What do equity issuances signal? A study of equity issuances in the UK before and during the financial crisis

The financial crisis provides an ideal setting to study how quality signalling by firms, and information asymmetries, might explain the stock price reactions around seasoned equity offerings. The heightened information asymmetry levels during the GFC should have increased the importance of issuance quality and information asymmetries in explaining announcement returns. However, we document new and, in some cases, surprising findings, using a sample of 700 UK seasoned equity offerings between 2003 and 2012: (1) Contrary to expectations, announcement returns during the crisis were driven less by signalling and asymmetric information effects and more by macroeconomic conditions and general uncertainty. (2) In constrained capital markets, firms that were able to move more quickly to raise significant amounts of capital, made the capital-raising environment more challenging for firms that followed, such that the latter had to incur additional costs. (3) Contrary to the traditional view that the low book-to-market ratios may proxy for overvaluation and thus lower announcement returns, we found a negative relationship during the crisis period. The latter is consistent with the view that book-to-market ratios may also proxy for a distressed firm effect which may have dominated the conventional ‘market timing’ effect during the GFC. (4) Announcement returns were strongly positive for many firms at the peak of the crisis, possibly because the market was relieved to see that equity issues might potentially save firms from insolvency; an equity issuance could, in such circumstances, be a positive signal, even though equity issues are conventionally seen as negative signals. Overall, our paper documents fresh and surprising results about equity capital-raising during the GFC, and also offers insights for corporate finance that are of interest beyond the current crisis.     

Market behaviour around bankruptcy announcements: evidence from the Australian Stock Exchange

The corporate distress literature to date has largely focused on the predictive power of accounting variables ( Altman, 2001 ). Following previous literature, this study examines the relevance of abnormal stock returns in discriminating between failed and non‐failed firms (e.g. Clark and Weinstein, 1983; Shumway, 2001). Our results confirm the findings of previous literature that investors in failed firms typically incur substantial negative stock returns leading up to failure announcements. However, in contrast to prior research we do not find evidence of an announcement effect (i.e. negative stock returns on the event day itself or the day preceding). We also document evidence that the bid‐ask spreads of failed firms widen substantially up to 7 months prior to failure, indicating the likelihood of significant information asymmetries across investors in failed firms.     

Equilibrium Correlations of Asset Price and Return

Two empirical questions concerning the equity and housing have been studied extensively: (1) Are the price and return serially correlated, and (2) What is the optimal weight of housing in the portfolio? The answer to the second question crucially depends on the cross-correlation of assets. This paper complements the literature by building a simple dynamic general equilibrium with fully rational agents, and obtain closed form solutions for the implied auto- and cross-correlations. The length of time horizon, as well as the persistence of economic shock matter. Implications and future research directions are then discussed.     

Periodic Information Asymmetry and Intraday Market Behaviour: An Empirical Analysis

The model of Foster-Viswanathan (1990, FV) predicts that informationheterogeneity among market participants generates patterns involume, trading costs and volatility. In the Italian Treasurybond market, periodic information asymmetry is related to thearrival of block orders from international investors, whichcluster soon after the opening of the market and, respectively,of the US market. Our evidence is that volume is lower and tradingcosts are higher after the two openings, consistent with FV.We find only weak evidence that volatility behaves as impliedby the model. JEL Classification: D82; G14     

中国股票市场的已实现偏度与收益率预测

利用高频股票指数数据,本文构造了中国股票市场的已实现偏度,并检验了其对中国股票市场收益率的预测能力。实证结果显示,当前较低的已实现偏度可以显著预测下个月中国股票市场较高的超额收益率,样本内和样本外的R²分别达到了3.39%和2.24%。在控制了一系列的其它股票预测变量之后,该结论依然成立。此外,基于四种不同的构造方法,已实现偏度对上海和深圳两个股票市场都具有显著的预测能力。在将所有不同的已实现偏度指标进行组合之后,预测能力得到了进一步提升。从经济解释上,本文发现已实现偏度对股票收益率的预测能力是通过影响股票市场的交易活跃程度,从而传导到股票市场收益率。     

Forecasting stock market returns: The sum of the parts is more than the whole

We propose forecasting separately the three components of stock market returns—the dividend–price ratio, earnings growth, and price–earnings ratio growth—the sum-of-the-parts (SOP) method. Our method exploits the different time series persistence of the components and obtains out-of-sample R-squares (compared with the historical mean) of more than 1.3% with monthly data and 13.4% with yearly data. This compares with typically negative R-squares obtained in a similar experiment with predictive regressions. The performance of the SOP method comes mainly from the dividend–price ratio and earnings growth components, and the robustness of the method is due to its low estimation error. An investor who timed the market using our method would have had a Sharpe ratio gain of 0.3.     

