Are options redundant? Further evidence from currency futures markets

This paper investigates the impact of the introduction of options on the underlying asset's price formation process, using Geweke feedback measures. We derive the feedback measures from the Deutsche Mark, British Pound, Swiss Franc, Japanese Yen and Canadian Dollar futures and spot prices, before and after the introduction of options for these currency futures. While each currency market maintains some distinct characteristics in the post-option period, a common theme is found: after the option introduction, the instantaneous feedback between spot and futures markets improves drastically. The feedback from the spot to the futures market tends to decrease and remains small. The feedback from the futures market to the spot market tends to decrease as well. These results confirm the dominance of options markets, probably due to their smaller transaction costs. When made available, options assume a leading role for information transmission in currency markets.     

Dependence structure and extreme comovements in international equity and bond markets

Common negative extreme variations in returns are prevalent in international equity markets. This has been widely documented with statistical tools such as exceedance correlation, extreme value theory, and Gaussian bivariate GARCH or regime-switching models. We point to limits of these tools to characterize extreme dependence and propose an alternative regime-switching copula model that includes one normal regime in which dependence is symmetric and a second regime characterized by asymmetric dependence. We apply this model to international equity and bond markets, to allow for inter-market movements. Empirically, we find that dependence between international assets of the same type is strong in both regimes, especially in the asymmetric one, but weak between equities and bonds, even in the same country.     

Information transmission in informationally linked markets: Evidence from US and Chinese commodity futures markets

This paper investigates information transmission and price discovery in informationally linked markets within the multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity and information share frameworks. Based on both synchronous and non-synchronous trading information from Chinese futures/spot markets, the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), and CME Globex futures markets for copper and soybeans, we show that there is a bidirectional relationship in terms of price and volatility spillovers between US and Chinese markets, with a stronger effect from US to Chinese markets than the other way around. Additionally, the NYMEX and CBOT play a more important role than the CME Globex in the flow of information from US to Chinese markets. Moreover, we find that Chinese copper market adjusts more quickly than the NYMEX copper market to correct the disparity between both markets. However, the converse is true in the case of soybeans. Finally, our results highlight the remarkable role of Chinese futures markets in the price formation process, though NYMEX and CBOT futures markets are the main driving force in price discovery.     

Mean reversion in stock market prices: New evidence based on bull and bear markets

In this paper we test whether mean reversion in stock market prices presents a different behavior in bull and bear markets. We date the US bull and bear periods using Bry and Boschan (1971) algorithm. We examine the order of integration in the S&P 500 stock market index covering a daily period from August 1929 to December 2006 in bull and bear phases. Our results indicate the existence of different episodes of mean reversion, which mainly correspond to bull market periods.     

Estimation of continuous-time models with an application to equity volatility dynamics

The treatment of this article renders closed-form density approximation feasible for univariate continuous-time models. Implementation methodology depends directly on the parametric-form of the drift and the diffusion of the primitive process and not on its transformation to a unit-variance process. Offering methodological convenience, the approximation method relies on numerically evaluating one-dimensional integrals and circumvents existing dependence on intractable multidimensional integrals. Density-based inferences can now be drawn for a broader set of models of equity volatility. Our empirical results provide insights on crucial outstanding issues related to the rank-ordering of continuous-time stochastic volatility models, the absence or presence of nonlinearities in the drift function, and the desirability of pursuing more flexible diffusion function specifications.     

Volume and skewness in international equity markets

We examine the relation between trading volume and skewness in 11 international stock markets using daily and monthly data from January 1980 to August 2004. We construct single equation and VAR models of the relation between the first three moments of market returns and trading volumes. Our results show hitherto unrecognised channels of influence, and support the investor heterogeneity approach to explaining return asymmetries.     

The dynamics of price discovery for cross-listed shares: Evidence from Australia and New Zealand

This paper studies the dynamics of price discovery for markets with bilateral cross-listings. Using a sample of four Australian stocks cross-listed in New Zealand and five New Zealand stocks cross-listed in Australia for the period January 2002 to December 2007, we assess Hasbrouck (1995) information shares and Grammig et al. (2005) conditional information shares over time. We observe that in both cases the home market is dominant in terms of price discovery. However, when studying price discovery over time, we find that the importance of the Australian market (the larger of the two markets) is increasing for both Australian and New Zealand domiciled firms. Finally, using panel regression analysis, we find that the growth in the importance of the Australian market is positively related to the growth in the size of the firm and negatively related to the size of the percentage spread in the Australian market, implying that as firms grow larger and their cost of trading in Australia declines, the Australian market becomes more informative.     

