From market signals to investor surges—unveiling the fallacy of bird-in-hand in a volatile emerging market

Abstract The paper re-examines the principle of the bird-in-hand under the dynamic situation in the emerging spots market in Pakistan. Our sample consisted of 100 KSE—100 companies dating 2009–2024. The abnormal returns are separated out using an event study model and a rolling window version of the CAPM, and we have constructed a new Dividend Announcement Factor (DAF) to capture systematic variation associated with the payout signals. The evidence proves the bird-in-hand preference defined by c