Essays on Investors’ Trading Policy around Interim Earnings Announcements in a Thinly Traded Securities Market

This study consists introductory survey and three essays where investors’ trading responses to interim earnings announcements are studied using Finnish data. The essays are individual papers, but their topics are closely connected since they address the trading response from different angles. The essays progress from an aggregated to a more detailed examination. The first essay was conducted on daily data, whereas the second and third consist of intraday trading data. In all three essays information asymmetry is assumed to affect trading behavior around interim earnings announcements. The first article contains empirical findings regarding the effect of interim earnings announcements on investors’ trading policy using Finnish data. The aim of the paper is to investigate empirically the role of predisclosure information asymmetry and the information content in explaining volume responses to interim earnings announcements. Evidence is provided that the trading volume response is positively associated with the information content and to some extent with the level of pre-disclosure information asymmetry. The results are in line with the theoretical trading volume proposition. However, the significance levels are lower than in similar US studies and the association between positive and negative news is slightly asymmetric. The second article finds evidence from the Helsinki Stock Exchange that the widely documented U-shape pattern in trading activity namely heavy trading in the beginning and at the end of the trading day and relatively light trading in the middle of the day is affected by an anticipated information event (i.e. interim earnings announcement). Before the announcement day, trading is more concentrated at the close. This is consistent with investors’ heterogeneous willingness to bear expected overnight risk, which is especially prevalent before an announcement. Moreover, a slight increase on the open is evident after the announcement day. Evidence is also provided that the change in intraday trading behavior is associated with announcementrelated factors, such as the range of analysts’ earnings forecasts, the magnitude of unexpected earnings and firm size. Furthermore, this association is evident to some extent during the transition between trading and non-