In this thesis, I use two strategies of inquiry to further our understanding of indirect short-selling constraints. First, I interview a series of experienced market practitioners to identify their attitudes towards indirect constraints. I find little support for D’Avolio’s (2002) suggestions that short-selling is inhibited by managers’ fear of tracking error and by the cultural pressures of a society that can vilify short-sellers. However, I am able to introduce a new, social, indirect constraint to the literature – the perception that short-selling is a form of ‘trading’ as distinct from ‘investment’, and the consequent lack of acceptance amongst stakeholders that this engenders. This constraint reveals a divide between the attitudes of the academic community and parts of the institutional practitioner community on the subject of short-selling. However, interviewees argue that this indirect constraint is diminishing over time. This raises the prospect of markets in practice converging in behaviour towards the markets assumed in classical asset pricing models, and has implications for market efficiency. My second strategy of inquiry is to use a large, new stock lending database to explore three risk-related indirect constraints to short-selling. I examine ‘crowded exits’, a general class of liquidity problem, and find that these are associated with statistically and economically significant losses for short-sellers. I also examine ‘manipulative short squeezes’, a liquidity problem arising from predatory trading. Consistent with theory and the literature on the subject, I find that these are rare for larger, more liquid stocks. However, when they do occur, these events generate statistically significant losses for short-sellers. Finally, I build upon the work of Gamboa-Cavazos and Savor (2007) and investigate the response of short-sellers to losses. I find that short-sellers close their positions in response to accounting losses and not simply in response to rising share prices. This is consistent with short-sellers’ use of risk management tools that are designed to crystallize small losses. These serve to limit the risk of potentially unlimited losses and to reduce short positions at times of heightened synchronization risk. Stocks subject to shortcovering in this manner do not subsequently under-perform the market. My findings demonstrate that a sophisticated group of traders, strongly associated with price setting, does not suffer from the bias known as loss realization aversion.

Cette thèse consiste en trois chapitres distincts. Dans le premier chapitre, je teste l'hypothèse selon laquelle le format d'affichage de l'information financière affecte les décisions des investisseurs individuels. Je montre qu'un affichage plus efficace permet aux individus de mieux gérer leurs ordres à cours limité en minimisant le risque de sélection adverse encouru en utilisant ces ordres. Cela suggère que les investisseurs individuels ont une rationalité limitée. Dans le second chapitre, je teste si les stratégies de trading apporteuses de liquidité peuvent générer des profits, après coûts de transactions, pour les traders actifs qui les implémentent. Je montre que seuls les individus situés dans le plus haut décile de performance peuvent battre le marché de façon persistante en utilisant des stratégies hautement contrariantes qui nécessitent l'utilisation massive d'ordres à cours limité. Les limites-à-l'arbitrage semblent expliquer ce phénomène. Dans le troisième chapitre, j'étudie les stratégies des individus autour des annonces de résultats. Je montre que les allers-retours qui sont implémentés un jour avant une annonce génèrent en moyenne des profits plus élevés et sont plus courts en durée que ceux implémentés en temps normal. Les individus clôturent leurs positions gagnantes le jour de l'annonce, ce qui peut ralentir l'ajustement des prix suite à l'annonce. / This thesis is made of three distinct chapters. In the first chapter, I test whether the display format of financial information matters for the individual investor. I find that a more efficient information display allows investors to increase returns on their limit orders, because it becomes easier for them to mitigate the risk of adverse selection when trading with those orders. My findings suggest that retail investors have bounded rationality. In the second chapter I test whether liquidity provision to the market can be a profitable strategy, after fees, for active retail investors. I find that only individuals ranked in the top decile of performance can persistently beat the market using highly contrarian limit order strategies. Limits-to-arbitrage seem to explain why these top retail investors exploit trading opportunities before other more sophisticated arbitrageurs. In the third chapter, I study the retail trading strategies around stock earnings announcements. I find that round-trips started one day before an announcement are more profitable and much shorter in duration than those started during the non-announcement period. Retails reverse their winning trades on the event date, which can slow down the adjustment of prices to new information.

[pt] Neste trabalho, estudo o comportamento dos arbitradores ao se depararem com variações nos níveis de preços das ações, mais especificamente, analisando a forma como eles buscam informações sobre esses ativos. Para isso, testo e confirmo a hipótese de que os retornos anormais das ações levam os investidores a buscarem ativamente mais informações sobre essas empresas, usando dados de volume de buscas no Google. Adicionalmente, analiso de forma separada o impacto de retornos anormais negativos e de retornos anormais positivos sobre o volume de buscas do Google, chegando à conclusão de que os retornos negativos têm um efeito maior sobre o volume de buscas que os efeitos positivos. / [en] I study the behavior of arbitrageurs when they are faced with changes in stock price levels, more specifically analyzing the way they seek information about these assets. I test and confirm the hypothesis that abnormal stock returns prompt investors to seek actively information about these companies by using Google search volume data. Furthermore, I study the separate effects of negative abnormal returns and positive abnormal returns on Google search volumes, and conclude that negative returns cause a greater impact on the search volumes than positive returns.

博士（商学） / 乙第440号 / 113p / Hitotsubashi University(一橋大学)

La spécificité de la tradition monétaire de Henry Thornton, Ralph George Hawtrey, John Maynard Keynes et John Richard Hicks, est de considérer le taux d'intérêt comme une variable influencée par la banque centrale. Ces auteurs peuvent être rattachés à une même tradition monétaire, différente de celle de Knut Wicksell, où le taux d'intérêt est déterminé par une variable réelle: le taux de profit. Dans la tradition de Thornton, le prêt et l'emprunt renvoient une vente et un achat de titres de dette. Ces derniers prennent une forme différente selon la période étudiée. Au dix-neuvième siècle, Thornton proposait que la Banque d'Angleterre contrôle, par des variations de son taux d'escompte, le prix de la liquidité de court-terme, étant la substituabilité des traites commerciales en monnaie. Un siècle plus tard, cette influence était effective. Cependant, au XXe siècle, avec le développement des marchés financiers, d'autre canaux de transmissions de la politique monétaire sont apparus. Bien que négligée par 1 littérature, une des controverses les plus représentatives de cette époque est celle d'Hawtre Keynes et Hicks. Ils conviennent que le taux court est un phénomène monétaire. En revanche, ils ne s'accordent pas sur la nature du taux long. Les débats portent sur la théorie pionnière d Keynes de la structure par terme des taux d'intérêt, les effets d'annonces, ainsi que les limite de l'arbitrage. / The specificity of the monetary tradition of Henry Thornton, Ralph George Hawtrey, John Maynard Keynes and John Richard Hicks is to consider the interest rate as mainly determined by the monetary policy. Those authors are part of the same monetary tradition, different that Knut Wicksell for whom the interest rate is a real variable: the rate of profit. The process of borrowing and lending, in the monetary tradition analyzed in my PhD thesis, corresponds to a sale and a purchase of debts. Debts take a different form according to the period studied. ln the nineteenth century, Thornton wrote that the Bank of England should be able to manage, by varying its discount rate, the price of short-term liquidity, which is the substitution of bills againt money. ln the twentieth century, other transmission channels of monetary policy appeared wit the evolution of financial markets. Although neglected by the literature, one of the most representative controversy at that time was between Hawtrey, Keynes and Hicks. All made a theory in which the short-term rate is a monetary phenomenon. They however disagreed on the nature of the long-term rate. The debate is on Keynes's pioneering theory of the term structur of interest rates, the announcement effects, and the limits to arbitrage.