Prior studies have shown that firms tend to experience negative returns in final quarters
before breaks of earnings strings, even though earnings growth still continues during the same
period, and that the abnormal stock returns around breaks of earnings strings are not negative in
a substantial number of cases. Therefore, not all breaks arrive as a surprise to investors, which is
inconsistent with the view of investor irrationality that investors erroneously extrapolate past
earnings performance. In this paper, I propose that investors, perceiving varying earnings
persistence, are able to anticipate the breaks of earnings strings; and I investigate two interrelated
research questions.