Analysts’ Forecast Dispersion and Stock Returns: A Quantile Regression Approach

Prior research has not provided conclusive evidence on the association between analysts’ forecast dispersion and subsequent stock returns. Since inferences from prior studies may be confounded by research design choices, we use the quantile regression (QR) approach and assess the hidden non-monotonic relations between dispersion and stock returns within a broader sample. The empirical results show that dispersion is negatively associated with subsequent stock returns when the latter is in lower quantiles. In contrast, when the stock returns are in high quantiles, dispersion is positively associated with subsequent stock returns. Moreover, the association between dispersion and stock returns is trivial when the mid-range return quantiles are concerned. These non-uniform connections between dispersion and stock returns reflect the different status of overpricing correction process. Our findings help to reconcile the mixed results reported by prior research concerning the relation between analysts’ forecast dispersion and subsequent stock returns.     

Stock market response to monetary and fiscal policy shocks: Multi-country evidence

A Structural VAR model is employed to investigate the effects of monetary and fiscal policy shocks on stock market performance in Germany, UK and the US. A significant number of past studies have concentrated their attention on the relationship between monetary policy and stock market performance, yet only few on the effects of fiscal policy on stock markets. Even more we know little, if any, on the effects of fiscal and monetary policies on stock market performance when the two policies interact. This study aims to fill this void. Our results show that both fiscal and monetary policies influence the stock market, via either direct or indirect channels. More importantly, we find evidence that the interaction between the two policies is very important in explaining stock market developments. Thus, investors and analysts in their effort to understand the relationship between macroeconomic policies and stock market performance should consider fiscal and monetary policies in tandem rather than in isolation.     

Estimating the portion of technical analysts in a market

This article presents structural estimates of the portion of technical analysts in six markets. I find that the portion of technical analysts in the U.S. equity market has been decreasing since the 1970s. A simple asset pricing model predicts that both risk and return are increasing in the portion of technical analysts. This prediction is confirmed across stock market indexes for six countries.     

The effect of price targets on the composition of CEO pay

This article analyzes the impact of price targets from the IBES Detail Price History Target database on CEO compensation retained from Execucomp. The two databases are merged at fiscal year frequency and an OLS regression with fixed effect is used to analyze the impact of price target on CEO compensation. The analysis reveals that analysts’ price targets affect top executives’ compensation: when analysts predict a growth in the share price for a company, the compensation package tilts towards stock options, when analysts forecast a drop in the share price, the compensation package tilts towards cash-based compensation and restricted stocks. I argue that the result is more aligned with the managerial power model of compensation (which assumes the board of directors maximizes managers’ compensation) than with the arm’s length bargaining model (that states that managers’ compensation is set to maximize shareholders’ profit).     

Analysis of long-run benefits from international equity diversification between Taiwan and its major European trading partners: an empirical note

This paper employs four cointegration test approaches, PO, HI, JJ and KSS, to test for pairwise long-run equilibrium relationships between Taiwan's stock price index and each of the stock price indexes of four European markets – French, German, Dutch, and British stock markets. The results from these four tests are robust and clearly consistent in suggesting that the Taiwan stock market is not pairwise cointegrated with the four European stock markets. This provides strong evidence that there exist long-run benefits for Taiwan investors diversifying in the equity markets of Taiwan's major European trading partners, France, Germany, Holland, and the UK, over the sample period considered from 6 January 1998 to 30 May 2002. These findings could be valuable to Taiwan individual investors and financial institutions holding long-run investment portfolios in the equity markets of France, Germany, Holland, and the UK.     

When and Where Are Informed Traders? What Is Their Relationship with Analysts in the Price Discovery Process?

The authors' aim was to analyze the influence of analysts' recommendations on the activity of informed and uninformed traders and whether such influence produces changes in the price discovery process. The analysis was carried out in the Spanish market, considered to be an ideal market given its characteristics. The authors' results indicate that although investors as a whole react to new information from analysts and their activity increases, this reaction is not independent of the type of stock. Informed traders do not increase their activity with small stocks to the same extent as uninformed investors do. Furthermore, the influence of these movements on price discovery is not significant. The results suggest that the interpretation role of analysts is more important for less accessible firms in terms of assessing their growth opportunities. This role may enhance the herding behavior of uninformed agents trading in those small titles for which they would otherwise need to invest extra time and extra money for taking profitable decisions.     

证券分析师的盈余预测和股票评级是否具有独立性?

