The incremental impact of analyst initiation of coverage

I compare the return surrounding a sell-side analyst's initiation of coverage to the return surrounding a recommendation by an analyst who already covers the stock. The market responds more positively to analysts' initiations than to other recommendations. The incremental price impact of an initiation is 1.02% greater than the reaction to a recommendation by an analyst who already covers the stock. I examine whether the hypothesis that analyst coverage increases liquidity explains this incremental return. I find that liquidity improves after initiations, but that one must extend the liquidity hypothesis in order to fully explain the incremental price impact. Liquidity gains subsequent to analyst initiation depend on the analyst's recommendation. The more positive the initial recommendation, the greater the subsequent liquidity improvement. I also find that the initiation abnormal return correlates with the subsequent improvements in liquidity. Corporations should encourage analyst coverage to capture this liquidity benefit.     

Does short selling improve stock price efficiency and liquidity? Evidence from a natural experiment in China

China introduced short selling for designated stocks in March 2010. Using this important policy change as a natural experiment, we examine the effect of short selling on stock price efficiency and liquidity. We show that the introduction of short selling significantly improves price efficiency, as measured by the differences in individual stock responses to market returns and the delay in price adjustments. Short selling also enhances stock liquidity, as measured by bid-ask spread and Amihud [2002. ‘Illiquidity and Stock Returns: Cross-section and Time-series Effects.’ Journal of Financial Markets 5: 31–56] illiquidity measure; and reduces stock volatility. Overall, our results suggest that short selling helps to stabilize asset prices, provides additional liquidity and improves market quality, even in an emerging economy with a less developed stock market than that in the US and Europe.     

Trading activity and bid–ask spreads of individual equity options

We empirically examine the impact of trading activities on the liquidity of individual equity options measured by the proportional bid–ask spread. There are three main findings. First, the option return volatility, defined as the option price elasticity times the stock return volatility, has a much higher power in explaining the spread variations than the commonly considered liquidity determinants such as the stock return volatility and option trading volume. Second, after controlling for all the liquidity determinants, we find a maturity-substitution effect due to expiration cycles. When medium-term options (60–90 days maturity) are not available, traders use short-term options as substitutes whose higher volume leads to a smaller bid–ask spread or better liquidity. Third, we also find a moneyness-substitution effect induced by the stock return volatility. When the stock return volatility goes up, trading shifts from in-the-money options to out-of-the-money options, causing the latter’s spread to narrow.     

Effects of Passive Intensity on Aggregate Price Dynamics

We find that passive intensity (PI), measured by the passive‐linked share of total stock market trading volume, is strongly related to the overall pattern of stock price movements. A one‐standard‐deviation increase in PI is associated with an 8% higher price synchronicity. We further investigate the channels through which this relation is established by separately analyzing its impact on aggregate systematic and idiosyncratic volatility of stock returns. PI has a positive effect on systematic volatility and a negative impact on firm‐specific volatility. Consistent with the effect of passive trading on price dynamics, we find evidence that PI is negatively associated with mutual funds alpha dissimilarity. After controlling for market and idiosyncratic volatility, a one‐standard‐deviation increase in PI corresponds to a 0.20% decrease in fund dissimilarity. Our findings are robust after controlling for various macro and corporate factors known to affect systematic or firm‐specific volatility.     

Stock Liquidity Risk and the Cross‐sectional Earnings‐Returns Relationship

We argue that a higher sensitivity to aggregate market‐wide liquidity shocks (i.e., a higher liquidity risk) implies a tendency for a stock's price to converge to fundamentals. We test this intuition within the framework of the earnings‐returns relationship. We find a positive liquidity risk effect on the relationship between return and expected change in earnings. This effect on the earnings‐returns relationship is distinct from the negative effect observed for stock illiquidity level. Notably, the liquidity risk effect is evident (absent) during periods of neutral/low (high) aggregate market liquidity. We also show that the liquidity risk effect is dominant in firms that: (a) are of intermediate size; (b) are of intermediate book‐to‐market; and (c) are profit making.     

Return and volatility co-movement in commodity futures markets: the effects of liquidity risk

Commodity markets are a widely researched topic in the field of finance. In this paper, we investigate the co-movement of return and volatility measures in different commodity futures markets and how these measures are affected by liquidity risk. First, we find that commodity returns display co-movement and that liquidity risk plays a key role in shaping asset return patterns. Moreover, we show that the volatilities of commodity returns co-move, and we demonstrate the role of liquidity risk in this joint pattern. We also find that the commodity markets we investigated share a common volatility factor that determines their joint volatility co-movement. Because liquidity risk affects both commodity returns and volatility shocks, it might be interpreted as the common causal factor driving both measures simultaneously. Therefore, we affirm the view that liquidity shocks are firmly related to two residual risks originating from both market return and market volatility. Finally, we also show that liquidity spillovers can significantly drive cross-sectional correlation dynamics.     

