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Session Chair: Hengjie Ai, University of Wisconsin-Madison Discussant: Shen Zhao, University of Macau
Location:9B301 (3rd basement floor, International Hall)
Presentations
The Pre-Announcement Drift in China: Government Meetings and Macro Announcements
Qing Peng1, Jun Pan2
1Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance at Shanghai Jiao Tong University; 2Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance at Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Confirming the conventional wisdom that China is a top-down economy with policydriven markets, we document a significant pre-Govt return of 42 basis points on Chinese equity over the 48-hour window before the announcement of the top government meetings. Similar to the pre-FOMC drift in U.S. equity, this pre-Govt drift in China is significantly larger than that before the macro announcements, demonstrating the unique importance of top government meetings in China. Explaining the pre-Govt returns, we identify two distinct drivers. Under high market volatility, the heightened uncertainty channel of Hu et al. (2022) dominates and the premium for heightened uncertainty (i.e., the pre-Govt drift) escalates to 91 basis points. Meanwhile, institutional investors over-sell equity as the heightened uncertainty builds up, and then over-buy upon its subsequent resolution before the announcements. Under low market volatility, the pre-Govt drift disappears and we document instead an information channel, where the pre-Govt returns are predictive of the post-Govt returns.
