The Value Added by Trading Based on Valuation Criteria

We investigate the value added by active mutual fund management by examining a comprehensive database of monthly trades of equity mutual funds because understanding how managers add value for their clients is important in the current context of a growing fraction of individual investors delegating their portfolio management to professional managers. We find that the value added by trading based on valuation criteria outperform trading decisions motivated by other reasons such as liquidity and taxes. This finding is obtained using both the measures previously proposed by financial literature as well as some refinements proposed here to evaluate the role of mutual funds' cash level as well as the interdependence between buying and selling decisions. In addition, mutual funds that trade based on valuation criteria more frequently outperform funds that follow this type of trading occasionally. The results are consistent with the notion that active mutual funds on average fail to outperform passive benchmarks and only a subset of funds have skilled managers.     

Managerial Sharing,Mutual Fund Connections,and Performance

In this study, we examine the effect of mutual fund connections, through managerial sharing, on performance and stock holding commonalities. Our analysis of return correlations and portfolio holdings indicates that more interconnected funds tend to buy and sell similar stocks, hence increasing the similarity of portfolio holdings and undermining the distinctiveness of their investment strategy. Our results also indicate that highly connected funds significantly underperform weakly connected funds by about 1.4% on a yearly risk‐adjusted basis. We show that fund family performance is unaffected by the intensity of fund connections, and that greater fund connections could significantly enhance family‐level profit margins.     

High‐Frequency Positive Feedback Trading and Market Quality: Evidence from China's Stock Market

This paper managed to measure the positive feedback trading intensity and its asymmetry with high‐frequency transaction data of China's individual stocks. The intraday positive feedback trading is found to be heterogeneous, and buying‐winners effect is significantly stronger than selling‐losers effect. In general, the high‐frequency asymmetric positive feedback trading's impact on market quality is mixed: The intraday positive feedback trades contribute to a liquid and active‐trading market but at the same time slow down the price discovery process and reduce the price efficiency.     

Trading under the proof-of-stake protocol – A continuous-time control approach

We develop a continuous-time control approach to optimal trading in a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain, formulated as a consumption-investment problem that aims to strike the optimal balance between a participant's (or agent's) utility from holding/trading stakes and utility from consumption. We present solutions via dynamic programming and the Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman (HJB) equations. When the utility functions are linear or convex, we derive close-form solutions and show that the bang-bang strategy is optimal (i.e., always buy or sell at full capacity). Furthermore, we bring out the explicit connection between the rate of return in trading/holding stakes and the participant's risk-adjusted valuation of the stakes. In particular, we show when a participant is risk-neutral or risk-seeking, corresponding to the risk-adjusted valuation being a martingale or a sub-martingale, the optimal strategy must be to either buy all the time, sell all the time, or first buy then sell, and with both buying and selling executed at full capacity. We also propose a risk-control version of the consumption-investment problem; and for a special case, the “stake-parity” problem, we show a mean-reverting strategy is optimal.     

Who should sell stocks?

Never selling stocks is optimal for investors with a long horizon and a realistic range of preference and market parameters, if relative risk aversion, investment opportunities, proportional transaction costs, and dividend yields are constant. Such investors should buy stocks when their portfolio weight is too low and otherwise hold them, letting dividends rebalance to cash over time rather than selling. With capital gains taxes, this policy outperforms both static buy‐and‐hold and dynamic rebalancing strategies that account for transaction costs. Selling stocks becomes optimal if either their target weight is low or intermediate consumption is substantial.     

Factors that determine the reputation of private equity managers in developing markets

This paper analyzes the relationship between investors and private equity managers in order to identify the factors that affect the latter's reputation. Since there are no individual references about their past returns in developing private equity markets, the reputation of such players is thought to be linked to their capacity for obtaining new funds. Results provide evidence of the volume of investments recorded in the past, the ratio of portfolio companies to investment manager, the percentage of divestments carried out through initial public offerings and trade sales, the membership of the national private equity association and the size of funds under management as characteristics of the highest importance in raising funds.     

