Are VC-backed IPOs delayed trade sales?

We investigate the role of venture-backing at the time of the initial public offering for the decision to subsequently be taken over and leave the exchange. We show, controlling for firm characteristics as well as the endogeneity of the involvement of VC, that VC-backed firms are significantly more likely to leave the exchange in the course of a take over. Our analysis sheds new light on decisions to go private, and even more so on the process of going public for VC-backed firms. Our findings suggest that, in a significant number of cases, VC-backed IPOs can be interpreted as delayed trade sales.     

Do different streams of capital flows affect asset prices differently?

This paper explores the impact of six types of gross capital flows (debt, equity, and banking gross inflows and outflows) on two dimensions: (1) extreme episodes of surges, stops, flights, and retrenchments, and (2) the probability of boom-busts in ASEAN-4 asset markets for the period 1993–2018. To this end, we first decompose gross capital inflows and outflows from Balance of Payments 5 and 6 and show that ASEAN-4 is largely dominated by portfolio flows and a relatively small magnitude of banking flows. However, when we link this decomposition to the extreme episodes, our findings show banking flows are volatile enough to cause greater occurrences of flight and retrenchment episodes while volatile debt flows tend to lead to surge and stop episodes. In the second part, we construct asset price index for ASEAN-4 that can detect boom-busts periods with a minimal noise-to-signal ratio eight quarters ahead. We use heteroscedasticity panel probit and ordinal generalized linear models to show that fundamental variables and banking inflows are statistically significant at increasing likelihood of boom-busts in asset markets. These two findings highlight that although largest percentage of capital flows come through debt and equity markets, the banking channel is of paramount importance in causing extreme episodes of flight and retrenchment as well as boom-busts of asset markets.     

Are Chinese Stock Market Cycles Duration Independent?

This paper studies the duration properties of the Chinese stock market cycle. We find evidence for duration dependence in both A‐share and B‐share markets for whole cycles. The results reject the random‐walk hypotheses for both markets. For half cycles, evidence of duration dependence for expansions in the Shanghai A‐share market is found. For the Shenzhen B‐share market, there is little evidence of duration dependence for half cycles. Although the B‐share market is less liquid as compared to the A‐share market, the results of this study suggest that the B‐share market is more efficient than the A‐share market. An important implication is that the quality of market participants plays an important role in the duration property of the Chinese stock market.     

Does the US-China trade war affect co-movements between US and Chinese stock markets?

This paper investigates the impact of the US-China Trade War on co-movements between US and Chinese stock markets. It particularly examines the time-varying stock market co-movement between the United States and China at market level, as well as at sector level, over the period from 3rd January 2017 to 23rd January 2020. The ‘event study’ analysis is employed to investigate the effect of US-China trade disputes news on co-movement dynamics, and the news announcement effects before and after the official start of the US-China Trade War (regarded as 6th July 2018) are examined separately in light of this phenomenon. We also identify structural breaks and spillover patterns of cross-market co-movements during different phases. The results indicate that co-movements amongst mainland China, Hong Kong and US stock markets are positively affected by news releases and, after 6th July 2018, are enhanced significantly. More precisely, there is also empirical evidence of positive announcement effects in stock market co-movements between the US and mainland China in specific sectors (particularly, Industrials and Information Technology). For international investors, this evidence suggests that the US-China Trade War has reduced the benefit of portfolio diversification in managing risk.     

Market opportunities and owner identity: Are family firms different?

We test the hypothesis that ownership of a firm does not affect the firm's ability to seize market opportunities once decisions about productive structure are taken into account. By grouping firms in size clusters having a similar distance between the actual and the optimal size, we assess how the sensitivity of a firm's sales to market demand changes in response to differences in the owner's identity. We use data from a panel of 4696 continental western European firms over the period 1995–2010 and Eurostat 3-digit sectoral data on firm size distribution. Empirical evidence rejects the hypothesis of ownership irrelevance: family firms are less sensitive to market demand than other firms, in particular when the actual size of the firm is larger than optimal and in the case of both founder- and heir-run family firms.     

Factor exposures and diversification: Are sustainably screened portfolios any different?

Financial Markets and Portfolio Management - We analyze the performance, risk, and diversification characteristics of global screened and best-in-class equity portfolios constructed according to...     

Examining bank SEOs: Are offers made by undercapitalized banks different?

