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STOCK MARKET REACTION TO ANTICIPATED VERSUS SURPRISE RATING CHANGES
Author(s) -
Purda Lynnette D.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
journal of financial research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.319
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1475-6803
pISSN - 0270-2592
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-6803.2007.00215.x
Subject(s) - surprise , stock market , stock (firearms) , economics , monetary economics , business , financial economics , psychology , history , social psychology , context (archaeology) , archaeology
I examine whether bond rating changes can be anticipated by investors and test whether the stock price reaction to the eventual change varies as a result. All else equal, the market reaction to changes that could have been easily predicted should be significantly smaller than the reaction to changes that are largely a surprise. Although rating upgrades prove difficult to predict, approximately 20% of downgrades can be correctly predicted using a relatively small number of publicly available variables. There is no significant difference between the stock price reaction to anticipated versus unanticipated rating changes.