The Impact of IPP and HUBCO News on Energy Sector Firms: Case Study of Karachi Stock Market

Abstract

The aim of the study is to investigate the role of combined news of IPP and Hubco as public information on stock market activity at energy sector firms for the period July 1998 to December 2006. It is investigated the relationship between publicly reported news in daily Dawn and Business Recorder and e measures of market activity, i.e., returns and volume at firm level. It is found that the combined news of IPPs and HUBCO has no significant effect on stock returns in all selected power supply firms. However, the combined news of IPP and HUBCO has significant and negative effect on trading volume in case of HUBCO and positive effect on KESC. It indicates that the role of non-informational trade has dominant on informational trade. For day of the week investigation it is found that the combined news of IPP and HUBCO has negative and significant effect on stock returns on Monday in all selected firms except HUBCO. The combined news of IPP and HUBCO has negative and significant effect on stock returns on Tuesday on HUBCO firms. However, the positive and significant effect of combined news on stock returns found on Tuesday in KESC and SEPCO. The combined news has negative and significant effect on volume on Monday in SEPCO, Tuesday in HUBCO. The combined news of IPP and HUBCO has positive and significant effect on volume on Tuesday and Friday in KESC. It implies that there is consistency in daily variability of news across the two newspapers (Business Recorder and Dawn) and that the daily average number of news/information exhibits some systematic pattern.