Sovereign rating changes—Do they provide new information for stock markets?

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of sovereign rating changes on international financial markets using a comprehensive database of 42 countries, covering the major regions in the world over the period 1995–2003. In general, we find that rating agencies provide stock and foreign exchange markets with new tradable information. Specifically, rating upgrades (downgrades) significantly increased (decreased) USD denominated stock market returns and decreased (increased) volatility. Whereas the mean response is contributed evenly by the local currency stock returns and exchange rate changes that make up the USD returns, only the foreign exchange volatility was behind the USD denominated return volatility. In addition, we find significant asymmetric effects of rating announcements. The market responses – both return and volatility – are more pronounced in the cases of downgrades, foreign currency debt, emerging market debt, and during crisis periods. This study has important policy implications for international investors’ asset allocation plans and for regulatory bodies such as the Basel Committee who increasingly rely upon Moody's, Standard and Poor's and Fitch's ratings for their regulatory regimes.     

Predictability in international stock returns using currency fluctuations and forward rate forecasts

We find that currency risk, specifically dollar exchange rate risk, is a determinant in firm stock returns worldwide. Firms exposed to various dollar exchange rate risks worldwide exhibit strong differences in expected returns, and firms with previously high sensitivity to their home country’s exchange rate fluctuation subsequently outperform during the following six to twelve months. This effect is robust across countries, time, exchange rate policies, and macroeconomic environments. We find that information in currency forward rates provides additional, useful information when predicting future returns of these currency-sensitive firms, and dynamic, state-space estimation of currency forward rate term structures complements the predictability.     

Foreign Currency Translation Reporting and the Exchange-Rate Exposure Effect

This study further explores a structural break in the relation between stock returns of firms with foreign currency positions and lagged exchange rate changes (exchange rate exposure effect) documented in Bartov and Bodnar (1994). We examine whether changes in the financial accounting reporting of foreign currency positions from SFAS No. 52 might have improved investors' ability to characterize firms' economic exchange rate exposures, and thus the impact of exchange rate movements on firm value. Our findings indicate that only firms reporting using the dollar as the functional currency (i.e., those reporting as if they were still under SFAS No. 8) retain a significant relation between the lagged change in the dollar and firm value in the post-SFAS No. 52 period. For firms reporting using the foreign currency as the functional currency (i.e., those who switched to the new translation method) the significant lagged relation disappears. This is consistent with the use of a foreign currency as the functional currency under SFAS No. 52 facilitating valuation of U.S. firms with foreign operations.     

The impact of ADR activity on stock market liquidity: Evidence from Latin America

This paper examines the impact of ADR activity on liquidity of four major Latin American stock markets. We construct a measure of ADR activity in U.S. markets for a sample of ADRs trading during January 2003–December 2010, which is subsequent to the financial liberalization episodes and currency crises that shocked emerging markets in the 1990s. The sample lists 164 depositary receipt programs (Levels I, II, and III): 16 from Argentina, 81 from Brazil, 19 from Chile, and 48 from Mexico. Using System GMM methods to handle the potential effects from stock market development on economic growth and ADR issuance, we find that higher ADR turnover in U.S. markets has positive effects on domestic market turnover, particularly for issuance of exchange-listed (Levels II and III) ADRs. This positive relationship is not a statistical artifact created by the global financial crisis of 2008.     

Dynamic spillovers and linkages between gold,crude oil,S&P 500, and other economic and financial variables. Evidence from the USA

This paper focuses on the price determinants of gold, and on the challenges associated with gold’s safe haven property. Specifically, it analyses the interlinkages and the return spillover effect among gold, crude oil, S&P 500, dollar exchange rate, Consumer Price Index (CPI), economic policy uncertainty and Treasury bills, by employing a Vector Autoregression (VAR) and the spillover index of Diebold and Yilmaz (2012), Diebold and Yılmaz (2014). Monthly realized return series, covering the period from 2nd of January 1986 to 31st of December 2019 are used to examine the short-run linkages, and the return spillovers rolling-window estimates in analyzing the transmission mechanism in a time-varying fashion, respectively. Our findings identify gold as a strong dollar hedge, while crude oil and Treasury bills appear to drive inflation; they also indicate strong spillover effects between exchange rate and gold returns. In general, co-movement dynamics display state-dependent characteristics. Both total and directional spillovers increase significantly during market turbulence caused by severe financial crises such as the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007–2009 and the European Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2010–2012. Net spillovers switch between positive and negative values for all these markets, implying that the recipient/transmitter position changes drastically with market events. Economic policy uncertainty, stock market returns, and crude oil price returns are the main transmitters, while Treasury bills and CPI are the main return shock recipients. Gold and exchange rate act both as receivers and transmitters over the sample period.     