Does air pollution influence investor trading behavior? Evidence from China

Building on the research linking environmental factors to investor mood, we posit that there is a negative relation between air pollution and individual trading strategies. Through an analysis of unique individual transaction data, our results show that air pollution negatively influences individual investors' propensity to buy and positively influences investors' propensity to sell. We find obvious heterogeneity effects across different investor, stock and city characteristics. The effects are even larger for investors with less investment experience and for those living in heavily polluted cities. This study is crucial for establishing an association between air pollution and individual trading activities.     

A note on closet-indexing

Actively managed equity mutual funds with returns that are highly correlated with popular stock market indices like the S&P 500 often are accused of “closet-indexing”. We ask whether a trading strategy that shorts these funds and buys “true” index funds makes money for investors. Using a sample of high-R² growth-and-income funds from the CRSP survivor bias free mutual fund file, we document that the Sharpe ratio of this trading strategy and the market Sharpe ratio are statistically indistinguishable in the 1991–2000 sample period. The result is consistent with the view that widespread closet-indexing does not exist in the mutual fund industry.     

How about selling commodity futures losers?

This paper explores the benefits of extending the investment universe to commodity futures, from the perspective of momentum traders. We find that the growth-optimal portfolio includes negative (positive) weights on commodity futures losers (stock winners). Motivated by this finding, we construct a joint momentum strategy, buying stock winners and selling commodity futures losers, and show that it generates an average monthly return of up to 1.91% and provides much lower skewness (0.04) and kurtosis (1.27) than a traditional stock momentum strategy. It also greatly improves profitability, especially in unfavorable market states, and thus effectively manages tail risk.     

Can Mutual Fund Investors Distinguish Good from Bad Managers?

Mutual fund flows respond significantly to the return gap, which captures information about unobserved actions of mutual funds and predicts future performance. The sensitivity of fund flows to the return gap is: (i) strong and positive; (ii) increasing with investor sophistication; (iii) highly nonlinear; and (iv) decreasing with the informativeness of past fund returns. On average, the response of investors to the return gap enhances their performance. Our findings suggest there is a sophisticated mass of investors who can distinguish good from bad managers using information that may not be directly inferred from standard performance indicators.     

BUY‐LOW AND SELL‐HIGH INVESTMENT STRATEGIES

Buy‐low and sell‐high investment strategies are a recurrent theme in the considerations of many investors. In this paper, we consider an investor who aims at maximizing the expected discounted cash‐flow that can be generated by sequentially buying and selling one share of a given asset at fixed transaction costs. We model the underlying asset price by means of a general one‐dimensional Itô diffusion X , we solve the resulting stochastic control problem in a closed analytic form, and we completely characterize the optimal strategy. In particular, we show that, if 0 is a natural boundary point of X , e.g., if X is a geometric Brownian motion, then it is never optimal to sequentially buy and sell. On the other hand, we prove that, if 0 is an entrance point of X , e.g., if X is a mean‐reverting constant elasticity of variance (CEV) process, then it may be optimal to sequentially buy and sell, depending on the problem data.     

Fallout from the Mutual Fund Trading Scandal

In September 2003, several prominent mutual fund companies came under investigation for illegal trading practices. Allegations suggested these funds allowed certain investors to profit from short-term trading schemes at the expense of other investors. Surprisingly, regulatory authorities have known for more than two decades of the potential for such abuses, yet have taken limited steps to correct the problem. We explore investor reaction to the scandal by measuring assets under management, stock returns, and performance. Mutual funds managed by investigated firms show a substantial decline in post-announcement assets under management. These firms also experienced significantly negative announcement-period returns. Finally, we discuss several policy suggestions to prevent future trading abuses and provide direction for future research.     

Institutional trading in IPOs and post-IPOs: Value-based vs speculative

Using a unique dataset from Shanghai Stock Exchange, we study institutional trading behaviors in IPOs and post-IPOs. From the perspective of value-based or speculation, we find that, (1) institutional investors are flippers on the first day of IPOs, (2) trading by institutional investors and the active institutional investors (mutual funds or brokerage) is value-based, and (3) the net buys of institutional investors can predict the long term performance of IPO-firms and shows a negative relation with a bubble in future. Since individual investors are the opponent of institutional investors, our results mean that individuals are speculators in the market. Our study suggest that institutional investors are the sophisticated ones in the market and they can process information more efficiently, whose value-based trading can enhance market price discovery and is good for market stabilization.     

