Stock prices and the dissemination of second-hand information-new evidence from Germany

We analyse a large sample of second-hand information published in the Tendenzen & Tips column of the prominent German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), which is free of any contamination from first-hand information. We find strong evidence for the price-pressure hypothesis because we observe a highly significant abnormal return of 0.19% for buy recommendations on the publication day. Additionally, our data supports the attention hypothesis, since the market reaction is more pronounced when relatively few stocks are recommended in the column.