Expectations in the Cross Section: Stock Price Reactions to the Information and Bias in Analyst-Expected Returns

This paper provides evidence that the market does not efficiently incorporate expected returns implied by analyst price targets into prices. I use a novel decomposition to extract information and bias components from these analyst-expected returns and develop an asset pricing framework that helps interpret price reactions to each component. A one-standard-deviation increase in the information (bias) component is associated with a five (one) percentage point increase in announcement-month returns. The positive reaction to bias implies the market does not fully debias analyst-expected returns before incorporating them into prices. Prices overreact to bias and reverse their initial reaction within three to six months. Prices underreact to information and returns drift an additional one percentage point beyond their initial reaction in the following 12 months. Announcement-window returns forecast future returns, which provides model-free evidence of underreaction, and that underreaction dominates overreaction. Trading against underreaction generates average monthly returns of 1.12% with a Sharpe ratio of 1.08, and the returns survive controlling for exposure to many standard factors.