The Effect of Credit Rating Announcements on the GICS Market Sectors

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to test the effect on the GICS sectors stock returns found on the S&P 500 from credit rating announcements provided by Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s through an event study spanning from 2000 to 2019. We find that the GICS sectors exhibit different effects in stock returns, where the magnitude depends on the rating announcement. The more timely indicators of creditworthiness found in the outlook sample produce the greatest effects for the negative rating announcements. Whereas for the positive announcements more publicly available information decreases the effect. Suggesting that the negative rating announcements can be found to reduce the information asymmetry more.