Price manipulation, front running and bulk trades: Evidence from India

We analyze the stock price effects of bulk trade in India over the period 2004–2012. Using an event study model we note significant impact of bulk trades on the share prices with cumulative returns being very high around the trades for both BSE and NSE. Buy trade has significant positive cumulative abnormal returns, indicating that buy trades on average increases firm value. Next, we regress cumulative average abnormal returns of different windows on different independent variables. The effect of all the variables considered is found to be higher in the case of buy trades than that of the sell trades.