Despite extensive monitoring, banking operations are often considered opaque, and despite explicit capital adequacy regulation, banks may have substantial discretion in their financing. Both monitoring and capital regulation have changed substantially over time, with the adoption of FDICIA being one important breakpoint. This article empirically studies seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) by banks to understand how opacity and capital regulation interact to determine the timing of bank SEOs and their market valuation. SEOs both by banks that are undercapitalized relative to regulatory standards and also well-capitalized banks are fully discretionary when it comes to SEOs, even before FDICIA. Both undercapitalized and well-capitalized banks experience similar and significantly negative stock price reactions to SEO announcements, and also have similar prior patterns of insider trading and similar economic drivers of the issuance decision. Moreover, post-SEO abnormal stock returns are similar to benchmark returns for both types of issuers in the long run, suggesting that, contrary to the well-documented evidence for industrial SEOs, investors understand the value implications of bank SEOs upon announcement. The evidence implies that undercapitalized banks' SEOs are more discretionary and that all bank SEOs are less opaque than implied by earlier studies.     

How do individual investors trade?

This paper examines how high-frequency trading decisions of individual investors are influenced by past price changes. Specifically, we address the question as to whether decisions to open or close a position are different when investors already hold a position compared with when they do not. Based on a unique data set from an electronic foreign exchange trading platform, OANDA FXTrade, we find that investors’ future order flow is (significantly) driven by past price movements and that these predictive patterns last up to several hours. This observation clearly shows that for high-frequency trading, investors rely on previous price movements in making future investment decisions. We provide clear evidence that market and limit orders flows are much more predictable if those orders are submitted to close an existing position than if they are used to open one. We interpret this finding as evidence for the existence of a monitoring effect, which has implications for theoretical market microstructure models and behavioral finance phenomena, such as the endowment effect.     

What drives international portfolio flows?

Understanding what drives international portfolio flows has important policy implications for countries wishing to exert some control on the size, direction and volatility of the flows. This paper empirically assesses the relative contribution of common (push) and country-specific (pull) factors to the variation of bond and equity flows from the US to 55 other countries. Using a Bayesian dynamic latent factor model, we find that more than 80% of the variation in bond and equity flows is due to push factors from the US to other countries. Hence global economic forces seem to prevail over domestic economic forces in explaining movements in international portfolio flows. The dynamics of push and pull factors can be partially explained by US and foreign economic fundamentals.     

Are investors always compensated for information risk? Evidence from Chinese reverse-merger firms

Using a data sample of 93 Chinese reverse-merger (CRM) firms listed in the U.S. over the period from 2000 to 2011, we find supporting evidence of poorer financial reporting quality exhibited by CRM firms relative to their respective US counterparts. Our main result indicates that while poor financial reporting quality induces information risk/asymmetry, higher (lower) information risk fails to be associated with higher (lower) expected returns. In contrast with prior studies that document information risk as non-diversifiable and a priced risk factor, the value relevance of the CRM firms’ financial reporting quality, in terms of information asymmetry-based premiums, is found to be remote.

     

Do insiders trade on innovation?

We find that pure insider share purchases—which we define as insider purchases over two successive years without any corresponding sales—are a strong predictor of a firm’s patent applications. The predictability increases with the quality of the patent: Applications for the highest-quality, breakthrough patents increase by 21% in the year following pure insider purchases in our sample. These purchases are associated with large abnormal stock returns of 1.1% per month (14% annualized) over the subsequent three-year period. We also document that stock price responds less to the subsequent announcement of the grant of patent if the application for the patent has been preceded by pure insider purchases, consistent with the idea that insider purchases reveal information about future firm innovation. Our evidence has implications for understanding insider trading within technology companies that have become a dominant feature of US stock markets in recent decades.     

Are covered bonds different from securitization bonds? A comparative analysis of credit spreads

This study compares credit spreads and pricing determinants of securitization vis-à-vis covered bonds. Our analysis reveals that although ratings are the most important pricing determinant for asset-backed securities (ABS) and mortgage-backed securities (MBS) investors place relatively more importance on contractual, macroeconomic and banks' characteristics rather than ratings in pricing covered bonds. We find evidence of a mispricing effect in structured finance markets: ABS and MBS have higher credit spreads than similarly rated public-covered bonds and mortgage-covered bonds and security prices reflect information beyond credit ratings. We find no evidence of borrowing costs affecting banks' choice between securitization and covered bonds.     

