MARKET TIMING IN REGRESSIONS AND REALITY

We compare price‐to‐earnings ratios and dividend yields, which are indirect measures of sentiment, with the bullish sentiment index, which is a direct measure. We find that the sentiment index does better as a market‐timing tool than do P/E ratios and dividend yields, but none is very reliable. We do not argue that market timing is impossible. Rather, we observe that stock prices reflect both sentiment and value, both of which are difficult to measure and neither of which is perfectly known in foresight. Successful market timing requires insights into future sentiment and value, insights beyond those that are reflected in widely available measures.     

Is there price discovery in equity options?

We use tick-by-tick quote data for 39 liquid US stocks and options on them, and we focus on events when the two markets disagree about the stock price in the sense that the option-implied stock price obtained from the put-call parity relation is inconsistent with the actual stock price. Option market quotes adjust to eliminate the disagreement, while the stock market quotes behave normally, as if there were no disagreement. The disagreement events are typically precipitated by stock price movements and display signed option volume in the direction that tends to eliminate the disagreements. These results show that option price quotes do not contain economically significant information about future stock prices beyond what is already reflected in current stock prices, i.e., no economically significant price discovery occurs in the option market. We also find no option market price discovery using a much larger sample of disagreement events based on a weaker definition of a disagreement, which verifies that the findings for the primary sample are not due to unusual or unrepresentative market behavior during the put-call parity violations.     

Do stock price bubbles influence corporate investment?

Dispersion in investor beliefs and short-selling constraints can lead to stock market bubbles. This paper argues that firms, unlike investors, can exploit such bubbles by issuing new shares at inflated prices. This lowers the cost of capital and increases real investment. Perhaps surprisingly, large bubbles are not eliminated in equilibrium nor do large bubbles necessarily imply large distortions. Using the variance of analysts’ earnings forecasts to proxy for the dispersion of investor beliefs, we find that increases in dispersion cause increases in new equity issuance, Tobin's Q, and real investment, as predicted by the model.     

Stock Market Efficiency and Economic Efficiency: Is There a Connection?

In a capitalist economy, prices serve to equilibrate supply and demand for goods and services, continually changing to reallocate resources to their most efficient uses. However, secondary stock market prices, often viewed as the most “informationally efficient” prices in the economy, have no direct role in the allocation of equity capital since managers have discretion in determining the level of investment. What is the link between stock price informational efficiency and economic efficiency? We present a model of the stock market in which: (i) managers have discretion in making investments and must be given the right incentives; and (ii) stock market traders may have important information that managers do not have about the value of prospective investment opportunities. In equilibrium, information in stock prices will guide investment decisions because managers will be compensated based on informative stock prices in the future. The stock market indirectly guides investment by transferring two kinds of information: information about investment opportunities and information about managers' past decisions. However, because this role is only indirect, the link between price efficiency and economic efficiency is tenuous. We show that stock price efficiency is not sufficient for economic efficiency by showing that the model may have another equilibrium in which prices are strong-form efficient, but investment decisions are suboptimal. We also suggest that stock market efficiency is not necessary for investment efficiency by considering a banking system that can serve as an alternative institution for the efficient allocation of investment resources.     

Option-implied volatility factors and the cross-section of market risk premia

The main goal of this paper is to study the cross-sectional pricing of market volatility. The paper proposes that the market return, diffusion volatility, and jump volatility are fundamental factors that change the investors’ investment opportunity set. Based on estimates of diffusion and jump volatility factors using an enriched dataset including S&P 500 index returns, index options, and VIX, the paper finds negative market prices for volatility factors in the cross-section of stock returns. The findings are consistent with risk-based interpretations of value and size premia and indicate that the value effect is mainly related to the persistent diffusion volatility factor, whereas the size effect is associated with both the diffusion volatility factor and the jump volatility factor. The paper also finds that the use of market index data alone may yield counter-intuitive results.     

Diversification Benefits of iShares and Closed-End Country Funds

We study the performance and diversification of iShares and their rival closed‐end country funds from April 1996 to December 1999. International iShares are country‐specific series of securities that track the price and yield of a specific Morgan Stanley Capital Internation (MSCI) country index and, presumably, should provide diversification benefits. Our single‐index model demonstrates that iShares replicate the home index, showing some potential for diversification. However, our two‐factor model, which isolates the “true” diversification virtues, documents that both iShares and closed‐end country fund market prices maintain considerable exposure to the U.S. market. Furthermore, the net asset value returns of the closed‐end funds demonstrate a strong home country exposure, suggesting there is no substitute for direct foreign investment.     

