the measure of the price paid for a share compared to the net income or earnings of a company. The P/E ratio reflects the capital structure of the company. A higher P/E ratio means the investors are paying more for each unit of net income; therefore, the stock is more expensive in relation to one with a lower P/E ratio. The P/E ratio expressed in years, shows the number of years of earnings which would be required to pay back purchase price ignoring inflation. The P/E ratio can also show current investors demand for a company share. The reciprocal of the P/E ratio is the earnings yield. Companies with high P/E ratios are more likely to be considered risky investments than those with a low P/E ratio. If the price of a share rises and the EPS remains constant then the P/E multiple will rise, if the share price falls with a constant EPS the P/E falls. Companies that are not profitable or those companies which have negative earnings don’t have a P/E ratio.
According to the conceptual framework, the potential users of financial statements are investors, creditors, suppliers, employees, customers, governments and agencies, and the general public (Financial Accounting Standards Board, 2006). The primary users are investors, creditors, and those who advise them. It goes on to define the criteria that make up each potential user, as well as, the limitations of financial reporting. The FASB explicitly states that financial reporting is “but one source of information needed by those who make investment, credit, and similar resource allocation decisions. Users also need to consider pertinent information from other sources, and be aware of the characteristics and limitations of the information in them” (Financial Accounting Standards Board, 2006). With this in mind, it is still particularly difficult to determine whom the financials should be catered towards and what level of prudence is necessary for quality judgment.
Efficient Market Theory suggests that in every financial market the flow of information is very efficient and this is reflected in the price of the share at which it is being traded. As we know that the price of the share floating in a market is not only dependent upon the company name printed and the information about the company in the balance sheet and other financial statements available to the public (Baghestani, H., 2009). In fact government and political stability, inflation, interest rates, treasury bills and several more factors determine the price at which any particular share is sold or bought at. Information about all these factors is always available to every investor in the market, be it the buyer or the seller.
...ccurately reflects the intrinsic value of the company from the shareholders point of view and their expectations of future earnings.
Opposition Viewed through a Lens In his 1936 essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Walter Benjamin seemingly draws a parallel with Platonic thought in his discussion of artistic reproduction's destruction of aura. Benjamin argues that the mechanical reproducibility of an image, with regards specifically toward the development of a photograph or film, causes the unique authenticity of the original image to deteriorate. According to Benjamin, a mechanical reproduction of a work cannot claim to be the actual work because it lacks the former's "presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be" (Benjamin, 3). Because the reproduction lacks the original's uniqueness, a mechanically reproduced
If company is to perform well and earnings show growth consistently, investors see it as a potential stock, market price will rise regardless of good or bad
Based on this model the author determined that if the rate of return is lower than the company’s discount rate the share price decreases and if it is higher the share price rises. The second model used was the Walter model. According to this model if the Internal rate of return is greater than cost of capital the share price increases and if it is lower it declines. The model also revealed that an insolvent company’s debt to equity ratio is at optimum when it is equal to one. The ratio is not important for an ordinary company as the rate of return equals the cost of capital. The optimum debt to equity ratio for a developing company will be zero. Based on these findings the author determines that factors such as conditions of the industry, demand and supply, domestic, global markets, technology, company life, competition need to be accounted for when valuing stocks. The result of the study suggests that manager’s success in stock valuation depends on the correct understanding of these influential resources and acclaim managers should increase the value of their company’s stock by proper use and combination of these factors. Managers should therefore increase stock values through investing companies, institutional investors, bonus shares and models such as Gordon and
They found that managers are in a stronger position to make judgement calls regarding the future financial decisions of a firm, based on the fact that an investors’ assessment of value associated with share price is vulnerable to a variety of volatile factors. Specifically, the inability to access inside information hinders investors from conducting accurate security valuations included in the share price. Furthermore, because of informational disadvantage representing higher risk, equity investors will demand for a “risk premium” result in higher return making it more expensive than other source of finance and therefore less attractive for firms as a finance instrument (Hawawini and Viallet,
A crucial reason in favour of mental accounting and overconfidence is decision efficiency. Real-life investing scenario changes every moment Time-consuming and systematic thinking process seldom is allowed during the intense decision-making (Stewart Jr et al., 1999, Busenitz and Barney, 1997). Additionally, the ‘small world’ used by the economic theory, which only applied to strict condition, is not necessarily applicable in the practical investment decision. As the assumption in those analysis approach may not conform with real life well and for most of times, cognitive heuristics is more suitable for the uncertainty(Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier, 2011). However, there is also a few argument against them, for it may hinder people from examining their investment choice thoroughly. Research shows that they did not perceive themselves as risk taker, but in fact, they are more likely to take relatively low return alternatives as ‘opportunities’, indicating that they are risk-taking to a great extent(Palich and Ray Bagby, 1995). As a result of the illusion created by such factors, decision makers tend to be narrow-minded in composing strategies and unable to bring enough information into thought(Schwenk, 1988). It was demonstrated by several researches that decisions made by means of biases and heuristics impose
Chapter 3 was another interesting chapter that simply covered common biases of decision making thru three heuristic methods. The availability, representative and confirmation heuristic. The chapter covered twelve common biases associated with one’s decision based given situation.
As human beings, we often use representativeness heuristic to make judgments about other individuals or events based on little information because it is easier and quicker to make an assumption when we face uncertainty. However, those judgments may not always be correct. This study is trying to investigate whether or not the use of representativeness heuristics was present during the research. The authors depict that people use little or biased information to make decisions or assumptions, nonetheless these may or may not be true. For instance, someone might make a remark about a random individual that is competitive and disciplined with muscular and built characteristics and assume he or
Lin, J. L. (2010). Event study analysis (lecturer note of Research Methods in Finance 2010)
In other words we often rely on how easy it is to think of examples when making a decision or judgement.When you try to make a decision, a number of related events or situations might immediately pop up in your mind. As a result, you might judge that those events are more frequent and than others. When you are trying to make a decision, you might remember a number of relevant instances. Since these are more readily available in the memory, you will likely judge these outcomes as being more common or frequently occurring. For example, if you are thinking of flying and suddenly think of a number of recent airline accidents, you might feel like air travel is too dangerous and decide to travel by car instead of going by air. Because those examples of air disasters come to your mind so easily, the availability heuristic leads you to think that plane crashes are more common than they really are. You give greater credence to this information and tend to overestimate the probability and likelihood of similar things happening in the