Stock Market Valuation,Foreign Investment,and Cross-Country Arbitrage

This study investigates the role of stock market valuation and cross-country arbitrage in shaping foreign direct and indirect investments, contingent upon a country's stage of development. This paper is built upon the mispricing-driven foreign investment hypotheses developed by Baker, Foley, and Wurgler (2009). Interesting findings emerge when developed and emerging markets are considered separately. Empirical evidence indicates that the use of relatively cheap financial capital for foreign investment is prominent among developed countries, but not so in emerging markets. This is largely due to the extremely low level of foreign investment outflows in emerging markets and the inability of unsophisticated emerging market managers to successfully time the market. Further investigation shows that host-country stock market valuation is an important determinant of the mode of foreign investment; investors tend to choose indirect or portfolio investment, as opposed to direct investment, when the stock market is perceived to be undervalued. This is especially the case in emerging markets, where there is more room for misvaluation and potential arbitrage. These findings suggest that the unique institutional features of the markets involved play an important role in shaping foreign investment and cross-country arbitrage.     

Pricing deviation,misvaluation comovement,and macroeconomic conditions

We measure an individual stock’s misvaluation based on the deviation of its price from predicted intrinsic value. Both under- and overvalued stocks identified by this misvaluation measure exhibit greater valuation uncertainty and arbitrage difficulty, and the misvaluation measure strongly predicts stock returns incremental to size, book-to-market ratio, past returns, and various return anomalies. Based on the misvaluation measure, we form a misvaluation factor and find that stock return covariances with this factor possess significant and robust return predictive power. We further show that the misvaluation factor predicts future economic conditions, providing additional insight into the real effect of systematic misvaluation in the stock market.     

Price Comovement and Institutional Performance Following Large Market Movements

This paper investigates the price comovement of stocks actively traded by institutions and the investment performance of foreign and domestic institutional investors in Taiwan's stock markets during periods of large market movements. Stocks of small size, high share turnover, and high return volatility tend to move together with the market when markets rise sharply. In short-term holdings, foreign investors and domestic mutual funds can outperform the market by trading small-size, high-turnover, and high-volatility stocks.     

Professional stock analysts' recommendations: Implications for individual investors

Conclusions regarding analyst performance often depend on the evaluation technique employed. Using a wide variety of techniques, we find that although there is some evidence that analysts do have the ability to identify undervalued and overvalued securities, individual investors generally experience inferior portfolio performance by following analyst recommendations published in the “Market Highlights” section of USA Today (even before transaction costs are included). As a result, individual investors should view studies that purport to show superior performance with skepticism. This statement is particularly true when the assertions are based on stock index comparisons.     

A note on market-neutral portfolio selection

Long–short equity strategies allow investors to benefit potentially from both undervalued and overvalued securities. The present study develops a normative portfolio model under the practical conditions that a market-neutral strategy entails. The offsetting long and short equity holdings are established jointly and without any constraints by the underlying market index. While accurately capturing institutional procedures for short selling, the model contains the analytical and economic properties as required for a ranking approach to filter out any undesirable securities under consideration. In view of its practical features, the analysis should be of interest to practitioners for assisting their long–short investment decisions.     

Do Attention-Grabbing Stocks Attract All Investors? Evidence from China

Abstract:

Using a unique and comprehensive data set of China’s Shenzhen Stock Exchange, we test whether all investors adopt attention-grabbing stocks. Only the less-wealthy individuals, the Small Group, are found to have the tendency to pursue attention-grabbing stocks, such as abnormal-volume stocks, extreme-return stocks, and initial public offering stocks. By contrast, wealthy individuals, such as the Middle and Large Groups, are the sellers of attention-grabbing stocks and prefer non-attention-grabbing stocks, thereby exhibiting a behavior resembling that of institutional investors. The wealth levels of individual investors may account for such heterogeneous trading behavior. Heterogeneous trading behavior may address one reason why only the less-wealthy individuals do poorly in China’s stock market. Accordingly, we suggest that the Small Group manage the stock selection problem through consultancy with investment institutions.     

