Momentum meets value investing in a small European market

In this paper, we investigate two prominent market anomalies documented in the finance literature – the momentum effect and value-growth effect. We conduct an out-of-sample test to the link between these two anomalies recurring to a sample of Portuguese stocks during the period 1988–2015. We find that the momentum of value and growth stocks is significantly different: growth stocks exhibit a much larger momentum than value stocks. A combined value and momentum strategy can generate statistically significant excess annual returns of 10.8%. These findings persist across several holding periods up to a year. Moreover, we show that macroeconomic variables fail to explain value and momentum of individual and combined returns. Collectively, our results contradict market efficiency at the weak form and pose a challenge to existing asset pricing theories.     

The Role of Industry Effects in Simultaneous Reversal and Momentum Patterns in One-Month Stock Returns

When stocks are ranked by returns in one month, the portfolio of loser stocks tends to outperform the portfolio of winner stocks in the subsequent month. Yet industry portfolios tend to display momentum. We develop a model of information diffusion among agents with constrained information processing ability that reconciles these well-documented phenomena. We test whether this model or the overreaction hypothesis is consistent with the data. Additionally, a trading strategy based on the model outperforms strategies based on overreaction and on industry momentum. The strategy produces abnormal returns while controlling for market–risk and the size, book value, January, momentum, and liquidity effects.     

Constructing the job-finding rate and separation rate of Hong Kong labour market

This paper constructs two essential time series of the aggregate labour market in Hong Kong: the job-finding rate and the separation rate. The average job-finding rate per month is 27.54% while the average separation rate per month is 1.29%. These numbers are similar to those for Nordic and Anglo-Saxon countries. Variance decomposition shows that the separation rate contributes to more than half the variation of the unemployment rate.     

中国各省区市创业板上市公司分布与GDP的关系分析

分别计量分析了各省区市创业板上市公司的数量、总市值、总利润、平均市盈率与各省区市GDP总量和人均值的关系,发现创业板上市公司的数量、总市值的区域分布主要与各区域的GDP总量和人均值有较大的关系,而创业板上市公司总利润、平均市盈率与GDP总量和人均值的关系强度较弱。创业板上市公司的上市数量在各省区市之间的分配,可能主要不是依赖于各创业型公司的质量。有计划成为创业板上市公司的企业,若注册在GDP总量或人均值比较靠前的东部省份,其成功上市的概率更高。     

The momentum effect on Chinese real estate stocks: Evidence from firm performance levels

This paper investigates the momentum effects under different firm performance levels for Chinese real estate stocks using quantile regression with a dummy variable estimator. This paper finds that regardless of the momentum horizon, the momentum effects are positive under high-performing individual stocks, but they are negative under low-performing individual stocks. While prior literature only finds that this asymmetric phenomenon appears under different market states, and the findings on different horizons are inconsistent. Furthermore, this paper finds that the positive (negative) momentum effect under high (low) firm performance levels is stronger than that under bullish (bearish) markets. This implies that superior (inferior) fundamental business performance and bullish (bearish) markets can cause the stock prices to go up (down); however, the effect of the former is stronger than that of the latter. Moreover, this paper finds that the relation between future returns and past turnover ratios is positively correlated under high-performing stocks, but negatively correlated under low-performing stocks. Based on the above findings, this paper regards past turnover ratios as a leading indicator of stock returns and suggests two profitable investment portfolios which are superior to the average returns of real estate stocks.     

Idiosyncratic volatility and the cross-section of anomaly returns: is risk your Ally?

Due to arbitrage risk asymmetries, the relationship between idiosyncratic risk and expected returns is positive (negative) among overpriced (underpriced) stocks. We offer a new active anomaly-selection strategy that capitalizes on this effect. To this end, we consider 11 equity anomalies in the U.S. market for years 1963–2016. Buying (selling) long (short) legs of the anomaly portfolios with the highest idiosyncratic volatility produces monthly abnormal returns ranging from 0.97% to 1.14% per month, outperforming a naive benchmark that equally weights all the anomalies by 45–70%. The effect cannot be subsumed by any other established anomaly-return predictor, such as momentum or seasonality. The results are robust to many considerations, including different numbers of anomalies in the portfolios, subperiod analysis, as well as estimation of idiosyncratic risk from the alternative models and throughout different periods.     