本文通过构建理论模型和实证检验全面分析了证券分析师所面临的利益关系对其所发布的信息质量的影响,结果表明:证券分析师为了维护与基金等机构投资者以及公司内部投资银行部门的关系,倾向于发布偏乐观的盈余预测和股票评级;声誉较高的分析师也同样不能在各种利益关系的漩涡中保持独立.这些结果揭示了我国证券分析师独立性缺失的利益根源,并为监管层规范和发展证券分析师行业提供了重要的理论依据.     

Financial Integration and Market Efficiency: Some International Evidence from Cointegration Tests

This study investigates whether the globalization of financial markets enhances the efficiency of national stock markets. To this end, we have developed a dynamic representation of cointegration which is consistent with hypothesis that stock prices reflect the efficient discounting of new information on market fundamentals and testes for market efficiency in five industrialized markets (the United States, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Germany) over the last two decades. Our empirical analysis indicates that the U.S. and Canadian stock markets obey the long-run equilibrium path implied by our dynamic cointegration model, but the Japanese, British, and German markets do not exhibit such characteristics. Thus, it can be claimed that the stock markets of the United States and Canada are informationally efficient, whereas those of Japan, the United Kingdom, and Germany are not. [G15, G14]     

Analyst coverage and stock return synchronicity: evidence from regulation changes in China’s IPO market

This article investigates the relation between analyst coverage and stock return synchronicity in the IPO market. Using a unique data set in China from 2005 to 2012, we find a significantly different effect of analyst coverage on synchronicity before and after the implementation of important 2009 IPO regulation changes in China. Specifically, we document that analyst coverage reduces synchronicity but that this effect is significant only after 2009. In addition, we extend this research to further distinguish the information production role of underwriter and independent analysts. We find that prior to 2009, underwriter analysts’ coverage decreases synchronicity but independent analysts’ coverage does not. However, in the post-2009 period, both types of analyst coverage are significantly and inversely associated with synchronicity. Overall, our results support analysts’ role as producers of firm-specific information in an emerging IPO market and shows that this role depends on the institutional environment.     

Published stock recommendations as investor sentiment in the near-term stock market

This paper investigates the role of published stock recommendations in print and online media as investor sentiment in the near-term German stock market. In line with extant literature on other sentiment measures, vector autoregressions reveal that past stock returns drive today’s sentiment, but not the other way around, and that sentiment is a powerful predictor of itself. In particular, sentiment based on printed analyst recommendations follows reversals, that is, when analysts face a stock market downturn, they see a buying opportunity and become optimistic.     

Chaos in German stock returns — New evidence from the 0-1 test

This paper applies the 0-1 test for chaos to returns from the German stock market, providing empirical evidence of chaotic structures in the returns of all DAX members. For noise reduction purposes, wavelet denoising is employed prior to the application of the 0-1 test.     

Macroeconomic News and Stock Returns in the United States and Germany

Abstract. Using daily data for the January 1997 to June 2002 period, we analyze similarities and differences in the impact of macroeconomic news on stock returns in the United States and Germany. We consider 27 different types of news for the United States and 12 different types of news for Germany. For the United States, we present evidence for asymmetric reactions of stock prices to news. In a boom (recession) period, bad (good) news on GDP growth and unemployment or lower (higher) than expected interest rates may be good news for stock prices. In the period under consideration there is little evidence for asymmetric effects in Germany. However, in the case of Germany, international news appears at least as important as domestic news. There is no evidence that US stock prices are influenced by German news. The analysis of bi-hourly data for Germany confirms these results.     

Stock Analysts: Experts on Whose Behalf?

Investors rely on the opinions of experts to help us pick stocks. Whether one buys stocks through a 401(k) plan, or manage the mutual fund for individuals investing in the 401(k) the decision maker utilizes expert opinion. Those experts are supposed to be stock analysts. Recent scandals like Enron have caused these analysts to be much maligned. We will examine the role of those analysts, their motivations and the amount of useful information they provide.     

Home is Where You Know Your Volatility – Local Investor Sentiment and Stock Market Volatility

Using a new variable to measure investor sentiment we show that the sentiment of German and European investors matters for return volatility in local stock markets. A flexible empirical similarity (ES) approach is used to emulate the dynamics of the volatility process by a time‐varying parameter that is created via the similarity of realized volatility and investor sentiment. Out‐of‐sample results show that the ES model produces significantly better volatility forecasts than various benchmark models for DAX and EUROSTOXX. Regarding other international markets no significant difference between the forecasts can be observed.     

