Ashish Ochani

Ashish Ochani

Ph.D. Candidate, Accounting

Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management

Cornell
Hi! I am a Ph.D. candidate in Accounting at Samuel Curtis Johnson School of Management, Cornell University. I will be joining Binghamton University School of Management as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2023!

I am broadly interested in understanding investors’ demand for information and how this demand affects capital markets and the information production function of intermediaries. In my job market paper, I study the information production function of financial media in capital markets. Specifically, I examine how cryptocurrency markets influence the media coverage of earnings announcements.

Interests
  • Investors’ information demand
  • Capital markets
  • Financial media
  • Cryptocurrency markets
  • Fundamental analysis and valuation
Education
  • Ph.D. in Accounting, 2023

    Cornell University

  • MS in Management, 2022

    Cornell University

  • Masters of Commerce, 2017

    University of Mumbai

  • Bachelors of Commerce, 2014

    University of Mumbai

  • Chartered Accountant (CPA equivalent), 2015

    Institute of Chartered Accountants of India

Research

Lifetime Earnings
(with Sanjeev Bhojraj and Shivaram Rajgopal)
Revise and Resubmit at Management Science
Using realized earnings over long periods of time, we investigate errors in earnings expectations implied by stock prices of firms. We compute realized lifetime earnings for each firm starting at the IPO date and the beginning of each subsequent year and compare it to stock price on that date. Of the 16,386 firms examined, only 17% survived till 2019, 42% merged with other firms and the rest were delisted for other reasons. While the average lifetime earnings at the aggregate level slightly exceeds first day price, the results are driven by roughly 33% of the firms in the sample. Mergers account for most of success in recovering the first day stock price and appear to be the best way to generate enough earnings to justify valuations. Even among firms that survived, over 46% have yet to generate enough earnings to justify their first day valuations even though they have been in business between 15 and 45 years. Aggregate free cash flows over the lifetime of all firms are lower than the lifetime earnings and justify 80% of the first day trading price. We relate our paper to Bessembinder (2018) by examining the link between lifetime earnings (as a measure of fundamental wealth creation) and stock returns-based wealth creation. We find that lifetime earnings are positively associated with future returns-based wealth creation while current returns-based wealth created itself is negatively associated with future returns-based wealth creation. These results point to a disconnect between returns-based wealth creation and fundamental wealth creation in the short to medium term that eventually corrects.
Lifetime Earnings
Cryptocurrency Disruption and Investors' Reaction to Earnings Announcements
(with Minjae Kim, Eva Liang and Xinyuan Shao)
In this paper, we study the relationship between the cryptocurrency market and investor reactions to earnings news. Building on the limited investor attention literature, we hypothesize that the cryptocurrency market distracts investors from earnings news. We measure the cryptocurrency distraction as the magnitude of two-week cumulative cryptocurrency returns before earnings announcements, and find that the cryptocurrency distraction is associated with a weaker price reaction to earnings surprises. Our result is robust when using the Chinese bans on cryptocurrency offerings and exchanges as sources of exogenous variation in cryptocurrency distraction. Consistent with the limited attention hypothesis, we document that busy earnings announcement days experience greater cryptocurrency distraction. To corroborate the main finding, we further show that the Google search volume and abnormal trading volume around earnings announcements are lower when there is a greater amount of cryptocurrency distraction. Cryptocurrency distraction effect is concentrated in retail trading rather than institutional trading, and consistently, is associated with more severe information asymmetry. Overall, our study provides evidence that cryptocurrency, a class of asset with no intrinsic value, disrupts information processing and thus price formation in the equity market.
Cryptocurrency Disruption and Investors' Reaction to Earnings Announcements

Experience

 
 
 
 
 
Cornell University
Ph.D. Student
Cornell University
Aug 2018 – Present Ithaca, NY
Instructor
Fall 2021 - NCC 5500 Financial Accounting
         Instructor rating - 4.7/5.0
Fall 2020 - NCC 5500 Financial Accounting
         Instructor rating - 3.9/5.0

Teaching Assistant
Spring 2020     - NBA 5060 Financial Statement Analysis
Fall 2019          - NCCW 5000 Financial Accounting
Summer 2019 - NCCB 5000 Financial Accounting
Summer 2019 - NCC 5000 Financial Accounting
 
 
 
 
 
Ernst & Young
Associate - Transaction Advisory
Ernst & Young
Sep 2015 – May 2018 Mumbai, India
 
 
 
 
 
Ernst & Young
Intern - Audit
Ernst & Young
Jul 2013 – Aug 2015 Mumbai, India
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