An examination of the relation between asymmetric risk measures,prior returns and expected daily stock returns

We use a sample of individual firm stock returns over the 1988–2009 time period to determine whether: (1) expected daily returns are related to asymmetric risk measures, (2) expected daily returns are related to the directional change of the prior day's price, and (3) our results are robust to the addition of firm size, book-to-market equity and liquidity. We find that investors are compensated for asymmetric risk; however, the positive risk–return relation is present only for our smallest firm quintile. We find a short-term return reversal present in all subgroups, except for the largest firms in our sample. We also document that the low volatility anomaly may be related to firm size and liquidity.     

Illiquidity,return and risk in G7 stock markets: Interdependencies and spillovers

Trading activity in G7 stock markets reflects not only the macroeconomic and financial impact of these G7 economies in international economic growth, but also their financial interdependence. While this nexus of major stock markets has been explored in terms of volatility and return spillovers, there has been no combined analysis of return, volatility and illiquidity spillovers. We study illiquidity spillovers because they are transmissions of trading activity and, thereof, transmissions of information and market sentiment. We find that the dynamics of international stock markets are characterized by persistent illiquidity and also that illiquidity shocks are significantly correlated across markets. Furthermore, we discover Granger causal associations between risk, return and illiquidity across G7 stock market and also within each stock market. Our findings bear significance for the regulation of international financial markets and also for international portfolio diversification.     

Liquidity commonality and high frequency trading: Evidence from the French stock market

High frequency trading (HFT) depends on sophisticated algorithms to closely monitor price changes across securities. Theory predicts this technological advantage should translate into market-wide liquidity co-variation, by transmitting information-based liquidity shocks. Using a dataset of orders and trades from the French stock market, we investigate whether HFT algorithms constitute a source of systematic liquidity risk. We demonstrate that, across securities, the liquidity offered by high frequency traders is significantly less diverse than that of traditional traders; this finding is in line with the cross-asset learning hypothesis. The excessive co-movement in liquidity is also partly explained by common market making rules. In periods of increased market stress, we find HFT, designated market making, and order size to be important sources of liquidity commonality. Our results have policy implications for market regulators in Paris, suggesting the inclusion of maximum spread-limit rules in market making contracts will reduce the possibility of liquidity drying up when markets are in turmoil.     

Share buybacks in India

We examine the market price and liquidity reaction to 239 share repurchase announcements in India. The average abnormal return on announcement day is 2.07 percent. Firms with larger promotor ownership stakes experience higher market reactions. Using the Amihud illiquidity measure and volume, we show that liquidity improves after the announcement. Open market repurchase programs increase market liquidity while tender offers do not. Liquidity improves more for high promotor ownership firms. Lastly, shorter duration repurchase programs improve liquidity more than longer duration programs. These results are consistent with our discussion of the pecking order of ownership structure in the low information transparency environment of India.     

Asset market equilibrium with liquidity risk

This paper derives an equilibrium asset pricing model with endogenous liquidity risk. Liquidity risk is modeled as a stochastic quantity impact on the price from trading, where the size of the impact depends on trade size. Under a strong set of assumptions, we prove that a unique equilibrium liquidity cost process and a unique equilibrium price process exists for our economy. We characterize the market’s state price density, which enables the derivation of the risk-return relation for the stock’s expected return including liquidity risk. We derive a generalized intertemporal CAPM and consumption CAPM for these markets. In contrast to the traditional models without liquidity risk, there is an additional systematic liquidity risk factor which is related to the stock return’s covariation with the market’s stochastic liquidity cost. Traditional transaction costs are a special case of our formulation.     

The impact of corporate governance,regulatory differences and futures contracts on movements among portfolios of cross-listed equities: The case of Germany

We test the impact of corporate governance effects on the stock price volatility of the DAX100 and find that these variables increase the volatility and decrease the error terms statistically significant. In addition, controlling for contemporaneous and next period's movements, we find that shocks can have a significant impact on the magnitude of stock return co-movements. In particular, our results show that the impact of the German mark/Euro and German bond price index futures shocks have a significant effect on spillovers, on contemporaneous and next period's co-movements related to firms or equities that cross-list on markets with different creditor bankruptcy protection rules. On the other hand, the impact of the German mark/Euro and the German stock price index shocks related to different shareholder protection rules have a smaller impact on both the next period's co-movements and contemporaneous co-movements among or between markets.     

Market illiquidity and bounds on European option prices

The paper analyses the impact of illiquidity of a stock paying no dividends on the pricing of European options written on that stock. In particular, it is shown how illiquidity generates price bounds on an option on this stock, even in the absence of other imperfections, such as transaction costs and trading constraints, or the assumption of stochastic volatility. Moreover, price bounds are shown to be asymmetric with respect to the option price under perfect liquidity. This fact explains, under some conditions, the appearance of a smile effect when the implied volatility is estimated from the mid-quote.     

