Short sellers trade more on days with qualitative news -- i.e. news containing fewer numbers. We show that this behavior is not informationally motivated but can be explained by short sellers exploiting higher liquidity on such days. We document that liquidity and noise trading increase in the...

We investigate how short sellers strategically exploit the liquidity generated by the arrival of ambiguous information – i.e. information likely to cause disagreement in interpretation. Using a sample of newspaper articles, media newswires, and press releases, we construct a measure of...