In addition to long-run underperformance relative to other stocks, there is some evidence that issuers succeed at timing their equity offerings for periods when future market returns are low.When examining a large class of corporate financing activities, including equity offerings, convertible bond offerings, bond offerings, open market repurchases, stock and cashfinanced mergers and acquisitions, and dividend increases or decreases, several patterns emerge.In general, the announcement effects are negative for activities that provide cash to the firm, and positive for activities that pay cash out of the firm.Furthermore, the market generally underreacts, in that long-run abnormal returns are usually of the same sign as the announcement effect.In spite of the large expenditure of resources on analyst coverage, there is little academic work emphasizing the importance of the marketing of financial securities. Only recently have papers begun to focus on the corporate financing implications if firms face variations in the cost of external financing due to the mispricing of securities by the market.