We investigate whether sophisticated investors' trading concentration in the auto industry is associated with their use of auto complaint data. We find that the extent to which mutual funds incorporate the complaint information into their trading decisions is positively associated with their concentration of trading in the auto industry. We provide direct evidence that information advantage can arise from superior information processing. We find that pension funds, regardless of their level of trading concentration, do not use the customer complaint information to inform their trading decisions. Our findings suggest that pension funds concentrate trading for reasons other than information advantage.
JEL Classification: G14
1.information advantage reason predicts a purely positive relation (Kacperczyk et al., 2005;Ekholm and Maury, 2014;Hiraki et al., 2015). However, prior research has generally not identified nor investigated the kind of information advantage utilized by concentrated investors.Information advantage can occur in two ways: 1) obtaining private information (i.e., information asymmetry), and 2) superior processing or analysis of public information based on the investor's superior ability, prior experience, knowledge or expertise (i.e., specialization) (Bodnaruk and Simonov, 2015). In fact, most studies on investment concentration generally conclude that it is due to information advantage without any attempt to determine the cause. (e.g., Brands et al., 2005;Baks et al., 2006). Moreover, most earlier studies either do not distinguish between the underlying source of information advantage (e.g., Kacpercyzk et al., 2005) or assume that it arises from private information without testing this assumption (e.g., Ekholm and Maury, 2014;Jiang and Sun, 2014). Examination of specific sources of possible information advantage, or its use by investors, is sparse, perhaps because testing the information advantage reason for investor behavior is difficult as the nature, timing, and information content of an investor's actual information set is usually unobservable by researchers. Specifically, the possibility of investment concentration occurring out of an investor's superior ability to utilize public information rather than having access to private information has yet to be examined. In this study, we address this issue by utilizing a value relevant, industry-specific information source that is available to all investors that could be exploited as an informational advantage, if a sophisticated investor so desired. Specifically, we examine whether institutional investors that have greater trading concentration in the auto industry are more likely to exploit the product complaint data freely available from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). We examine the