Institutional Holdings and Analysts' Stock Recommendations
研究发现机构投资者会依据卖方分析师的股票推荐进行交易，这有助于解释其超越市场的表现；推荐有利时机构持股季度变化平均高出0.90%，且由此带来的交易贡献了约每年4.2%的超常收益。
Prior studies document that institutional investors outperform the market. We investigate whether this superior performance is partly derived from institutional investors' use of sell-side analysts' stock recommendations. First, we find that the quarterly change in institutional ownership is positively correlated with consensus recommendations. After controlling for other determinants of institutional holdings, the quarterly change in institutional ownership is on average 0.90 percent higher for firms with favorable recommendations than for those with unfavorable recommendations. Second, using large trades to proxy for institutional trading, we find that there are more buyer-initiated than seller-initiated large trades around favorable recommendations and vice versa for unfavorable recommendations. Lastly, we find that the change in institutional ownership that is explained by stock recommendations is associated with positive abnormal returns in the future, about 4.2 percent per year. Overall, these results indicate that institutional investors trade upon stock recommendations and that such trading contributes to their superior performance.