Information Timing and Release: The Gaming of Guidance!

I am a lapsed academic, insofar as I have not submitted a paper for publication in more than two decades, but to acquire academic status, I did have to earn a PhD in the distant past. My doctoral dissertation, which like most doctoral theses is little noted and long forgotten, was completed in 1984 and focused on how the frequency of and delays in the release of information plays out in stock price volatility, skew and jumps. I don't plan to rehash that paper, but there have been two long running news stories that reminded me of it. The first is a proposal being floated by the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) to replace quarterly reporting of financial statements by companies with semi-annual reporting. The second is the opinion voiced by Kevin Warsh, the new Fed Chair, that the Fed…