In addition, the regression results show an evidence for a negative relationship between firm
profitability and institutional ownership. Hence, institutional investors prefer to invest in firms
with low profitability ratios. This result contradicts the expected positive sign between
profitability and institutional ownership found by many scholars including Barucci (2005). It
is worth noting that Tong and Ning (2004) find significant negative relationship between the
average shares held by institutional investors and return on equity. They concluded that
there is limited evidence that institutional investors prefer firms with high profitability ratios.
One way to explain this result is that institutional investors such as pension funds (which are
owned by the government) are forced to invest in such firms to minimize any significant
damage in the market or that other institutional investors are more oriented toward long-term
investment than the short-term investments. In sum, the study does not find evidence that
Jordanian institutional investors prefer to invest in firms with high profitable ratios instead of
that there is evidence that such investors prefer to invest in low profitable firms.