THE RELATION BETWEEN THE VALUE LINE ENIGMA AND POST-EARNINGS-ANNOUNCEMENT DRIFT

We investigate the relation between the Value Line enigma and post-earnings-announcement drift. The ability of Value Line's 'timeliness' ranks to predict future abnormal returns is well-documented. However, we show that most rank changes occur within eight trading days of an earnings announcement. Once we control for post-earnings-announcement drift, differences in abnormal returns across Value Line timeliness ranks are no longer significant. Moreover, we find that timeliness ranks have no predictive power for firms with small earnings 'surprises'. We conclude that the Value Line enigma is a manifestation of post-earnings-announcement drift.