Contagion effects and risk transmission channels in the housing,stock, interest rate and currency markets: An Empirical Study in China and the U.S.

This paper aims to investigate the crisis linkage and transmission channels within the housing, stock, interest rate and the currency markets in the U.S. and China in the past decade since the 2008 Subprime Mortgage Crisis. Two hybrid models, namely the SWARCH-EVT-Copula and the Bivariate SWARCH-EVT models, are proposed and applied in order to take into account (A) the high/low volatility regimes, (B) the interdependence structure inherited from the joint tail behaviours, as well as, (C) the risk spillover dynamics among financial sectors during market turmoils. We empirically show that the housing and stock markets share the strongest linkage and play central roles in the spreading of shocks. With a highly integrated system, the American financial sectors are under greater exposure to risk contagion and systemic risk during crises than the Chinese markets. Nevertheless, the exchange rate risk of Renminbi remains at an intensive level since its “crawl-like arrangement” and leads to increasing co-movements in the stock and interest rate markets since 2014.     

Volatility analysis of precious metals returns and oil returns: An ICSS approach

This study examines volatility persistence on precious metals returns taking into account oil returns and the three world major stock equity indices (Dow Jones Industrial, FTSE 100, and Nikkei 225) using daily data over the sample period January 1995 to May 2008; the aim is to analyze market relationships before the global financial crisis. We first determine when large changes in the volatility of each market returns occur by identifying major global events that would increase fluctuations in these markets. The Iterated Cumulative Sums of Squares (ICSS) algorithm was used to identify the existence of structural breaks or sudden changes in the variance of returns. In each market the standardized residuals were obtained through the GARCH(1,1) mean equation. Our main results identify a clear relationship between precious metals returns and oil returns, while the interaction between precious metals and stock returns seems to be an independent one in the case of gold with mixed results for silver and platinum. In relation to volatility persistence, the results show clear evidence of high volatility persistence between these markets, especially during times when markets were affected by excessive volatility due to economic and financial shocks.     

Which exchange rate regimes in an era of high capital mobility?☆

This paper asks what influence increasing capital mobility has on the choice of exchange rate regime. Among exchange rate regimes considered are currency boards and dollarization. It is argued that a key lesson of the recent currency and financial crises in the emerging markets is that corner solutions in exchange rate policy may be preferable to less rigidly fixed exchange rates. The paper concludes that in the end the optimal exchange rate regime depends on the circumstances of a particular country and time, because each exchange rate system requires the fulfillment of certain preconditions. The paper then discusses institutional measures and innovations that may be necessary to enable exchange rate arrangements to avoid financial and currency crises or to dampen their consequences.     

Price effects after one-day abnormal returns in developed and emerging markets: ESG versus traditional indices

This paper examines price effects related to one day abnormal returns on the stock market indices of both developed and emerging countries while accounting for differences between environmental, social, governance (ESG), and conventional indices. Using daily data from MSCI family indices from 2007 to 2020 and various methods to avoid methodological bias, the following hypotheses are tested: after one-day abnormal returns, specific price effects (momentum/contrarian) appear (H1) in cases of positive (H1.1) and negative (H1.2) returns, price effects after one-day abnormal returns are stronger in the case of traditional indices as compared to ESG indices (H2), price effects after one-day abnormal returns are stronger during the crisis period (H3), a dynamic trigger approach is more appropriate for defining abnormal returns than a static approach (H4), price effects after one-day abnormal returns are stronger in emerging markets as compared to developed ones (H5). The results are mixed in the case of H1 and provide no evidence in favor of H2-H5. They also show no significant differences between ESG and conventional indices. The types of detected price effects are the same for the cases of ESG and conventional indices; their power is different in some cases. Overall, a strong contrarian effect is observed in the US stock market after one-day abnormal returns; a trading strategy constructed based on this observation could generate profits from trading. The main results offer additional evidence against the Efficient Market Hypothesis and provide implications that can assist practitioners in beating the market.     

UK Multinationals' Effective Use of Financial Currency‐Hedge Techniques: Estimating and Explaining Foreign Exchange Exposure Using Bilateral Exchange Rates

Using a unique dataset of recently available accounting disclosures, this study examines the relationship between UK multinationals' stock returns and changes in the principal exchange rate to which each firm is most exposed. We find more firms with significant foreign exchange exposure estimates using this firm‐specific principal currency data, compared with those exposure estimates using the broad exchange rate index data prevalent in prior studies. The cross‐sectional variations in such principal‐currency exposure estimates are explained in relation to the financial currency‐hedge techniques that each firm specifically identifies as being used to manage its currency risk. In particular, we provide evidence that firms effectively use foreign currency derivatives and foreign‐denominated debt to reduce the currency risk associated with the bilateral exchange rate to which they are most exposed. This study is important to both the academic and the practitioner communities because it represents the first use of publicly available UK disclosures to improve the estimation and explanation of foreign exchange exposure.     

