Information Contents of Insider Trading before Seasoned Equity Announcements

This paper finds that firms announcing a new equity offering experience more negative price reactions with recent insider “net-sale” than with recent insider “net- purchases.” However, the impact of insider trading on the issue announcement effects disappears when the timing of insider transactions relative to the offering announcement date is expanded to more than 10 days before the announcement date. These results suggest that investors use insider trading as information to reevaluate common stock offering announcements and that they consider not only the relative intensity of purchases and sales, but also the timing of trades relative to the offering announcement date as an important signaling aspect of insider trading.