The distress anomaly reflects the abnormally low returns of high credit risk stocks during financial distress. Evidence from stocks and corporate bonds reinforces the anomaly and challenges rationales based on shareholders' ability to extract value from bondholders, time-varying betas,...

This paper shows that distressed stocks and bonds are overpriced during high sentiment periods. The correction of overpricing leads to a range of anomalous cross-sectional patterns in stock and bond returns. Including bonds as additional test assets allows us to develop testable restrictions...