Securities Lending Activities in Mutual Funds and ETFs: Ethical Considerations

Securities lending has been a lucrative business for mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) over the past decade. Unfortunately for investors, the sponsors of these funds have not been very transparent with the details of their securities lending programs, and consequently most investors in these funds are unaware of their exposure to the risks inherent in securities lending. Interestingly, most funds do not return the full profits from securities lending activities to their investors. In this paper, we examine and discuss the ethical considerations related to the securities lending activities of mutual funds and ETFs and offer a series of best practices that we believe will provide better transparency of these activities to fund investors.     

Hedge Fund Performance and Manager Skill

Using data on the monthly returns of hedge funds during the period January 1990 to August 1998, we estimate six‐factor Jensen alphas for individual hedge funds, employing eight different investment styles. We find that about 25% of the hedge funds earn positive excess returns and that the frequency and magnitude of funds' excess returns differ markedly with investment style. Using six‐factor alphas as a measure of performance, we also analyze performance persistence over 1‐year and 2‐year horizons and find evidence of significant persistence among both winners and losers. These findings, together with our finding that hedge funds that pay managers higher incentive fees also have higher excess returns, are consistent with the view that fund manager skill may be a partial explanation for the positive excess returns earned by hedge funds. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 21:1003–1028, 2001     

Simple Trading Rules and the Market for Internet Stocks

We investigate the profitability of moving average trading rules for Internet stocks based on the Dow Jones Internet Composite Index. Consistent with previous studies e.g. Brock et al. (1992), returns after buy signals exceed returns after sell signals. The average buy–sell spread is large and significant even after accounting for transaction costs. Bootstrap simulations based on a version of the dynamic CAPM show that the model is able to replicate the pattern of buy and sell returns. Simulated buy–sell spreads amount on average to more than 39% of the actual spread. However, actual profits are still too large to be explained in terms of risk compensation.     

机构投资者的交易行为研究:来自中国台湾股市的证据

文章以中国台湾股市为研究对象,主要研究机构投资者的交易行为。文章构建了机构投资者交易不平衡性指标——净交易,在此基础上研究机构投资者的交易行为。研究结果表明:台湾股票市场中以外资和投信基金为代表的金融机构投资者表现为正反馈的交易策略,并且交易的信息含量较高;一般法人的交易表现为负反馈的交易策略,并且交易的信息含量不足;而自营商由于交易动机复杂,交易的信息含量不明确。可见不同的机构投资者的交易行为并不相同。     

Commonality in trading activity and futures‐cash basis: Evidence from the Taiwan futures and stock markets

This study examines commonality in trading activity by various types of institutional investors across futures and stock markets, and the dynamic relationship between the common factors in trading activity and the futures‐cash basis. The empirical results provide evidence of commonality in trading activity by various types of institutional investors across futures and stock markets. Additionally, this study finds that the first principal component of trading activity is most closely related to the futures trading of mutual funds. Moreover, the empirical results indicate that the first principal component of trading activity and mutual funds' futures trading Granger‐cause the futures‐cash basis and vice versa. Finally, the results of the impulse response functions show that the first principal component of trading activity as well as mutual funds' futures trading have a greater impact on the futures‐cash basis than other common factors and other investor types. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 32:964–994, 2012     

不同基金组织形式下管理人行为的博弈分析

建立了基金管理人与投资者之间的不完全信息动态博弈模型,用以说明不同基金组织形式下基金管理人行为选择的差异。研究认为管理人的行为选择是其相机抉择的结果,开放式基金制度是否对管理人有更强约束力,取决于监督机制、声誉机制、管理人收入方案等因素。在模型分析的基础上,提出了减轻管理人机会主义行为的制度设计方案。     

指数期货套利交易策略设计

在期货市场上 ,指数期货是一种股票的避险工具。由于时间及其它因素 ,使得指数期货市场发生不平衡的现象 ,此一不平衡我们称之为套利空间。如何运用金融工程和信息技术来计算出其套利空间 ,为投资人赢得更多的利润 ,正是本研究的宗旨。本文针对指数期货的特性来寻找实时套利机会 ,明确地指出了买低卖高的方向及套利空间的大小 ,并给投资者设计了指数期货套利的交易策略。