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More studies have investigated the relation between option measures and stock returns during scheduled corporate events. This study adds to the literature and investigates the informational role of options concerning stock returns following unscheduled corporate news events. The authors focus on individual analysts' recommendation changes rather than consensus revisions, as the recommendation consensus might discard a large amount of potentially valuable information in the aggregation process.

Based on the econometric model, the authors follow Bakshi et al. (2003) to construct the model-free option implied measures. The authors further decompose the implied option variance into upside and downside components. In such a way, the different informational roles of call and put options can be distinguished. A variety of regression analyses are conducted to examine the predictive power of option implied measures, and the ordered probit model is used to test the tipping hypothesis of analyst recommendations.

This study’s results show that the option market impounds the “valuable” firm-specific news; thus, the pre-event option market is strongly related to stock returns around recommendations even though recommendation changes are largely “unscheduled”. At the same time, these results suggest that upside (good) and downside (bad) implied volatilities contain distinctive information on subsequent stock returns.

This study provides new evidence that an increase in upside (downside) volatility around analyst recommendation changes would increase the probability that analysts upgrade (downgrade) the stock. The findings provide implications for investors and risk managers in making investment decisions.

This study aims to examine whether the publication of analyst recommendations has reaction in the Russian stock market. This study also aims to determine the other factors that influence the reaction.

Event study analysis (ESA) and regression models are used in this study.

The study finds that Russian stock market significantly reacts to analyst recommendations publications. Then study deeply investigates about the influence of other factors on the Russian market when an analyst's recommendations are published such as changes in recommendation levels, companies' size and general economic situation. The analysis done in the context of three types of recommendations: “buy,” “hold” and “sell.” The study finds that the market reacts not only to separate forecasts and subsequent recommendations, but also to the changes in recommendations' levels as well. Interestingly, the study finds that the impact of crises is not found to be a significant factor in the context of the Russian market.

Analysts used to spend much more resources on conducting a fundamental analysis than ordinary investors do. Therefore, they usually possess valuable privileged information that is supposed to influence stock prices when published. However, the present study argues that the direction, extent and period of a reaction of an analyst's recommendations are highly complicated and depend on what factors are under consideration in a particular research. Very often, the authors who dedicate their papers to develop and study markets choose a couple of (or even one) factors and delve into them. Nevertheless, to the author's best knowledge, few frequently cited and well-conducted research focused on such an emerging market as the Russian one. Thus, it seems reasonable that there is a gap in the literature that needs to be filled while considering other important factors. The study findings have a significant investment policy content.

In several senses, the present study is unique. First, it investigates whether analyst recommendations sufficiently affect the Russian stock market; second, it determines whether the significant factors such as changes in recommendation levels, companies' size and general economic situation have influence on the reaction. Finally, the study discusses about whether there is an impact of crises in the present study findings.

This study aims to evaluate the short-term impact of brokerage analysts’ recommendations on abnormal returns using a sample selected from the S&P BSE 100 in the Indian context. The efficient market hypothesis, specifically, its semi-strong form, is tested for “Buy” stock recommendations published in the electronic version of Business Standard. The crucial issue is, are there any abnormal returns that can be earned following a recommendation? If so, how quickly do prices incorporate the information value of these recommendations? It tests the impact of analyst recommendations on average abnormal returns (AARs) and standardized abnormal returns (SRs) to determine their statistical significance.

Using a sample of stock recommendations published in the e-version of Business Standard, the event study methodology is used to determine whether AARs and SRs are significantly different from zero for the duration of the event window by using several significance tests.

The findings indicate a marginal opportunity for profit in the short term, restricted to the event day. However, the effect does not persist, i.e. the market is efficient in its semi-strong form implying that investors cannot consistently earn abnormal returns by following analysts’ recommendations. Post the event date, the market reaction to analyst recommendations becomes positive, however, insignificant until the ninth day after the recommendation providing support to the underreaction hypothesis given by Shliefer (2000) and post-recommendation price drift documented by Womack (1996). The study contributes by using different statistical tests to determine the significance of returns.

There are important implications for traders, investors and portfolio managers. The speed with which market prices incorporate publicly available information is useful in formulating trading strategies. However, stock characteristics such as market capitalization, volatility and level of analyst coverage need to be incorporated while making investment decisions.

The study contributes by using different statistical tests to determine the significance of returns.

The recommendation of the analyst report is not only limited to a small number of ratings, but also biased toward a buy opinion with the absence of sell opinion. As an alternative to this, this paper aims to extract analysts' textual opinions embedded in the report body through text analysis and examine the profitability of investment strategies. Analyst opinion about a firm is measured by calculating the frequency of positive and negative words in the report text through the Korean sentiment lexicon for finance (KOSELF). To verify the usefulness of textual opinions, the author constructs a calendar-time based portfolios by the analysts' textual opinion variable of each stock. When opinion level is used, investment strategy has no significant hedged portfolio return. However, hedged portfolio constructed by opinion change shows significant return of 0.117% per day (2.57% per month). In addition, the hedged return increases to 0.163% per day (3.59% per month) when the opening price is used instead of closing price. This study show that the analysts’ opinion extracted from text analysis contains more detailed spectrum than recommendation and investment strategies using them give significant returns.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate what and how intellectual capital information (ICI) conveyed through analyst reports varies by the type of stock recommendation. It draws on the theory of impression management.

Content analysis is used to investigate ICI in the full text of sell‐side analysts’ initiating coverage reports. It categorises ICI by type and three qualitative characteristics: evidence; time orientation; and news‐tenor. It explores how the extent, types and qualitative characteristics of ICI found in analyst reports vary by the type of stock recommendation accompanying the analyst report.

