H. Scott Asay and Jeffrey Hales have authored a paper, "Disclaiming the Future:  Investigating the Impact of Cautionary Disclaimers on Investor Judgments Before and After Experiencing Economic Loss," which reviews how disclaimers about forward-looking statements affect investor judgments.  The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, or PSLRA, provided protections to issuers against claims that forward-looking statements were misleading if such statements were identified and accompanied by meaningful cautionary statements.  The authors consider whether such disclaimers protect nonprofessional, or retail, investors by reducing their reliance on forward-looking statements.  Through a series of experiments, the authors conclude that indeed such disclaimers do reduce the participants' explicit reliance on the forward-looking statements, however, the presence of such statements does not serve to reduce the valuation assessments made by the investors.  The authors also consider whether these statements lead nonprofessional investors to believe they were adequately warned in the event of a loss.  Based on their experiment, the authors conclude that the presence of disclaimers may reduce the extent to which investors feel wronged, especially if the issuer acted in good faith when making the forward-looking statements.  However, if the issuer acted with scienter, then investors believe that they are entitled to compensation—perhaps even more so than if such disclaimers had not been furnished to them.  As a result, the authors suggest that cautionary disclaimers may be more efficient if the statements contain less boilerplate language, are written in plain English, and are integrated with the forward-looking statements that they are intended to qualify rather than appearing alone.

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