Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

An empirical analysis of corporate insiders' trading performance

An empirical analysis of corporate insiders' trading performance Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to conduct an empirical analysis of the trading performance of US corporate insiders. Design/methodology/approach – Based on the volume weighted average price (VWAP), the authors propose a metric to measure the trading performance of US corporate insiders: trading alpha. This metric is clean of the contamination effect from insiders' own trades. The authors apply this metric to examine whether insiders can beat the market when they trade. Findings – It is found that corporate insiders achieve positive trading alpha on both purchases and sales of stocks on average. The existence of a positive trading alpha is robust to controlling for firm, trading and insider characteristics. More importantly, evidence is found for the persistence in corporate insiders' trading performance. Those insiders who traded well in the past continue to trade well over time. Those who well execute in purchases of stocks also perform well in sales. Originality/value – This paper extends the notion of beating the market from the investment profession to the trading profession. Skyrocketing corporate insider trades provide a natural setting under which to examine the trading performance. The findings that: insiders can beat the market on average when they trade; and there exists persistence in the insiders' trading performance over time and along trading directions are novel and new to the literature. This paper also has bearing on how to evaluate professional traders. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png China Finance Review International Emerald Publishing

An empirical analysis of corporate insiders' trading performance

Qin Lei; Murli Rajan; Xuewu Wang
China Finance Review International , Volume 2 (3): 19 – Jun 8, 2012
Download PDF
19 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/emerald-publishing/an-empirical-analysis-of-corporate-insiders-trading-performance-eyfTbW03NH

References (47)

Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 Emerald Group Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.
ISSN
2044-1398
DOI
10.1108/20441391211231033
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to conduct an empirical analysis of the trading performance of US corporate insiders. Design/methodology/approach – Based on the volume weighted average price (VWAP), the authors propose a metric to measure the trading performance of US corporate insiders: trading alpha. This metric is clean of the contamination effect from insiders' own trades. The authors apply this metric to examine whether insiders can beat the market when they trade. Findings – It is found that corporate insiders achieve positive trading alpha on both purchases and sales of stocks on average. The existence of a positive trading alpha is robust to controlling for firm, trading and insider characteristics. More importantly, evidence is found for the persistence in corporate insiders' trading performance. Those insiders who traded well in the past continue to trade well over time. Those who well execute in purchases of stocks also perform well in sales. Originality/value – This paper extends the notion of beating the market from the investment profession to the trading profession. Skyrocketing corporate insider trades provide a natural setting under which to examine the trading performance. The findings that: insiders can beat the market on average when they trade; and there exists persistence in the insiders' trading performance over time and along trading directions are novel and new to the literature. This paper also has bearing on how to evaluate professional traders.

Journal

China Finance Review International – Emerald Publishing

Published: Jun 8, 2012

Keywords: United States of America; Insider trading; Stocks and shares; Portfolio investment; Insider trades; Volume weighted average price; Trading alpha; Performance persistence

There are no references for this article.