国外私募股权二级市场发展对我国的启示

PE二级市场在国外已有近30年的发展历史,其对于一国健康稳定多层次金融环境的建设贡献良多。近年来我国PE初级市场获得了长足发展,由此催生了建设PE二级市场的需求。我们需要在借鉴国外PE二级市场发展经验的同时结合国情寻找中国的PE二级市场之路。营造宽松的法律政策环境、鼓励多主体参与以及加快二级市场的理论与实际相结合的研究是我国PE二级市场发展初期可以考虑的三类政策措施。     

Order book characteristics and the volume–volatility relation: Empirical evidence from a limit order market

Using unique data, we address the issue of price formation in a limit order market. A standard volume–volatility relation is documented with the number of trades acting as the important component of volume. The main contribution of the paper is to identify strong evidence that volume, volatility, and the volume–volatility relation are negatively related to the order book slope. These results are robust to the inclusion of several liquidity measures. A significant empirical relationship between the order book slope and the coefficient of variation in earnings forecasts by financial analysts suggests that the slope is proxying for disagreement among investors. Hence, our results support models where investor heterogeneity intensifies the volume–volatility relation.     

我国发展私募股权基金的思考

发展私募股权基金可促进金融结构优化、推动企业素质提高.但我国发展私募股权基金还存在许多障碍,我们应从完善有利于私募股权基金发展的法律法规体系、促进创新型企业的发展、完善私募股权基金的退出通道、拓宽私募股权基金资本来源渠道等方面促进我国私募股权基金的发展.     

Nonlinear serial dependence and the weak-form efficiency of Asian emerging stock markets

The objective of this paper is to re-examine the weak-form efficiency of 10 Asian emerging stock markets. Using a battery of nonlinearity tests, the statistical results reveal that all the returns series still contain predictable nonlinearities even after removing linear serial correlation from the data. The next stage of sub-sample analysis using the Hinich [Hinich, M., 1996. Testing for dependence in the input to a linear time series model. Journal of Nonparametric Statistics 6, 205–221] bicorrelation test shows that the 10 Asian series follow a pure noise process for long periods of time, only to be interspersed with brief periods of strong nonlinear dependence. The exploratory investigation found that the cross-country differences in nonlinear departure from market efficiency can be explained by market size and trading activity, while the transient burst of nonlinear periods in each individual market can be attributed largely to the occurrence of economic and political events.     

Can we forecast the implied volatility surface dynamics of equity options? Predictability and economic value tests

We examine whether the dynamics of the implied volatility surface of individual equity options contains exploitable predictability patterns. Predictability in implied volatilities is expected due to the learning behavior of agents in option markets. In particular, we explore the possibility that the dynamics of the implied volatility surface of individual stocks may be associated with movements in the volatility surface of S&P 500 index options. We present evidence of strong predictable features in the cross-section of equity options and of dynamic linkages between the volatility surfaces of equity and S&P 500 index options. Moreover, time-variation in stock option volatility surfaces is best predicted by incorporating information from the dynamics in the surface of S&P 500 options. We analyze the economic value of such dynamic patterns using strategies that trade straddle and delta-hedged portfolios, and find that before transaction costs such strategies produce abnormal risk-adjusted returns.     

Developed markets’ business cycle dynamics and time-variation in emerging markets’ asset returns

This paper empirically studies the predictability of emerging markets’ stock returns by business cycle variables and the role of developed markets’ business cycle dynamics in this respect. The evidence shows that the link between business cycles and future stock market returns among emerging markets is considerably weaker than among developed markets. By contrast, I find strong evidence of stock return predictability by the respective country’s dividend-price ratio. This latter finding could reflect that variation in dividend-price ratios potentially reflects both the temporary impact of “hot money” inflows on emerging markets’ asset prices and rational expectations of future returns.