Are tightened trading rules always bad? Evidence from the Chinese index futures market

This paper investigates the impact of tightened trading rules on the market efficiency and price discovery function of the Chinese stock index futures in 2015. The market efficiency and the price discovery of Chinese stock index futures do not deteriorate after these rule changes. Using variance ratio and spectral shape tests, we find that the Chinese index futures market becomes even more efficient after the tightened rules came into effect. Furthermore, by employing Schwarz and Szakmary [J. Futures Markets, 1994, 14(2), 147–167] and Hasbrouck [J. Finance, 1995, 50(4), 1175–1199] price discovery measures, we find that the price discovery function, to some extent, becomes better. This finding is consistent with Stein [J. Finance, 2009, 64(4), 1517–1548], who documents that regulations on leverage can be helpful in a bad market state, and Zhu [Rev. Financ. Stud., 2014, 27(3), 747–789.], who finds that price discovery can be improved with reduced liquidity. It also suggests that the new rules may effectively regulate the manipulation behaviour of the Chinese stock index futures market during a bad market state, and then positively affect its market efficiency and price discovery function.     

Are there diversification benefits of increasing noninterest income in the Chinese banking industry?

This paper assesses the potential diversification benefits of the increasing reliance on nontraditional business activities based on data from the Chinese banking industry in 1986–2008. At the aggregate level, there are diversification benefits of the increase in noninterest income. However, noninterest income has higher volatility and cyclicality than net interest income, and the marginal benefit of diversification decreases with the increase in noninterest income. At the bank level, the correlation coefficients of the growth rates of net interest income and noninterest income are mostly negative, which also suggests that there are diversification benefits of increasing the noninterest income. However, further model analysis indicates that the effect of the noninterest income share on the Chinese banking industry's revenue and risk is not significant. Overall, our findings suggest that noninterest income diversifies bank revenue, but increased reliance on noninterest income may worsen the risk/return trade-off for the Chinese banking industry.     

Do insiders trade on government subsidies?

We examine whether and how insiders trade on government subsidies, a major instrument through which the governments intervene in the economy. Using a novel dataset of government subsidies of Chinese listed firms, we find that net insider purchase increases significantly during the month of subsidy receipt. The effect of subsidies on insider trading is weaker in firms with a more transparent information environment and when subsidies are granted in a more predictable manner. In contrast, the effect is more pronounced for politically connected firms. Further analysis shows that the subsidy-trading relation may reflect both insiders’ informational advantage concerning subsidies and their superior ability to detect mispricing-related opportunities. Our findings provide new insights into the capital market consequences of government subsidies through the lens of insider trading.     

Do investors trade uniformly through time?

This study tests whether investors trade uniformly through time by analyzing the quarter-by-quarter trading decision of individual shareholders in one no-load mutual fund family over nearly six years. These shareholders' trading probabilities change dramatically through time. Time has a larger economic effect on the shareholders' trading decisions than data commonly used in prior research, including fund performance. This effect is larger among shareholders who have more prior transactions, and it is robust to controls for unobserved heterogeneity.     

Do capital flows change domestic credit allocation?

Since the 1990s, domestic bank credit has been reallocated away from lending to non-financial business and toward households. An expanding literature discusses negative effects on growth and stability of this change in credit allocation. We research its drivers. We hypothesize that if foreign capital flows into economies with few investment opportunities, it may substitute for domestic bank lending to non-financial business, so that bank balance sheets become more dominated by household lending. In GMM estimations on data for 36 economies over 1990–2011, we find evidence consistent with this mechanism. Foreign capital inflows into the non-bank sector (but not into the bank sector) are associated with lower shares of business lending in domestic bank portfolios. The association is weaker in economies with more investment opportunities, whether proxied by investment shares, current account surpluses, or EMU membership. Our results highlight the importance of sectoral destination in determining the effects of capital flows.     

Are cryptocurrencies homogeneous?

This article investigates if cryptocurrencies returns' are similarly affected by a selection of demand- and supply-side determinants. Homogeneity among cryptocurrencies is tested via a least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) model where determinants of Bitcoin returns are applied to a sample of 12 cryptocurrencies. The analysis goes beyond existing research by simultaneously covering different periods and design choices of cryptocurrencies. The results show that cryptocurrencies are heterogeneous, apart from some similarities in the impact of technical determinants and cybercrime. The cryptocurrency market displays evidence of substitution effects, and design choices related explain the impact of the determinants of return.