Given the conflicting interests facing analysts and relative amenability of ICI, it was found that analysts use ICI to manage perceptions. In particular, analysts attempt to use ICI in their reports to subdue the pessimism associated with an unfavourable recommendation, increase credibility of favourable recommendations and distinguish sell from hold recommendations.

The paper contributes to the literature on impression management by extending its application to the study of sell‐side analysts’ decision processes and it alerts future researchers to the wider role played by ICI beyond its use in generation of forecasts and valuations. The paper's findings have implications for consumers of analyst reports, as the level of negativity/positivity of forecasts and recommendations may be altered as a result of the semantics associated with ICI.

This paper explores analysts’ use of ICI conditional on the type of stock recommendation accompanying the report. Findings are explained using the theory of impression management.

The purpose of this paper is to document performance of analysts’ recommendations in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region during the period between 1999 and 2010.

This paper uses post-announcement market-adjusted returns as a measure of performance and computes returns for different holding periods. Significant positive (negative) returns following buy (sell) recommendation will indicate value relevance of these recommendations.

The authors show that analysts’ buy recommendations have significant information in them, while their sell recommendations contain no significant information. Significant positive returns are reported following analysts’ buy recommendations and insignificant returns following their sell recommendations. Furthermore, it is also shown that these results hold true only in markets where institutions are relatively strong (common law countries and countries with stronger property rights) and for firms which have lower agency conflicts (firms that pay dividends and have concentrated ownership). For markets where institutions are relatively weak and for firms which have greater agency conflicts, these results show no value in analysts’ recommendations.

These results imply that investors should not blindly follow analyst recommendations while making their investment decisions in the MENA region.

This paper makes detailed analysis of analyst recommendations in previously unexplored MENA region. Some conditions under which analyst recommendation have no value and some conditions under which they have partial value have also been identified.

The authors examine how financial analysts respond to online investor sentiment when updating recommendations for specific stocks in South Africa. The aim is to establish whether online sentiment contains significant information that can influence analyst recommendations. The authors follow up the above by examining when online investor sentiment is most associated with analyst recommendation changes.

For online investor sentiment proxies, the authors make use of the social media sentiment and news media sentiment scores provided by Bloomberg Inc. The sample size includes all companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange All Share Index. The study uses traditional ordinary least squares to examine the relation at the mean and quantile regression to identify the scope of the relationship across the distribution of the dependent variable.

The authors find evidence that pre-event news sentiment significantly influences analyst recommendation changes while no significant relationship is found with the Twitter sentiment. Further analysis shows that news sentiment is more influential when the recommendation changes are moderate (in the middle of the conditional distribution of the recommendation changes).

The study is the one of the first to examine the association between online sentiment and analyst recommendation changes in an emerging market using high frequency data. The authors also make a direct comparison between social media sentiment and news media sentiment, some of the most used contemporary investor sentiment proxies.

This paper investigates individual investors' responses to stock underpricing and how their trading decisions are affected by analysts' forecasts and recommendations.

This empirical study uses mutual fund fire sales as an exogenous source that causes stock underpricing and analysts' forecasts and recommendations as price-correcting information. The study further uses regression analysis to examine individual investors' responses to fire sales and how their responses vary with price-correcting information.

The authors first show that individual investors respond to mutual fund fire sales by significantly decreasing net buys, and this effect appears to be prolonged. Next, the authors find that the decrease of net buys diminishes following analysts' price-correcting earnings forecast revisions and stock recommendation changes. Hence, the authors suggest that individual investors are not “wise” enough to recognize flow-driven underpricing; however, this response is weakened by analysts' price-correcting information.

There is an ongoing debate in the literature about whether individual investors should be portrayed as unsophisticated traders or informed traders who can predict future returns. The authors study a unique information event and provide new evidence related to both perspectives. Overall, our evidence suggests that the “unsophisticated traders” perspective is predominant, whereas a better information environment significantly reduces individual investors' information disadvantage. This finding could be of interest to both academic researchers and regulators.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the interplay between institutional investors' ownership (IIO), politically connected firms (POC) and sell-side analysts' stock recommendations (ASR).

This study employs ordinary least square (OLS) regression to test the hypotheses. The sample comprises 280 Malaysian public listed companies (PLC) and encompasses the 2008–2013 time frame (a total of 735 observations).

The results show a significant and positive link between IIO and ASR. In addition, a negative association is found between POC and ASR. Moreover, the POC weakens the positive relationship between the IIO and ASR.

One important implication of this study is that political involvement in corporate decisions is a prominent characteristic of the Malaysian market, which can significantly affect the information environment and analysts' reactions.

The findings of this study provide useful empirical guidance to the regulators in evaluating the efficacy of recent regulatory initiatives. Investors may also gain useful insights from this study, specifically in recognising the crucial monitoring role played by institutional investors and how politically patronised firms are viewed unfavourably by equity analysts.

This study is one of the first to examine the joint influence of IIO and POC, on ASR.

To show how conflicts of interest and disingenuous investment research at the end of the 1990s stock market bubble occurred in Australia as well as the USA and Western Europe.

Reviews the role of research analysts in major securities firms and conflicts of interest such as analyzing and evaluating a company for investment purposes, while seeking the investment banking business of the same company. Provides a case study of how an investment banking firm dealt with a provider of internet search services in both a research and an investment banking capacity. Investigates and evaluates the regulations and guidelines developed and introduced by the Australian regulatory bodies (Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC)) and the Australian Government to deal with potential conflicts of interest that could affect the objectivity and independence of analyst research.

There were examples of conflicts of interest and fraudulent stock recommendations in Australia that rivaled the worst examples in the USA and Western Europe.

A reminder of fraudulent investment research practices during the stock market bubble and the potential for conflicts of interest between research and investment banking functions within the same firm.