Price informativeness and stock return synchronicity: Evidence from the pricing of seasoned equity offerings

We investigate what stock return synchronicity reflects in terms of price informativeness by examining its effect on the pricing of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs). Based on 5,087 SEOs from 1984 to 2007, we find a significantly negative relation between stock return synchronicity (estimated as the logit transformation of the R-squared statistic from a two-factor regression) and SEO discounts (the percentage differences between pre-offer day closing prices and offer prices). The negative relation is strongest when there is no analyst coverage, and it declines as analyst coverage increases. This shows that stock price is more informative when stock return synchronicity is higher and also that information asymmetry can be mitigated by analyst coverage. We further decompose stock return synchronicity into the market comovement and industry comovement components and find that both components are equally important in affecting SEO discounts.     

How is illiquidity priced in the Chinese stock market?

This study investigates the liquidity premium in the Chinese stock market. We found that the expected stock returns increase monotonically with the quintile sort on characteristic liquidity with descending patterns. The characteristic liquidity premium ranges from 0.82% to 1.28% per month, which is much higher than that of their US counterparts. Moreover, our multivariate decomposition approach highlights that characteristic illiquidity premiums can be explained mainly by size, idiosyncratic volatility and momentum. The net systematic liquidity premium reaches 0.84% per month, driven mainly by commonality beta. The finding shows that a liquidity-based strategy forecasts cross-section and time-series expected returns.     

Depth improvement and adjusted price improvement on the New York stock exchange

Traditional price improvement improperly assesses large orders’ execution quality by ignoring additional liquidity depth-exceeding orders receive at the quoted price and viewing orders that “walk the book” as “disimproved”. Ignoring this additional liquidity is particularly problematic when assessing execution quality in markets with significant non-displayed liquidity. To correct this deficiency, we modify the price benchmark used to determine whether an order is price improved by making the benchmark a function of the order's size relative to the quoted depth. We document that the differences between conventional price improvement and our measure, adjusted price improvement, can be dramatic and show that the difference depends on trading volume, stock price, and volatility.     

Does eliminating the Form 20-F reconciliation from IFRS to U.S. GAAP have capital market consequences?

This paper investigates the capital market consequences of the SEC's decision to eliminate the reconciliation requirement for cross-listed companies following International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). We find no evidence that the elimination has a negative impact on firms' market liquidity or probability of informed trading (PIN). We also find no evidence of a significant impact on cost of equity, analyst forecasts, institutional ownership, stock price efficiency and synchronicity. Moreover, IFRS users do not increase disclosure frequency nor supply the reconciliation voluntarily. Our results do not support the argument that eliminating the reconciliation results in information loss or greater information asymmetry.     

IFRS adoption and stock misvaluation: Implication to Korea discount

Analyzing publicly traded stocks in Korea surrounding IFRS adoption in 2011, we find that the gap between stock price and firm value, value-to-price (V/P) ratio, narrows following the IFRS adoption and that this narrowed gap is observed only for higher V/P firms. We further find that the return predictability of V/P decreases in the post-IFRS period. Using a path analysis, we report further evidence that mandatory IFRS adoption decreases idiosyncratic volatility and improves trading volume and market liquidity, thereby contributing to the narrowed gap between value and price. We conclude that IFRS adoption contributes to resolution of Korea discount.     

STOCK MARKET OPENNESS AND MARKET QUALITY: EVIDENCE FROM THE SHANGHAI–HONG KONG STOCK CONNECT PROGRAM

We study the impact of capital market openness on high-frequency market quality in China. The Shanghai–Hong Kong Stock Connect program (SHHKConnect) opens China's stock market to foreign investors and offers a natural experiment to investigate this question. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that market liberalization leads to lower quoted spread, lower effective spread, lower market depth, and higher short-term volatility. Our findings imply that opening the markets to more sophisticated foreign investors is associated with higher competition and more cross-market arbitrage activities, narrowing the spread and reducing liquidity providers’ profits, but increasing the price impact and short-term volatility of connected stocks.     

Overnight block trades in the Korean stock market

We examine the characteristics of overnight block trades in the Korean stock market from 2004 to 2015. We find that the discount on the offering price is negatively related to the number and return volatility of shares, the offering price is higher for firm-commitment contracts than for best-effort contracts, the discount level is lower for larger deal values under best-effort contracts, commission fee rates and fees are more pronounced under firm-commitment contracts, and a deal's uncertainty is related to the firm's contract choice. The incentives of sellers and investment banks are aligned unless sellers face an informational disadvantage.