Security analyst firm reputation and investors’ response to forecasted stocks in the biotechnology sector

ABSTRACT

Stock analyst reputation bridges the gap between technical knowledge of the high-technology and the investor's response to its stock, implying that the reputation of the stand-alone analyst serves this purpose. However, global firms have a stronger influence on their stock analysts than do small firms with 2 personnel. Does firm reputation affect the individual analyst and attract investor attention to forecasted stocks? Evidence from SAFs (security analyst firms) in the biotechnology sector supports this question and proposition. Four moderators (interactive predictors of organisational reputation) show positive correlations. They are the SAF's age, size, performance, and media coverage. These organisational level measures contribute to the institutional theory compared to the literature that focuses on the individual analyst without their organisations. In line with institutional theory, we make three explicit points. First, high uncertainty in the biotechnology sector turns investors to the organisational legitimacy and reputation of the analyst. Second, the organisational age, size, performance and media coverage of the security firm reduces uncertainty of the investor in the biotechnology sector. Third, the reputation of security firm flow to its individual analysts as well as from the individual analyst to the security firm. Thus, the organisational context matters in a social setting.     

Does Correlation Between Stock Returns Really Increase During Turbulent Periods?

Correlations betwen international equity markets are often claimed to increase during periods of high volatility. Therefore the benefits of international diversification are reduced when they are most needed, i.e. during turbulent periods. This paper investigates the relationship between international correlation and stock-market turbulence. We estimate a multivariate Markov-switching model, in which the correlation matrix varies across regimes. Subsequently, we test the null hypothesis that correlations are regime-independent. Using weekly stock returns for the S&P, the DAX and the FTSE over the period 1988–99, we find that international correlations significantly increased during turbulent periods.
(J.E.L.: C53, G15).     

Return and volatility transmission between oil prices and oil-exporting and oil-importing countries

This paper provides further evidence of the comovements and dynamic volatility spillovers between stock markets and oil prices for a sample of five oil-importing countries (USA, Italy, Germany, Netherland and France) and four oil-exporting countries (United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela). We make use of a multivariate GJR-DCC-GARCH approach developed by Glosten et al. (1993). The results show that: i) dynamic correlations do not differ for oil-importing and oil-exporting economies; ii) cross-market comovements as measured by conditional correlation coefficients increase positively in response to significant aggregate demand (precautionary demand) and oil price shocks due to global business cycle fluctuations or world turmoil; iii) oil prices exhibit positive correlation with stock markets; and iv) oil assets are not a good ‘safe haven’ for protection against stock market losses during periods of turmoil.     

An analysis of accounting measures on the performance of U.S. international corporations

Accounting measures (earnings and cash flow) have been shown to affect market performance (stock price) in U.S. firms operating domestically. In general, earnings have statistically significant explanatory power of stock price movement, albeit superior to cash flow. However, U.S.-based international corporations consolidate earnings from foreign operations. Consolidation can report significant gains (losses) from foreign transactions, as well as from the translation of foreign assets and liabilities, as currency exchange rates flucturate. Researchers are divided over the impact, if any, that such gains (losses) have on stock price. Indeed, gain (loss) is not realized until foreign currency is converted into the parent firm's functional currency. Foreign operations may accumulate assets and foreign currency even while U.S. exchange rates decline. Stock analysts may consider all currencyadjusted data to be unreliable and prefer simple data such as sales. Currency-adjusted accounting measures may or may not influence market performance.     

Do political connections decrease the accuracy of stock analysts' recommendations in the Chinese stock market?

This paper studies the association between the accuracy of analysts' recommendations and political connections in the Chinese stock market. As most brokerage firms in China are state-owned, it raises concerns about conflicts of interest among their employed analysts issuing recommendations for Chinese state-owned enterprises. Based on 8469 analysts' recommendations with different ratings for both state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises from 74 brokerage firms, we document that analysts' recommendations are less accurate for Chinese state-owned enterprises, which supports the hypothesis that conflicts of interest create recommendation biases. Political connections encourage analysts to be more optimistic on SOEs and even to generate misleading “Buy” and “Hold” recommendations. Our results demonstrate the existence of an optimism bias among politically connected analysts on state-owned enterprises in China.     

Stock prices,production and interest rates: Comparison of three European countries with the USA

This paper investigates the relationships between stock returns, changes in production, and changes in interest rates in three European countries: France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The results obtained using annual data are much more conclusive than those obtained using quarterly data. Stock returns are affected by current changes in interest rates and by future changes in production. The dependence on changes in interest rates seems to be higher than on changes in production. Furthermore, the influence of future changes in production on stock returns diminishes substantially when contemporaneous changes in interest rates are taken into account. With reference to these points, the European markets behave in a similar fashion, but are in sharp contrast with the U.S. market.I am very grateful to Kay Davidson, Patric Hendershott and two anonymous referees for useful comments and suggestions. I am solely responsible for all remaining errors.