Multiple-Market Trading and Overnight Price Discovery: Evidence From American Depository Receipts

This paper compares the overnight price discovery of American Depository Receipts (ADRs) and other common stocks traded in the U.S. stock market, and examines how trading activities of ADRs’ underlying shares in home markets affect the price discovery. We find that the efficiency of opening price and the price discovery during the overnight period is significantly higher than that of U.S. common stocks. Further analyses show that the price discovery of ADRs shifts from the trading day to the overnight and the opening prices of ADRs are more efficient if there are more trading activities of underlying shares in home markets. The results suggest that the trading of similar assets in multiple markets over non-overlapping hours improves the price efficiency.