Understanding Stock Splits
Say you had a $100 bill and someone offered you two $50 bills for it. Would you take the offer? This might sound like a pointless question, but the action of a stock split puts you in a similar position. In this article we will explore what a stock split is, why it’s done and what it means to the investor.
What Is a Stock Split?
A stock split is a corporate action that increases the number of the corporation’s outstanding shares by dividing each share, which in turn diminishes its price. The stock’s market capitalization, however, remains the same, just like the value of the $100 bill does not change if it is exchanged for two $50s. For example, with a 2-for-1 stock split, each stockholder receives an additional share for each share held, but the value of each share is reduced by half: two shares now equal the original value of one share before the split.
Let’s say stock A is trading at $40 and has 10 million shares issued, which gives it a market capitalization of $400 million ($40 x 10 million shares). The company then decides to implement a 2-for-1 stock split. For each share shareholders currently own, they receive one share, deposited directly into their brokerage account. They now have two shares for each one previously held, but the price of the stock is split by 50%, from $40 to $20. Notice that the market capitalization stays the same – it has doubled the amount of stocks outstanding to 20 million while simultaneously reducing the stock price by 50% to $20 for a capitalization of $400 million. The true value of the company hasn’t changed one bit.
The most common stock splits are, 2-for-1, 3-for-2 and 3-for-1. An easy way to determine the new stock price is to divide the previous stock price by the split ratio. In the case of our example, divide $40 by 2 and we get the new trading price of $20. If a stock were to split 3-for-2, we’d do the same thing: 40/(3/2) = 40/1.5 = $26.6.
It is also possible to have a reverse stock split: a 1-for-10 means that for every ten shares you own, you get one share. Below we illustrate exactly what happens with the most popular splits in regards to number of shares, share price and market cap of the company splitting its shares.
What’s the Point of a Stock Split?
So, if the value of the stock doesn’t change, what motivates a company to split its stock? Good question. There are several reasons companies consider carrying out this corporate action.
The first reason is psychology. As the price of a stock gets higher and higher, some investors may feel the price is too high for them to buy, or small investors may feel it is unaffordable. Splitting the stock brings the share price down to a more “attractive” level. The effect here is purely psychological. The actual value of the stock doesn’t change one bit, but the lower stock price may affect the way the stock is perceived and therefore entice new investors. Splitting the stock also gives existing shareholders the feeling that they suddenly have more shares than they did before, and of course, if the prices rises, they have more stock to trade.
Another reason, and arguably a more logical one, for splitting a stock is to increase a stock’s liquidity, which increases with the stock’s number of outstanding shares. You see, when stocks get into the hundreds of dollars per share, very large bid/ask spreads can result (see Why the Bid/Ask Spread Is So Important.). A perfect example is Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, which has never had a stock split. At times, Berkshire stock has traded at nearly $100,000 and its bid/ask spread can often be over $1,000. By splitting shares a lower bid/ask spread is often achieved, thereby increasing liquidity.
None of these reasons or potential effects that we’ve mentioned agree with financial
theory, however. If you ask a finance professor, he or she will likely tell you that splits are totally irrelevant – yet companies still do it. Splits are a good demonstration of how the actions of companies and the behaviors of investors do not always fall into line with financial theory. This very fact has opened up a wide and relatively new area of financial study called behavioral finance (see Taking A Chance On Behavorial Finance.).
Advantages for Investors
There are plenty of arguments over whether a stock split is an advantage or disadvantage to investors. One side says a stock split is a good buying indicator, signaling that the company’s share price is increasing and therefore doing very well. This may be true, but on the other hand, you can’t get around the fact that a stock split has no affect on the fundamental value of the stock and therefore poses no real advantage to investors. Despite this fact the investment newsletter business has taken note of the often positive sentiment surrounding a stock split. There are entire publications devoted to tracking stocks that split and attempting to profit from the bullish nature of the splits. Critics would say that this strategy is by no means a time- tested one and questionably successful at best.
Factoring in Commissions
Historically, buying before the split was a good strategy because of commissions that were weighted by the number of shares you bought. It was advantageous only because it saved you money on commissions. This isn’t such an advantage today because most brokers offer a flat fee for commissions, so you pay the same amount whether you buy 10 shares or 1,000 shares. Some online brokers have a limit of 2,000 or 5,000 shares for that flat rate, but most investors don’t buy that many shares at once. The flat rate therefore covers most trades, so it does not matter if you buy pre-split or post-split.
