Size,value and momentum in stock returns: evidence from India

This paper examines the effects of size, value and momentum on the cross-sectional relation between expected returns and risk in the Indian stock market. We find that the conditional Carhart four-factor model empirically describes the variation of cross-section of return better than the unconditional model. When size, book-to-market and momentum effects are controlled in the conditional model, the positive relation of market beta, book-to-market and momentum with expected returns remains economically and statistically significant. However, this evidence is found to be subject to characteristics of test portfolios. The expected returns are sensitive to changes in predictive macroeconomic variables.     

Risk,Mispricing, and Value Investing

We evaluate the stock return performance of a modified version of the book-to-market strategy and its implications for market efficiency. If the previously documented superior stock return of the book-to-market strategy represents mispricing, its performance should be improved by excluding fairly valued firms with extreme book-to-market ratios. To attain this, we classify stocks as value or glamour on book-to-market ratios and accounting accruals jointly. This joint classification is likely to exclude stocks with extreme book-to-market ratios due to mismeasured accounting book values reflecting limitations underlying the accounting system. Using both 12-month buy-and-hold returns and earnings announcement returns, our results show that this joint classification generates substantially higher portfolio returns in the post-portfolio-formation year than the book-to-market classification alone with no evidence of increased risk. In addition, this superior stock return performance is more pronounced among firms held primarily by small (unsophisticated) investors and followed less closely by market participants (stock price <$10). Finally, and most importantly, financial analysts are overly optimistic (pessimistic) about earnings of glamour (value) stock, and for a subset of firms identified as overvalued by our strategy, the earnings announcement raw return, as well as abnormal return, is negative. These last results are particularly important because it is hard to envision a model consistent with rational investors holding risky stocks with predictable negative raw returns for a long period of time rather than holding fT-bills and with financial analysts systematically overestimating the earnings of these stocks while underestimating earnings of stocks that outperform the stock market.     

Default Risk and Equity Returns: Evidence from the Taiwan Equities Market

Studies of risk and return characteristics of different portfolios have recently gained enormous attention. Differing from past studies, this paper uses a compound option model to build the proxy of default risk and evaluate the relationship between default risk effect and equity returns. The primary goal of this paper is to evaluate the relationship among default risk, size, book-to-market, and equity returns, using data drawn from the Taiwan equities market, and to also examine whether size and book-to-market are proxies for default risk. The results show that the effects of size and book-to-market exist in different default portfolios when default risks are controlled. If size or book-to-market is controlled, there are no default effects. In the regression analysis, when default risk is included in Fama and French’s Three Factor Model, it shows that size, book-to-market and default risk have significant influence on equity returns and default risk is a systematic risk. Default risk is also more powerful in explaining returns when the compound option model is adopted for estimating default risks.     

Using Expectations to Test Asset Pricing Models

Asset pricing models generate predictions relating assets' expected rates of return and their risk attributes. Most tests of these models have employed realized rates of return as a proxy for expected return. We use analysts' expected rates of return to examine the relation between these expectations and firm attributes. By assuming that analysts' expectations are unbiased estimates of market-wide expected rates of return, we can circumvent the use of realized rates of return and provide evidence on the predictions emanating from traditional asset pricing models. We find a positive, robust relation between expected return and market beta and a negative relation between expected return and firm size, consistent with the notion that these are risk factors. We do not find that high book-to-market firms are expected to earn higher returns than low book-to-market firms, inconsistent with the notion that book-to-market is a risk factor.     

On the conditional pricing effects of beta,size, and book-to-market equity in the Hong Kong market

Using Hong Kong equity stock data, this study examines empirically the pricing effects of beta, firm size, and book-to-market equity, but conditional on market situations, i.e. whether the market is up or down. Evidence supports the hypothesis that, if the risk variable is priced by the market, then there exists a systematic but conditional relation between the risk variable and average return, and this relation takes on opposite directions during up and down markets. However, the significance of the relations is often affected by the changing values of the risk variables as a result of changes in market conditions. Specifically, it is found that all three risk variables, namely beta, size, and book-to-market equity, exhibit conditional pricing effects. This is the first comprehensive study of its kind on Hong Kong market, which provides out-of-sample evidence relative to earlier tests on US data. The findings give important insights into capital market behaviour, which should prove useful in investment management and corporate financial decisions.     

Characteristics, Covariances, and Average Returns: 1929 to 1997

The value premium in U.S. stock returns is robust. The positive relation between average return and book-to-market equity is as strong for 1929 to 1963 as for the subsequent period studied in previous papers. A three-factor risk model explains the value premium better than the hypothesis that the book-to-market characteristic is compensated irrespective of risk loadings.     