Liquidity and equity returns in Borsa Istanbul

We investigate the relationship between expected returns and liquidity measures in Borsa Istanbul. To do so, we gather a wide range of illiquidity measures that can be applied to the market. Firm-level cross-sectional regressions indicate that there is a positive relationship between various illiquidity measures and one- to six-month ahead stock returns. Findings of the article are robust after using different sample periods and controlling for well-known priced factors, such as market beta, size, book-to-market ratio and momentum. The portfolio analysis reveals that stocks that are in the highest illiquidity quintile earn 7.2%–19.2% higher risk-adjusted annual returns than those in the lowest illiquidity quintile. The illiquidity premium is stronger for small stocks and stocks with higher return volatility and it increases (decreases) during periods of extremely low (high) market returns.     

The profitability of financial analysts’ recommendations: evidence from an emerging market

This article aims at measuring recommendation value on the Tunisian market and uses a hand-collected database of 6646 recommendations (2005–2009). We apply the methodology of calendar–time portfolio analysis. This consists of simulating a portfolio that would include stocks depending on the recommendations issued by financial analysts. In order to measure abnormal (or ‘excess’) returns, the raw return of the portfolio is then compared to the evolution of the stock index and to the prediction of the Capital Asset-Pricing Model. Some of the portfolios we build earn a positive significant excess risk-adjusted return of 1.19% per month. Beyond the results that are in line with the literature, we provide two original results. First, ‘sell’ signals are informative, whereas ‘buy’ signals are not. We suggest that it is related to large (small) firms having more ‘buy’ (‘sell’) recommendations and to the direction of the market trend over the period. Second, the fact that recommendation levels have more impact than recommendation changes is explained by the specific informational context on that market, which is that recommendations are systematically disclosed each month, whereas on other markets, recommendations are produced only when the analyst has some new information to disclose.     

An Index of Economic Well–Being for Selected OECD Countries

Per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is a poor indicator of economic well–being. It measures effective consumption poorly (ignoring the value of leisure and of longer life spans) and it also ignores the value of accumulation for the benefit of future generations. Since incomes are uncertain and unequally distributed, the average also does not indicate the likelihood that any particular individual will share in prosperity or the degree of anxiety and insecurity with which individuals contemplate their futures. We argue that a better index of economic well–being should consider: current effective per capita consumption flows; net societal accumulation of stocks of productive resources; income distribution; and economic security. The paper develops such an index of economic well–being for the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, Norway and Sweden for the period 1980 to 1999. It compares trends in economic well–being to trends in GDP per person. In every case, growth in economic well–being was less than growth in GDP per capita, although to different degrees in different countries.     

Market Underreaction to Large Stock Price Declines: The Case of ADRs

This paper examines a sample of ADR stocks that experienced significant stock price declines of more than -15% during a specific month, and finds no evidence of a reversal pattern over the long run. The results are consistent with the predictions of the underreaction hypothesis and the existence of a "momentum" effect in stock prices. The underreaction hypothesis is also supported when ADRs are examined across industries, and for a sample of emerging market ADRs.     

股票市场能量体系研究

本文借鉴物理学研究物体运动规律的思想,提出以成交量为基础的标的资产交易速度定义。根据近代物理学相对论质速关系及质能方程的数学模型,提出以价格为基础的标的资产惯性价格以及其动量和能量假说。在此基础上,本文推导出股票市场量能方程,并结合金融市场的动量现象以及动量生命周期假说,构建了股票市场的资产动量和能量体系框架。通过对30只不同股本股票的能量谱进行实证研究,发现当股票能量值大于某一常数时,随后的一段时间里股价将会出现较大的变化,用此能量值可以揭示股票价格是处于稳态还是非稳态。研究30只股票的资产动量与能量之间的数量关系,发现要达到同一能级,大盘股需要较大的动量,而小盘股需要较小的动量。     

Accounting for human capital externalities with an application to the Nordic countries

Externalities caused by human capital accumulation have taken up considerable space in theoretical work on economic growth. However, less attention has been paid to this externality in traditional growth accounting exercises. This paper takes up the issue of growth accounting, suggesting a framework for quantifying human-capital externalities and illustrating it empirically using data from the five Nordic countries. Four sources of growth are identified, i.e. capital accumulation, labor force growth, and total factor productivity growth (TFP), where the traditional TFP measure is split into a part explained by human-capital formation and an unexplained part. By doing this I am able to attribute between 12 per cent and 33 per cent of growth in the Nordic countries to human capital investment.     

Cross-sectional and time-series momentum returns: are Islamic stocks different?

We search for differences in both unconditional and conditional momentum returns of Islamic and Non-Islamic stocks and test implications of competing behavioural theories that aim to explain momentum returns. Our results show that there is no significant difference in momentum returns between Islamic versus Non-Islamic stocks with respect to both cross-sectional (CS) and time-series (TS) momentum strategies even when we condition momentum returns on market dynamics, information uncertainty and idiosyncratic volatility. We also find that the TS strategy outperforms (underperforms) the CS strategy in market continuations (transitions) consistent with the recent evidence in the U.S. market.