Conclusion
The most important thing to know about stock splits is that there is no effect on the worth (as measured by market capitalization) of the company. A stock split should not be the deciding factor that entices you into buying a stock. While there are some psychological reasons why companies will split their stock, the split doesn’t change any of the business fundamentals. In the end, whether you have two $50 bills or one $100 bill, you have the same amount in the bank.
It’s hard not to think of the stock market as a person: it has moods that can turn from irritable to euphoric; it can also react hastily one day and make amends the next. But
can psychology really help us understand financial markets? Does it provide us with hands-on stock picking strategies? Behavioral finance theorists suggest that it can.
Tutorial: Behavioral Finance
Tenets and Findings of Behavioral Finance
This field of study argues that people are not nearly as rational as traditional finance theory makes out. For investors who are curious about how emotions and biases drive share prices, behavioral finance offers some interesting descriptions and explanations.
The idea that psychology drives stock market movements flies in the face of established theories that advocate the notion that markets are efficient. Proponents of efficient market hypothesis say that any new information relevant to a company’s value is quickly priced by the market through the process of arbitrage. (For further reading on market efficiency, see Mad Money … Mad Market?, Working Through The Efficient Market Hypothesis and What Is Market Efficiency?)
For anyone who has been through the Internet bubble and the subsequent crash, the efficient market theory is pretty hard to swallow. Behaviorists explain that, rather than being anomalies, irrational behavior is commonplace. In fact, researchers have regularly reproduced market behavior using very simple experiments.
Importance of Losses Versus Significance of Gains
Here is one experiment: offer someone a choice of a sure $50 or, on the flip of a coin, the possibility of winning $100 or winning nothing. Chances are the person will pocket the sure thing. Conversely, offer a choice of a sure loss of $50 or, on a flip of a coin, a loss of $100 or nothing. The person will probably take the coin toss. The chance of the coin flipping either way is equivalent for both scenarios, yet people will go for the coin toss to save themselves from loss even though the coin flip could mean an even greater loss. People tend to view the possibility of recouping a loss as more important than the possibility of greater gain.
The priority of avoiding losses holds true also for investors. Just think of Nortel Networks shareholders who watched their stock’s value plummet from over $100 a share in early 2000 to less than $2. No matter how low the price drops, investors, believing that the price will eventually come back, often hold onto stocks..
The Herd Versus the Self
Herd instinct explains why people tend to imitate others. When a market is moving up or down, investors are subject to a fear that others know more or have more information. As a consequence, investors feel a strong impulse to do what others are doing.
Behavior finance has also found that investors tend to place too much worth on judgments derived from small samples of data or from single sources. For instance, investors are known to attribute skill rather than luck to an analyst that picks a winning stock.
On the other hand, investors’ beliefs are not easily shaken. One belief that gripped investors through the late 1990s was that any sudden drop in the market is a good time to buy. Indeed, this view still pervades. Investors are often overconfident in their judgments and tend to pounce on a single “telling” detail rather than the more obvious average.
How Practical Is Behavioral Finance?
We can ask ourselves if these studies will help investors beat the market. After all, rational shortcomings ought to provide plenty of profitable opportunities for wise investors. In practice, however, few if any value investors are deploying behavioral principles to sort out which cheap stocks actually offer returns that can be taken to the bank. The impact of behavioral finance research still remains greater in academia than in practical money management.
While it points to numerous rational shortcomings, the field offers little in the way of solutions that make money from market manias. Robert Shiller, author of “Irrational Exuberance” (2000), showed that in the late 1990s, the market was in the thick of a bubble. But he couldn’t say when it would pop. Similarly, today’s behaviorists can’t tell us when the market has hit bottom. They can, however, describe what it might look like.
Conclusion
The behavioralists have yet to come up with a coherent model that actually predicts the future rather than merely explains, with the benefit of hindsight, what the market did in the past. The big lesson is that theory doesn’t tell people how to beat the
market. Instead, it tells us that psychology causes market prices and fundamental values to diverge for a long time.
Behavioral finance offers no investment miracles, but perhaps it can help investors train themselves how to be watchful of their behavior and, in turn, avoid mistakes that will decrease their personal wealth.
To continue reading on behavior-based trading, see Trading Psychology: Consensus Indicators – Part 1, Leading Indicators Of Behavioral Finance, Understanding Investor Behavior and The Madness Of Crowds.