Overreaction of country ETFs to US market returns: Intraday vs. daily horizons and the role of synchronized trading

In this paper we study the intraday price formation process of country Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). We identify specific parts of the US trading day during which Net Asset Values (NAVs), currency rates, premiums and discounts, and the S&P 500 index have special effects on ETF prices, and characterize a special intraday and overnight updating structure between these variables and country ETF prices. Our findings suggest a structural difference between synchronized and non-synchronized trading hours. While during synchronized trading hours ETF prices are mostly driven by their NAV returns, during non-synchronized trading hours the S&P 500 index has a dominant effect. This effect also exceeds the one that the S&P 500 index has on the underlying foreign indices and suggests an overreaction to US market returns when foreign markets are closed.     

The effect of tick size on managerial learning from stock prices

We investigate the effect of tick size, a key feature of market microstructure, on managerial learning from stock prices. Using a randomized controlled tick-size experiment, the 2016 Tick Size Pilot Program, we find that a larger tick size increases a firm's investment sensitivity to stock prices, suggesting that managers glean more new information from stock prices to guide their investment decisions as the tick size increases. Consistently, we also find that changes in managerial beliefs, as reflected in adjustments of forecasted capital expenditures, respond more strongly to market feedback under a larger tick size. Additional evidence suggests the following mechanism through which tick size affects managerial learning: a larger tick size reduces algorithmic trading, in turn encouraging fundamental information acquisition. Increased fundamental information acquisition generates incremental information about growth opportunities, macroeconomic factors, and industry factors, with respect to which the market has a comparative information advantage over management.     

Pricing options on scenario trees

We examine valuation procedures that can be applied to incorporate options in scenario-based portfolio optimization models. Stochastic programming models use discrete scenarios to represent the stochastic evolution of asset prices. At issue is the adoption of suitable procedures to price options on the basis of the postulated discrete distributions of asset prices so as to ensure internally consistent portfolio optimization models. We adapt and implement two methods to price European options in accordance with discrete distributions represented by scenario trees and assess their performance with numerical tests. We consider features of option prices that are observed in practice. We find that asymmetries and/or leptokurtic features in the distribution of the underlying materially affect option prices; we quantify the impact of higher moments (skewness and excess kurtosis) on option prices. We demonstrate through empirical tests using market prices of the S&P500 stock index and options on the index that the proposed procedures consistently approximate the observed prices of options under different market regimes, especially for deep out-of-the-money options.     

Trading frenzies and their impact on real investment

We study a model in which a capital provider learns from the price of a firm's security in deciding how much capital to provide for new investment. This feedback effect from the financial market to the investment decision gives rise to trading frenzies, in which speculators all wish to trade like others, generating large pressure on prices. Coordination among speculators is sometimes desirable for price informativeness and investment efficiency, but speculators' incentives push in the opposite direction, so that they coordinate exactly when it is undesirable. We analyze the effect of various market parameters on the likelihood of trading frenzies to arise.     

Futures trading volume as a determinant of prices in different momentum phases

Recent studies contend that trading volume has predictive power for ex ante stock prices, particularly small stocks that do not react quickly to macroeconomic information. This study postulates that a significant amount of macro-information that flows on to stock markets is derived from derivative markets. We examine the impact of short-term futures trading volume and prices on cash stock prices using a case study of 15-min data from the Australian stock index futures market which reports actual trading volume. After applying vector error correction modelling (VECM), variance decomposition and impulse functions, we conclude that futures prices provide a short-term information lead to stock prices that dominates trading volume effects. We also observe asymmetric changes in the impact of trading volume between bull and bear price momentum phases and after large trading volume shocks. These results suggest that, in future, studies on trading volume should control for the cross-correlation impact from derivative prices and the differential impact of trading phases.     

The Agency Effect of Repurchases on Closed‐End Funds

Share prices rise after companies announce repurchases, but there are differing views as to why this happens. Repurchases are announced by closed‐end funds when their discounts are widening (market‐to‐book is falling). The immediate post‐announcement effect is a small jump in a fund's share price, but the main effect occurs over the next four years during which time there is significant outperformance both of the fund's price and of its investment portfolio. Liquidity of the shares does not change. Repurchases, if executed, reduce the size of a fund and therefore the manager's fees. Our findings are consistent with directors using the threat of repurchases to discipline managers whose investment performance has been poor, leading to a closer alignment of pay and performance.     