Furthermore, we find that CS and TS strategies of both Islamic and Non-Islamic stocks are profitable only when the market continues in the same state consistent with overconfidence driving momentum returns of both Islamic and Non-Islamic stocks.     

Investment horizon effect on asset allocation between value and growth strategies

How does the optimal risk exposure of assets change as their investment horizons increase? Does this impact investment portfolio decision-making, in particular, optimal asset allocation between value and growth strategies over various investment horizons? This paper adopts a new approach to address these questions by examining portfolio allocation between value and growth stocks over various investment horizons. This new approach is based on wavelet analysis, which decomposes the returns of a particular investment strategy across multiple investment horizons. The key empirical results show that the success of pursuing the value strategy (short-selling growth stocks and going long on value stocks) is impacted by the approach used to classify value and growth stock returns. We explore two common alternatives: Fama-French versus Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500/Barra portfolios. The results using Fama-French portfolios show that as the investment horizon increases, the optimal mean allocation of investors tilts heavily away from growth stocks, particularly for lower and moderate levels of risk aversion. Interestingly, for S&P 500/Barra portfolios the allocation weights between value and growth do not vary much.     

Deliveries on Commodity Futures Contracts

Deliveries on futures contracts are widely thought to be relatively insignificant in amount; indeed sizeable deliveries are taken to indicate problems in a futures market. In fact, deliveries on five of the largest, physical delivery, futures markets in the US average approximately 10 per cent of the maximum open interest in each delivery month. Analysis also demonstrated the value of the timing and location options often provided by contract specifications. One implication is that measures of market performance like hedging effectiveness are sensitive to the imbedded options' effects on prices     

Re-examining differences between momentum and time series momentum among individual stocks

In this paper, we provide a comprehensive comparison of momentum (CSMOM) and time series momentum (TSMOM) among individual stocks in the US stock market from January 1964 to December 2015 and find that the two are distinct among individual stocks. With zero-cost strategies on both of them, we find that the explanations in Goyal and Jegadeesh (2018) cannot fully explain the differences between the performances of CSMOM strategies and TSMOM strategies.     

中国股市的惯性与反转效应研究

由于中国股市具有政策市的特征,本文在Hong和Stein(1999)模型的基础上,研究政策市背景下的中国股市的惯性与反转效应。我们的主要结果有:中国股市的反转效应相对于惯性效应要更明显一些,并且除了中期惯性与长期反转外,还存在一个超短期的惯性与短期的反转;同时,小公司股票相对大公司股票,惯性运动的趋势较弱,更容易发生反转,成交量大的股票相对于成交量小的股票,惯性运动的趋势较弱,更容易发生反转。最后通过实证分析,在中国股票市场对上述结果进行了检验,实证结果支持了我们的结论。     

The value of online banking to small and medium-sized enterprises: evidence from firms operating in the uae free trade zones

This study estimates the willingness to pay of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for a business online banking services. The estimation utilizes a contingent valuation method employing data from 400 SMEs in the United Arab Emirates free zones. An interval regression model is used to identify company characteristics affecting WTP. The results indicate an average WTP for online banking of $518.50 per month. Firms engaging in international trade value these services at least 10% more than those with only domestic operations. Other variables that significantly affect WTP include number of employees and the transportation cost of using traditional branch banking.     

Does aggregate uncertainty explain size and value anomalies?

This paper examines the impact of aggregate uncertainty on return dynamics of size and book-to-market ratio sorted portfolios. Using VVIX as a proxy for aggregate uncertainty, and controlling for market risk, volatility risk, correlation risk and the variance risk premium, we document significant portfolio return exposures to aggregate uncertainty. In particular, portfolios that contain small and value stocks have significant and negative uncertainty betas, whereas portfolios of large and growth stocks exhibit positive and significant uncertainty betas. Using a quasi-natural experimental setting around the financial crisis, we confirm the differential sensitivity of small versus big and value versus growth portfolios to aggregate uncertainty. We posit that due to their negative uncertainty betas, uncertainty-averse investors demand extra compensation to hold small and value stocks. Our results offer an uncertainty-based explanation to size and value anomalies.     

Do illiquid stocks jump more frequently?

We study the influence of stock liquidity on the stock price jump frequency using intraday data of 175 US stocks during 2007–11. Grouping these stocks according to their average liquidity we find less liquid stocks to jump more often than liquid stocks. Depending on the liquidity measure the least liquid stocks exhibit on average between 10% and 34% more jumps than the most liquid stocks. Our results are robust to different definitions of liquidity and jump measures as well prevail under different time frequencies.