Oil prices,stock returns,and exchange rates: Empirical evidence from China and the United States

Employing the diagonal BEKK model as well as the dynamic impulse response functions, this study investigates the time-varying trilateral relationships among real oil prices, exchange rate changes, and stock market returns in China and the U.S. from February 1991 to December 2015. We highlight several key observations: (i) oil prices respond positively and significantly to aggregate demand shocks; (ii) positive oil supply shocks adversely and significantly affect the Chinese stock market; (iii) oil price shocks persistently and significantly impact the trade-weighted US dollar index negatively; (iv) the US and China stock markets correlate positively just as the dollar index and the exchange rate does; (v) a significant parallel inverse relation exists between the US stock market and the dollar and between the China stock market and the exchange rate; and (vi) the Chinese stock market is more volatile and responsive to aggregate demand and oil price shocks than the US stock market in recent years.     

“汇改”后汇率变动对股票市场的影响——基于具体行业股票收益率的实证分析

使用GARCH和分位数回归模型,以11个具体行业上市公司为样本,对2005年7月＂汇改＂后人民币汇率变动与股票市场中行业股票收益率波动的相关性进行分析,研究结果表明：相对于即期汇率,以远期汇率为代表的汇率预期对行业股票收益率影响更为明显;预期汇率对行业股票收益率的影响具有明显的阶段性特征;在第一阶段,受远期汇率影响的行业主要对远期汇率的升值比较关注,而在第三阶段,不同行业对即期汇率和远期汇率的反应呈现多样化。     

Second Generation Models of Currency Crises

Until the beginning of the 1990s, currency crises were typically analyzed within the framework of a generation of models that assumed that the foreign exchange reserves of a country that was running a fixed exchange rate policy were falling (because the government was running a deficit on its budget that was financed by printing money). When the foreign exchange reserves reached a lower bound, a speculative attack on the fixed exchange rate was launched. Today, this theory is no longer the benchmark when explaining the occurrence of a currency crisis. Actually, a new generation of models that seeks to take explicitly into account the costs and benefits associated with the maintenance of a fixed exchange rate has emerged. This paper surveys these 'second generation models of currency crises'. This generation of models emphasizes that it is an endogenous decision if a government chooses to abandon a policy of fixed exchange rates. The survey pays special attention to the fact that the second generation of currency crises models often generates multiple equilibria for the rate of devaluation given one state of the economic fundamentals. A currency crisis can thus occur even if no secular trend in economic fundamentals can be identified, as in recent currency crises.     

Investor sentiment and country exchange traded funds: Does economic freedom matter?

Using unbalanced panel data of 27 iShares MSCI country-specific exchange traded funds (ETFs) over the period 1996–2014, this paper applies quantile regression to examine the impacts of global, foreign, and U.S. investor sentiments on the returns of the ETFs traded in the U.S. markets. We further investigate whether a country’s economic freedom affects the relationship between investor sentiments and ETF returns. We find that ETF returns are strongly determined by investor sentiments and the ETF expense ratio. The quantile regression approach reveals that high-return ETFs are positively sensitive to changes in global sentiment (measured by market turnover, VIX, U.S. federal funds rate), foreign sentiment (measured by current account balance, inflation, market turnover, public debt), U.S. sentiment, currency exchange ratio, and expense ratio, while negatively influenced by economic freedom and Asian proxy. The effects of VIX and foreign inflation are a reversal; that is, returns from lower (higher) quantiles have a negative (positive) relation with VIX and foreign inflation. Not all components of economic freedom affect returns equally.     

Volatility spillovers among the U.S. and Asian stock markets: A comparison between the periods of Asian currency crisis and subprime credit crisis

This paper examines the changing nature of volatility spillovers among the U.S. and eight East Asian stock markets between two financial crises: the Asian currency crisis and the U.S. subprime credit crisis. Our empirical results suggest that volatility is not always spilled over from the directly affected markets to surrounding markets in crisis periods. The East Asian markets who directly suffered from the Asian currency crisis are the ones to which volatility is spilled over from other markets during the Asian currency crisis period, whereas uni-directional volatility spillovers from the U.S. market to other markets are observed during both crisis periods. This difference can be explained by a pre-determined hierarchy in which volatility spillovers tend to start from the U.S. market regardless of the geographical origin of the crisis. Furthermore, our results reveal that the markets in three major Asian financial hubs, i.e., Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, are the markets to which volatility is spilled over uni-directionally from several other countries during the subprime credit crisis period, but not during the Asian currency crisis period. We attribute this difference to crisis-specific (currency or credit crisis), market-specific (credit derivatives market participation and foreign currency reserves), and time-specific (more integrated global market) factors.     

