Bridge over ocean
11 July 2022 Financial Analysts Journal

Litigation Risk and Stock Return Anomaly

  1. Jun Duanmu, CFA
  2. Qiping Huang
  3. Yongjia Li
A dynamic logistic model shows that low-litigation-risk firms outperform high-litigation-risk firms, with annual alpha exceeding 8%. Evidence suggests that the excess return comes from investors underreacting to changes in firms’ litigation risk.
Read the Complete Article in the Financial Analysts Journal CFA Institute Member Content

Overview

We create a proxy for security litigation risk using a dynamic logistic model and find that low-litigation-risk firms outperform high-litigation-risk firms. The out-of-sample long-short portfolio delivers an annual alpha of over 8%. This anomalous return is mainly driven by long positions in low-litigation-risk firms. The results are not affected by the realization of the lawsuits and are robust after controlling for other well-known anomaly factors. We provide evidence that the litigation-risk anomalous return is driven by investors’ underreaction to the changes in firms’ litigation risk.

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