Equity Price Discovery with Informed Private Debt∗
Hidden in Plain Sight: Equity Price Discovery with Informed Private Debt∗ Jawad M. Addoumy Justin R. Murfinz Cornell University Yale University May 29, 2017 Abstract { Equity markets fail to account for value-relevant non-public information enjoyed by syndicated loan participants and reflected in publicly posted loan prices. A strategy that buys the equities of firms whose debt has recently appreciated and sells the equities of firms whose loans have recently depreciated earns as much as 1.4 to 2.2% alpha per month. The strategy returns are unaffected when focusing on loan returns that are publicly reported in the Wall Street Journal. However, when we condition on the subsample of equities held by mutual funds that also trade in syndicated loans, returns to the strategy are eliminated. Keywords: Syndicated loans, private information, stock returns, return predictability, market integration. JEL Classification: G11, G12, G14, G21, G23. ∗We thank Nick Barberis, Lauren Cohen, Rich Evans, Erik Gilje (discussant), Denys Glushkov (discussant), Will Goetzmann, Byoung-Hyoun Hwang, Shane Johnson (discussant), Andrew Karolyi, Toby Moskowitz, Debarshi Nandy (discussant), David Ng, Greg Nini, Matt Ringgenberg (discussant), Zheng Sun (discussant), Scott Yonker, Xiaofei Zhao (discussant), seminar participants at Cornell University, the Federal Reserve Board, the FDIC, and Univer- sity of Toronto, and participants at the FSU SunTrust Beach Conference, Kentucky Finance Conference, Mid-Atlantic Research Conference in Finance (Villanova), Rodney L. White Cen- ter for Financial Research Conference (Wharton), SFS Cavalcade 2017, South Carolina FIFI Conference, and Young Scholars Finance Symposium (Texas A&M) for helpful comments and valuable suggestions. Thanks to Michael Roberts, Sudheer Chava, and Greg Nini for sharing Dealscan-Compustat matches.
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