Dynamic relationship between stock prices and exchange rates for G-7 countries

There are two major findings from our time-series estimations. First, we find that there is no long-run significant relationship between stock prices and exchange rates in the G-7 countries. This result interfaces with Bahmani-Oskooee and Sohrabian’s (1992) finding, but contrasts with the studies that suggest there be a significant relationship between these two financial variables. Our second finding is that the short-run significant relationship has only been found for one day in certain G-7 countries. For instance, currency depreciation often drags down stock returns in the German financial market, but it stimulates the Canadian and UK markets on the following day. However, an increase in stock price often causes currency depreciation the next day in Italy and Japan. In addition, we also find that the record of stock price and the value of the dollar cannot be depended on when predicting the future in the US, either in the short-run or long-run.     

Time-frequency effect of crude oil and exchange rates on stock markets in BRICS countries: Evidence from wavelet quantile regression analysis

This study examines the effects of oil prices and exchange rates on stock market returns in BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa) from a time–frequency perspective over the period 2009–2020. We use wavelet decomposition series to develop a threshold rolling window quantile regression to detect time–frequency effects at various scales. The empirical results are as follows. First, our findings confirm that the effects of both crude oil prices and exchange rates on BRICS stock returns are asymmetric. Positive shocks of crude oil have a greater impact on a bull market, whereas negative shocks have a greater impact on a bear market. Second, there is a short-term enhancement effect of crude oil and exchange rate on BRICS stock markets. In addition, volatility in the macro financial environment also exacerbates the impacts of oil prices and exchange rates on the stock market, and these fluctuations are heterogeneous. Overall, these findings provide useful insights for international investors and policy makers.     

金融危机时期公允价值计量对股票收益率和市场波动性的相关性研究

文章研究我国A股非金融类上市公司在金融危机时期,公允价值计量的资产和损益对股票收益率和市场波动性的影响。文章选取2007年第4季度-2009年第2季度7个季度的面板数据,运用固定效应模型进行回归分析,结果表明:公允价值计量的资产对股票收益率有显著影响,公允价值计量的损益的会计信息没有反映在股价上,对股票收益率无显著影响;公允价值计量的资产和损益都没有加剧市场波动,反而降低了市场波动,即公允价值在我国没有起到金融危机助推器的作用。     

Models for the Valuation of International Convertible Bonds

This paper presents a family of three models for the valuation of international convertible bonds which are denominated in a currency different from that of the country of the issuing corporation. The first model is two-state, with the value of the underlying stock and the value of the currency of the parent country as state variables. The second model is one-state. It is derived from the first one, with the two state variables collapsed into one, listed share price times exchange rate. The third model is an extension of the second one, in that it includes the risk of devaluation of the currency of the country of the issuing corporation. One specific Euroconvertible bond, issued by the Swedish corporation SCA, is used as illustration throughout.     

Foreign direct investment and financial markets influences: Results from the United States

This paper investigates the linkages among Foreign Direct Investment (FDI-greenfield and mergers and acquisitions (M&A)) decisions and equity market returns and volatilities. The central premise is that FDI decisions by Multinational Enterprises (MNE) are influenced, among other factors, by risk and uncertainty indicated by equity market returns and volatilities in the destination (host) countries. This is because of the events on the stock markets in general, and their volatilities, in particular, signal the vitality of the investment climate of the target country. Including capital market variables among the determinants of FDI is important for assessing the cost of capital and for evaluating direct investment and asset allocation decisions.Secondary time-series data (quarterly) were used on incoming US FDI from 1994 to 2018 along with data on independent variables such as exchange rates, inflation, market size, equity market returns, and equity market volatilities. Thus, the paper endeavors to contribute to the International Business literature by highlighting the role played of equity returns and volatilities in FDI decisions and therewith attempts to integrate finance (capital markets) with International Business/Strategic Decision making. Several different regression specifications (OLS, Fixed, and random-effects and VAR) were utilized to analyze the data, and capital market variables (stock returns and volatilities) were found to influence the location of production facilities by a multinational enterprise (MNE). In other words, the share of production capacity optimally located abroad, as well as M&A decisions, are influenced by capital market returns and volatilities.