Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
10-2012
Abstract
Industry expertise is an important aspect of sell-side research. We explore this aspect using a novel dataset of industry recommendations, which are often issued by strategy analysts. We study sell-side analysts' ability to rank industries relative to each other (across-industry expertise), and how it relates to analysts' ability to rank firms in a particular industry (within-industry expertise). We find that analysts express more optimism towards industries with higher levels of investment, past profitability, and past returns. Analysts exhibit across-industry expertise, as portfolios based on industry recommendations generate abnormal returns over both short and long horizons, beyond what would be explained by industry momentum. Additionally, industry recommendations contain information, which is orthogonal to the information revealed in firm recommendations, and more so for brokers who benchmark their firm recommendations to industry peers. Consequently, the investment value of sell-side analysts' recommendations is enhanced when both dimensions of industry expertise are utilized by considering industry and firm recommendations in combination.
Keywords
Financial analysts, Firm recommendations, Industry analysis, Sector rotation
Discipline
Corporate Finance | Portfolio and Security Analysis
Research Areas
Finance
Publication
Journal of Accounting and Economics
Volume
54
Issue
2-3
First Page
95
Last Page
120
ISSN
0165-4101
Identifier
10.1016/j.jacceco.2012.05.002
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
KADAN, Ohad; MADUREIRA, Leonardo; WANG, Rong; and ZACH, Tzachi.
Analysts' industry expertise. (2012). Journal of Accounting and Economics. 54, (2-3), 95-120.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/3237
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacceco.2012.05.002