The Cross-Section of Stock Returns on The Shanghai Stock Exchange

This study explores the cross-sectional stock return behavior on the A-share market of the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE), which is segmented from world's other equity markets. We estimate the effects of beta, firm size, book-to-market equity ratio and a variable unique to the Chinese stock markets, the proportion of firm's floating (tradable) equity over total equity on SSE stocks over the period 1993–2002. We find that smaller firms and value stocks perform better. Systematic risk is negatively significant in down markets. The proportion of floating equity has no direct effect on stock returns. JEL Classification: G14, G15     

Book-to-Market Components, Future Security Returns, and Errors in Expected Future Earnings

This study investigates whether the ability of book-to-market to predict returns derives from systematic errors in the market's expectation of future earnings. We extend Beaver and Ryan (1996, 2000) by decomposing book-to-market into a more persistent (bias) component and a delayed recognition (lag) component. We find that both components are related to analyst expectations of future earnings, but the lag component is the dominant factor across all forecast horizons. Similarly, we find that the lag component explains most of the inverse relation between book-to-market and future returns. Given that lag is constructed by regressing book-to-market ratios on lagged price changes, our results are consistent with the lag component capturing systematic stock price reversals. We find that the components have unique relations with subsequent earnings forecast revisions, and controlling for these relations substantially mitigates the components' ability to predict returns. Our component-level analysis provides insight into how expected future earnings, summarized in book-to-market ratios help to explain this market anomaly.     

Another Look at the Cross-section of Expected Stock Returns

Our examination of the cross-section of expected returns reveals economically and statistically significant compensation (about 6 to 9 percent per annum) for beta risk when betas are estimated from time-series regressions of annual portfolio returns on the annual return on the equally weighted market index. The relation between book-to-market equity and returns is weaker and less consistent than that in Fama and French (1992). We conjecture that past book-to-market results using COMPUS-TAT data are affected by a selection bias and provide indirect evidence.     

Risks and rewards for momentum and reversal portfolios

Rational asset pricing implies a positive relation between the expected risk-adjusted return and the volatility of a factor-mimicking portfolio. The relation for the momentum portfolio is weak after its return is adjusted for the risks associated with the market return, the size factor, and the book-to-market factor. However, the relation is significantly positive and captures most of the average return on the momentum portfolio after the return is adjusted for the market return and the risk associated with the short-term reversal portfolio return. The result supports the hypothesis that there is a common factor underlying both momentum and short-term reversal. The dynamics of the factor loadings and the correlation structure of the underlying factors have important implications for the risk prices associated with the factor-mimicking portfolios and the risk–return trade-off for momentum and reversal portfolios.     

Liquidity risk,leverage and long-run IPO returns

We examine the risk-return characteristics of a rolling portfolio investment strategy where more than 6000 Nasdaq initial public offering (IPO) stocks are bought and held for up to 5 years. The average long-run portfolio return is low, but IPO stocks appear as “longshots”, as 5-year buy-and-hold returns of 1000% or more are somewhat more frequent than for non-issuing Nasdaq firms matched on size and book-to-market ratio. The typical IPO firm is of average Nasdaq market capitalization but has relatively low book-to-market ratio. We also show that IPO firms exhibit relatively high stock turnover and low leverage, which may lower systematic risk exposures. To examine this possibility, we launch an easily constructed “low-minus-high” (LMH) stock turnover portfolio as a liquidity risk factor. The LMH factor produces significant betas for broad-based stock portfolios, as well as for our IPO portfolio and a comparison portfolio of seasoned equity offerings. The factor-model estimation also includes standard characteristic-based risk factors, and we explore mimicking portfolios for leverage-related macroeconomic risks. Because they track macroeconomic aggregates, these mimicking portfolios are relatively immune to market sentiment effects. Overall, we cannot reject the hypothesis that the realized return on the IPO portfolio is commensurable with the portfolio's risk exposures, as defined here.     

Cross-sectional determinants of New Zealand share market returns

We present evidence of the cross-sectional relation between security returns, beta, firm size and book-to-market ratio over the period 1971 to 1993 on the New Zealand sharemarket. Our results suggest that the NZSE-40 market index is not a mean-variance efficient market proxy—the betas calculated with respect to it being of little use for explaining expected returns cross-sectionally. Also, there is a significant positive relation between book-to-market ratio and average return.     

The conditional relation between dispersion and return

The main goal of this paper is to examine the conditional pricing effect of return dispersion on the cross section of returns. We observe a systematic conditional relation between dispersion and return even after controlling for market, size and book-to-market factors. However, we find that return dispersion risk is asymmetrically priced with a significantly positive premium observed during periods of large market gains only. The findings are found to be robust to alternative conditional specifications of market returns, suggesting asymmetric pricing effect of the return dispersion factor. We provide alternative explanations for the systematic risk captured by the return dispersion factor and discuss implications for portfolio management and corporate decisions.     