Responsible investment in the Chinese stock market

This paper provides insights into the current development of responsible investment in the Chinese stock market. We find that responsible investment can bring portfolio benefits to investors, and institutional investors have a holding preference for stocks in responsible investment indexes. By using a national air pollution proxy, we find that investors’ pessimistic mood on days with heavy air pollution has a negative influence on the stock return of A-shares, while stocks in responsible investment indexes display improved performance over the same time period. We use aggregated trading data to study the trading preference of Chinese retail investors on days when they are influenced by air pollution, and find that their total trading ratio shows a negative influence for both A-shares and responsible investment indexes. Moreover, there is more seller-initiated trading of the whole sample but more buyer-initiated trading of stocks in responsible investment indexes on air pollution days. This finding is consistent with the different stock return performances of these two samples. Our finding extends the studies of responsible investment to emerging markets and presents new evidence about the influence of environmental factors on trading behavior and return performance.     

险资持股对上市公司股价波动的影响研究 ——基于机构投资者异质性视角

保险机构已经成为资本市场重要的机构投资者,其在整个资本市场中的作用日益受到关注.基于机构投资者异质性的视角,对保险机构和证券投资基金、社保基金以及Q FII等其他机构投资者的持股特征进行对比分析,总结梳理保险机构投资者持股的特征.并运用面板数据模型,从长期持股和持股比例变动两个方面对比分析保险机构持股与证券投资基金持股对股价波动的影响.结果表明:在样本期间内,相对于证券投资基金,保险机构长期持股起到了稳定股市的作用,但保险机构持股比例变动会加剧股市的波动.     

Which past returns affect trading volume?

Anecdotal evidence suggests and recent theoretical models argue that past stock returns affect subsequent stock trading volume. We study 3,000 individual investors over a 51 month period to test this apparent link between past returns and volume using several different panel regression models (linear panel regressions, negative binomial panel regressions, Tobit panel regressions). We find that both past market returns as well as past portfolio returns affect trading activity of individual investors (as measured by stock portfolio turnover, the number of stock transactions, and the propensity to trade stocks in a given month). After high portfolio returns, investors buy high risk stocks and reduce the number of stocks in their portfolio. High past market returns do not lead to higher risk taking or underdiversification. We argue that the only explanations for our findings are overconfidence theories based on biased self-attribution and differences of opinion explanations for high levels of trading activity.     

Performance Attribution of US Institutional Investors

Institutional investors play a prominent role in today's markets. Quarterly reported portfolio holdings make it possible to evaluate the risk-adjusted equity investment performance of all institutional investors in the United States during 1981–2002. The results indicate that institutional investors have been successful in managing client assets; they have added significant value by generating excess returns after controlling for underlying portfolio risk factors. Style choice is the main factor in determining overall portfolio performance, but institutional investors also displayed significant stock selection skills during the period. The stocks they choose for their portfolios have outperformed the stocks they exclude.     

GLAMOUR VERSUS VALUE: TRADING BEHAVIOR OF INSTITUTIONS AND INDIVIDUAL INVESTORS

We design a new metric to measure the net buying and selling by institutions and individual investors and find that from 1980 to 2004 institutional investors were net buyers of growth stocks and net sellers of value stocks, implying that individual investors were net buyers of value stocks and net sellers of glamour stocks. The institutional preference for glamour and value stocks seems to be related to sell‐side analysts' recommendations and recent favorable stock price performances, especially during the post‐1994 period. Finally, the institutional buying of growth stocks and sale of value stocks was not based on superior information.     

Did institutions herd during the internet bubble?

We examine the trading behavior of institutional investors during the internet bubble and crash of 1998–2001, and its impact on stock prices. Similar to some recent findings concerning the trading behavior of hedge funds and NASDAQ 100 stocks, we find that during the bubble all types of institutions herded with great intensity into internet stocks for a comprehensive sample of institutional investors and internet stocks. In addition to this, we present three entirely new results. First, institutional herding was much greater than what can be explained by momentum trading. Second, institutions as a group continued to increase their holdings of internet stocks for two quarters past the market peak during the first quarter of 2000, and three quarters past the peak for individual stock prices, suggesting that institutions were unable to time the price peaks. Finally and most importantly, we find positive abnormal returns contemporaneous with institutional herding and negative abnormal returns (reversals) at the point that herding ceased. This finding suggests that institutions’ trading created temporary price pressures, and may have contributed to the bubble.     

Market liberalization and foreign equity portfolio selection in Korea

This study reports that before and after the complete opening of the Korean stock market, foreign equity portfolio selections deviate not only from the market portfolio but also from the portfolio held by domestic institutions. The divergence between foreign investors and domestic institutions is a finding different from that of a previous study on the Swedish market. This study also presents evidence consistent with the view that in the post-crisis deregulation period, foreign investors are most likely fundamental value investors with long-term investment horizons and well diversified portfolios, rather than short-term speculative stock-pickers.     