Derivative use,fund flows and investment manager performance

Prior literature which examines the use of derivatives by investment managers does not discern between different types of derivative trading strategies. This study is the first to examine and gather data on a particular type of derivative trading strategy undertaken by investment managers. We examine the extent to which equity fund managers use index futures to manage fund flows and the effect this has on their alpha and market timing measures of performance. Our results show that funds that do not use derivatives exhibit lower returns and negative market timing skills when they experience fund flow. The performance of funds that use derivatives, however, is independent of investor’s liquidity demands. In fact, the unconditional performance of the average user fund is statistically equivalent to the performance of the average non-user fund conditional on zero fund flow. Our results provide evidence that derivatives can be beneficial for mutual fund holders under certain conditions.     

Stock price informativeness,cross-listings,and investment decisions

We show that a cross-listing enables firms to obtain, from the stock market, more precise information about the value of their growth opportunities. Thus, cross-listed firms make better investment decisions and trade at a premium. This theory of cross-listings implies that the sensitivity of investment to stock prices is larger for cross-listed firms. Moreover, the cross-listing premium is positively related to the size of growth opportunities and negatively related to the quality of managerial information. The sensitivity of the premium to the size of growth opportunities increases with factors that strengthen the impact of the cross-listing on price informativeness.     

THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF USING REALIZED VOLATILITY IN FORECASTING FUTURE IMPLIED VOLATILITY

We examine the economic benefits of using realized volatility to forecast future implied volatility for pricing, trading, and hedging in the S&P 500 index options market. We propose an encompassing regression approach to forecast future implied volatility, and hence future option prices, by combining historical realized volatility and current implied volatility. Although the use of realized volatility results in superior performance in the encompassing regressions and out-of-sample option pricing tests, we do not find any significant economic gains in option trading and hedging strategies in the presence of transaction costs.     

Bank Debt versus Bond Debt: Evidence from Secondary Market Prices

This paper uses a new data set of daily secondary market prices of loans to analyze the specialness of banks as monitors. Consistent with a monitoring advantage of loans over bonds, we find the secondary loan market to be informationally more efficient than the secondary bond market prior to a loan default. Specifically, we find that secondary market loan returns Granger cause secondary market bond returns prior to a loan default. In contrast, secondary market bond returns do not Granger cause secondary market loan returns prior to a loan default.     

Does the stock market affect firm investment in China? A price informativeness perspective

This paper investigates the empirical relationship between firm-level investment and the stock market in China from a price informativeness perspective. We find that firm investment does not significantly respond to the stock market valuation, because stock prices contain very little extra information about the future operating performance of firms. This finding is further supported by the relative investment response test and the relative price information content test based on the informativeness proxy of price non-synchronicity combined with firm information transparency.     

Do institutional investors destabilize stock prices? evidence from an emerging market

In this paper, we provide empirical evidence on the impact of institutional investors on stock market returns dynamics in Poland. The Polish pension system reform in 1999 and the associated increase in institutional ownership due to the investment activities of pension funds are used as a unique institutional characteristic. We find robust empirical evidence that the increase of institutional ownership has changed the autocorrelation and volatility structure of aggregate stock returns. However, the findings do not support the hypothesis that institutional investors have destabilized stock prices. The results are interpretable in favor of a stabilizing effect on index stock returns induced by institutional trading.     

Is socially responsible investment useful in Mexico? A multi-factor and ex-ante review

The present paper continues the firsts reviews made to socially responsible investment in Mexico. We extended these reviews by using a non-parametric multivariate equality test, along with a multi-factor market cap model, and a Monte Carlo simulation. Our results show that the IPCS index, the IPCcomp and the IPC have a statistically equal mean-variance performance, suggesting that this sort of investment style (SRI) is a good substitute of the broad market investment style in the long term. Among the causes of this finding is the fact that the IPCS and the IPCcomp indexes have almost the same large and small cap stock concentration and the IPC index (a large-cap one) is not as diversified and mean-variance efficient as the former.     

Intraday trading volume and international spillover effects

The objective of this paper is to explore whether lagged trading activity in one market contributes to the return and volatility process in other markets, using 5-min concurrent data from German and British equity market. Our results lend support to our initial premise that if international investors have access to the same information set as domestic traders, then after observing foreign trading activity, market makers adjust prices to reflect their expectation of the security value, conditional upon all available information, including prior trades. Our findings clearly indicate that intraday trading volume contains predictive power for cross-border return and volatility processes. Moreover, these volume effects are found to be asymmetric in the sense that the impact of positive volume changes upon foreign stock market volatility is greater than is the impact of negative changes.