Endogenous leverage and expected stock returns

This note clarifies conditions under which endogenous choice of debt induces a negative relation between leverage or default risk and expected stock returns. In the context of the model of George and Hwang [2009. Journal of Financial Economics 96, 56–79], we correct the contention that variation in bankruptcy costs across firms is sufficient. Variation in asset risk parameters can lead to the desired relation, but may not when also controlling for variation in book-to-market ratios. A simple parameterization of cross-sectional heterogeneity in risk and profitability implies a negative association of expected return with leverage and distress risk and a positive association with book-to-market.     

Empirical tests of the float-adjusted return model

This paper implements empirical tests of the recently proposed float-adjusted return model by using Chinese stock-market data. The results show that variation in free float can explain cross-sectional variation in asset returns by about 6.7% annually, after we control for market risk, size, and book-to-market equity. In addition, we also find that size and book-to-market equity help explain cross-sectional variations in returns even after controlling for free float.     

Book-to-market and size effects: compensations for risks or outcomes of market inefficiencies?

We employ the optimal orthogonal portfolio approach to investigate if the size and book-to-market effects in US data are related to risk factors beside the market risk. This method enables us to estimate the upper limit of the risk premium, due to observed as well as all possible unobserved factors, which can be derived from a linear asset pricing model. As a corollary, it is possible to divide the observed average asset return into three parts: one explained by the market factor, one due to the unobserved factors, and finally the non-risk-based (NRB) component. Our empirical results confirm the existence of latent risk factors, which cannot be captured by the market index. In particular, the size effect is related to some other background risk factors than the market portfolio, but a large part of observed book-to-market effect has a NRB explanation.     

New Evidence on Risk Factors, Characteristics and the Cross-Sectional Variation of Japanese Stock Returns

This paper examines whether the cross-sectional variations in stock returns are better described by systematic risk factors or by firm characteristics such as book-to-market ratios and market capitalization. It provides new evidence from the Japanese stock market based on the recent sample period from 2002 to 2007, which is not addressed in the existing literature. Also, the new results are derived from the generalized method of moments applied to daily returns. The evidence suggests that both the firm size and book-to-market ratio are significantly related to average return premiums. There is mixed evidence, which tends to lend stronger support to the characteristic model rather than the Fama-French three-factor model as more reflective of the return dynamics in the Japanese stock market.     

Risk and return: Long-run relations,fractional cointegration,and return predictability

Univariate dependencies in market volatility, both objective and risk neutral, are best described by long-memory fractionally integrated processes. Meanwhile, the ex post difference, or the variance swap payoff reflecting the reward for bearing volatility risk, displays far less persistent dynamics. Using intraday data for the Standard & Poor's 500 and the volatility index (VIX), coupled with frequency domain methods, we separate the series into various components. We find that the coherence between volatility and the volatility-risk reward is the strongest at long-run frequencies. Our results are consistent with generalized long-run risk models and help explain why classical efforts of establishing a naïve return-volatility relation fail. We also estimate a fractionally cointegrated vector autoregression (CFVAR). The model-implied long-run equilibrium relation between the two variance variables results in nontrivial return predictability over interdaily and monthly horizons, supporting the idea that the cointegrating relation between the two variance measures proxies for the economic uncertainty rewarded by the market.     

Share price performance following actual share repurchases

Using unique actual daily share repurchase data from Hong Kong, this paper investigates share price performance surrounding and following actual share repurchases. It is found that repurchasing firms buy back shares following price drops, suggesting that they behave opportunistically when implementing actual share repurchases. On average, the initial 3-day market response to actual repurchases is about 0.43%. Repurchasing firms do not seem to exhibit superior abnormal performance over long horizons when they make actual share repurchases. However, the price performance of repurchasing firms varies across firm size and market–book value ratios, and shows a clear and consistent pattern. The market responds the most favorably to repurchases that are made by small and value (high book-to-market value) firms. Over a long horizon, there is some evidence that repurchases made by value firms show superior performance. The three-year buy-and-hold abnormal return, which is measured against a portfolio of control firms that are matched by size and book-to-market value ratios, is over 20%. At least, repurchases made by high book-to-market value firms, for which undervaluation is more likely to occur, can benefit long-term shareholders.     

Return dispersion and expected returns

This paper proposes a two-factor asset-pricing model that incorporates market return and return dispersion. Consistent with this model, we find that stocks with higher sensitivities to return dispersion have higher average returns, and that return dispersion carries a significant positive price of risk. In particular, the return dispersion factor dominates the book-to-market factor in explaining cross-sectional expected returns. The return dispersion model outperforms the CAPM, MVM, IVM, and FF-3M when using a set of 5×5 test portfolios constructed from NYSE and AMEX stock returns from August 1963 to December 2005. Return dispersion continues to play an important role in explaining the cross-sectional variation of expected returns, even when market volatility, idiosyncratic volatility, size, book-to-market factors, and a momentum factor are included. This study sheds some light on the ability of return dispersion to explain expected returns beyond the standard asset-pricing factors. Our finding suggests that return dispersion captures two dimensions of systematic risk: the business cycle and fundamental economic restructuring.