The Information Content of Equity Block Trades on the Warsaw Stock Exchange: Conventional and Bootstrap Approaches

This paper focuses on the Polish stock market by analysing the information content of 95 equity block trade transactions executed on shares of companies constituting the WIG20 index. A normalized conventional approach and a bootstrap approach are used to draw inferences. These approaches make use of a multivariate regression model with two explanatory variables: a market return and a dummy variable for the event. Resampling allows construction of an empirical distribution of the normalized test statistic. The outcomes obtained from the application of a normalized conventional approach as well as a bootstrap approach are in line and confirm that equity block trade transactions carry an important signal to investors. Significant abnormal positive (negative) returns are associated with the execution of the equity block trades, the prices of which are higher (lower) than the closing prices 2 days before the execution of the equity block trade transactions. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.