We examine price discovery after irregularly scheduled macroeconomic announce-ments. Exploiting time variation in Chinese macro announcements released outside regular trading hours, this paper isolates the role of elapsed non-trading time in facilitating investor learning and price discovery upon market reopening. We show that longer non-trading intervals generate more efficient post-announcement price
discovery, reduce information asymmetry, and diminish subsequent intraday return reversals. The mechanism operates through enhanced retail investor learning: during non-trading hours, retail investors actively acquire information, subsequently trade more aggressively, earn higher profits, and face reduced informational disadvantages at market opening. Our findings highlight that retail investor learning during non-trading hours levels the informational playing field among heterogeneous investors and improves price quality around irregularly timed macroeconomic announcements. These results have broader implications for emerging markets, which similarly feature irregular announcement timing and large populations of uninformed retail investors.
展开