Who Reacts to News?

We show that the positive relation between firm-level cash-flow news and institutional ownership documented by [Cohen et al., Journal of Financial Economics 66, 409-462.] is mostly driven by short-horizon investors. Short-term institutions trade to incorporate cash-flow related information into prices and potentially reduce under-reaction to cash-flow news. In contrast, long-term institutions are more sensitive to discount-rate news, consistent with the idea that their strategy is to realize the long-term expected returns and that they care more about changes in their opportunity set. Our results support the premise that short- and long-horizon institutions are potentially trading with each other based on their opposing preferences for news.