The Effects of Stock Characteristics on the Direction and Extent of Herding by Foreign Institutional Investors in the Taiwan Stock Exchange

We use a dynamic herding measure to explore the causes of foreign institutional investor (FII) herding in the Taiwan stock market and examine the effects of stock characteristics on the direction and extent of such herding. We find that FII herding primarily results from cascades rather than habit investing or momentum trading. The result of a panel smooth transition regression shows that FIIs' negative cascades focus on their largest net purchases of stocks, but FIIs' positive cascades focus on winner and small-sized stocks. To increase portfolio returns, investors can use FIIs' cascades to inform their stock purchases.     

Foreign and Local Institutional Ownership and the Speed of Price Adjustment

Abstract:  This paper examines the relation between the speed of price adjustment and stock ownership by foreign and local institutional investors using data from the Korean stock market. We show that returns of stocks with high foreign institutional ownership lead returns of stocks with low foreign institutional ownership, especially after foreign ownership restriction is lifted. Likewise, returns of stocks with high local institutional ownership lead returns of stocks with low local institutional ownership. These results support the idea that foreign institutional (local institutional) investors have faster access to or processing power of new information than local institutional (local individual) investors.     

Idiosyncratic risk,costly arbitrage,and the cross-section of stock returns

We test a new cross-sectional relation between expected stock return and idiosyncratic risk implied by the theory of costly arbitrage. If arbitrageurs find it more difficult to correct the mispricing of stocks with high idiosyncratic risk, there should be a positive (negative) relation between expected return and idiosyncratic risk for undervalued (overvalued) stocks. We combine several well-known anomalies to measure stock mispricing and proxy stock idiosyncratic risk using an exponential GARCH model for stock returns. We confirm that average stock returns monotonically increase (decrease) with idiosyncratic risk for undervalued (overvalued) stocks. Overall, our results support the importance of idiosyncratic risk as an arbitrage cost.     

Does institutional ownership matter for international stock return comovement?

We study the link between international stock return comovements and institutional investment. We test whether the rise of institutional ownership has increased cross-country correlations and decreased cross-industry correlations. Using stock-level institutional holdings across 45 countries during the 2001–2010 period, we find that industry and global factors are relatively more important the country factors in explaining stock return variation among stocks with higher institutional ownership. Industry diversification strategies are more beneficial than country diversification strategies for stocks with high institutional ownership. We show that cross-border portfolio investment is a powerful force of international capital market integration and convergence of asset prices.     

The Benefits of Overvaluation: Evidence from Mergers and Acquisitions

Theoretical and empirical evidence debates whether acquirers can exploit their overvalued equity and create value by purchasing less overvalued or undervalued target firms. Shleifer and Vishny (2003) and Savor and Lu (2009) argue in favor of this, while Fu, Lin, and Officer (2013) and Akbulut (2013) provide evidence against. I revisit this issue and develop a quasi-experimental design. The misvaluation effect for stock acquirers that are more overvalued than their targets is isolated and measured. My findings offer direct evidence in favor of the Shleifer and Vishny (2003) market-timing hypothesis.     

Local institutional investors,information asymmetries,and equity returns

We examine the informational role of geographically proximate institutions in stock markets. We find that both the level of and change in local institutional ownership predict future stock returns, particularly for firms with high information asymmetry; in contrast, such predictive abilities are relatively weak for nonlocal institutional ownership. The local advantage is especially evident for local investment advisors, high local ownership institutions, and high local turnover institutions. We also find that the stocks that local institutional investors hold (trade) earn higher excess returns around future earnings announcements than those that nonlocal institutional investors hold (trade).     

投资者异质后验信念对股票价格影响的实证研究

过度自信程度不同的投资者因消息确认精度差异引起意见分歧,产生异质后验信念,导致投资者对股价高估或者低估。在此基础上,以盈余公告信息作为利好或利空消息,研究不同环境下异质后验信念对我国股票价格的影响。实证结果表明:不管在牛市还是在熊市环境下,异质后验信念均会对股价产生影响,当盈余公告为利好消息时,异质后验信念程度越高,当期股价被高估的程度越显著;当盈余公告为利空消息时,异质后验信念程度越高,当期股价被低估的程度越显著。此外,在盈余公告前投资者就对盈余消息作出了反映,但对好消息与坏消息的反映程度不同。