Correlation and return dispersion dynamics in Chinese markets

This paper studies the relation between firm-level return dispersions and correlations among Chinese stocks during periods of unusually large upward and downward swings. We analyze individual stock returns across 18 sectors and test if return dispersions and stock correlations show asymmetric patterns for extreme up and down markets. Evidence from studies on U.S. stocks suggests that equity return correlations tend to be much greater on the downside than on the upside and that the degree of comovement gets even stronger during extreme market states. However, in the case of Chinese stock market, we find that higher downside correlations apply to only stocks within the Financial sector. With the exception of Financial stocks, we find that stock correlations are significantly higher during up markets, rather than down markets. Regarding firm-level return dispersions, our findings are consistent with rational asset pricing model predictions. We find that equity return dispersions are significantly higher during periods of large price changes.     

Asymmetric effect of basis on dynamic futures hedging: Empirical evidence from commodity markets

The dynamic minimum variance hedge ratios (MVHRs) have been commonly estimated using the Bivariate GARCH model that overlooks the basis effect on the time-varying variance–covariance of spot and futures returns. This paper proposes an alternative specification of the BGARCH model in which the effect is incorporated for estimating MVHRs. Empirical investigation in commodity markets suggests that the basis effect is asymmetric, i.e., the positive basis has greater impact than the negative basis on the variance and covariance structure. Both in-sample and out-of-sample comparisons of the MVHR performance reveal that the model with the asymmetric effect provides greater risk reduction than the conventional models, illustrating importance of the asymmetric effect when modeling the joint dynamics of spot and futures returns and hence estimating hedging strategies.     

The asset growth effect: Insights from international equity markets

Firms with higher asset growth rates subsequently experience lower stock returns in international equity markets, consistent with the U.S. evidence. This negative effect of asset growth on returns is stronger in more developed capital markets and markets where stocks are more efficiently priced, but is unrelated to country characteristics representing limits to arbitrage, investor protection, and accounting quality. The evidence suggests that the cross-sectional relation between asset growth and stock return is more likely due to an optimal investment effect than due to overinvestment, market timing, or other forms of mispricing.     

Idiosyncratic volatility and equity returns: UK evidence

The proposition that idiosyncratic volatility may matter in asset pricing is currently a topic of research and controversy. Using data from the UK market we examine the predictive ability of various measures of idiosyncratic risk and provide evidence which suggests that: (a) it is the idiosyncratic volatility of small capitalization stocks that matters for asset pricing and (b) that small stocks idiosyncratic volatility predicts the small capitalization premium component of market returns and is unrelated to either the market or the value premium. The predictive power of the aggregate idiosyncratic volatility of small stocks remains intact even after we control for the possible proxying effects of business cycle fluctuations and liquidity and is robust across time and different econometric specifications.     

International transmission of information: evidence from the Euroyen and Eurodollar futures markets

This paper examines the information transmission between Japan and the US by using the Tokyo Euroyen and Chicago Eurodollar futures. These two interest rate futures markets provide a better understanding of international information transmission than stock markets, which have been shown to exhibit nonsynchronous trading and market segmentation. The results show that traders in Tokyo (Chicago) use information that is revealed overnight in Chicago (Tokyo). The bivariate EGARCH-t model provides no evidence of volatility spillovers in either direction, suggesting that the opening price rapidly reflects foreign information. The overall results support the hypothesis that the domestic market efficiently adjusts to foreign news. The results are also broadly consistent with the covered interest arbitrage effects.     

Volatility clustering,leverage effects,and jump dynamics in the US and emerging Asian equity markets

This paper proposes asymmetric GARCH-Jump models that synthesize autoregressive jump intensities and volatility feedback in the jump component. Our results indicate that these models provide a better fit for the dynamics of the equity returns in the US and emerging Asian markets, irrespective whether the volatility feedback is generated through a common GARCH multiplier or a separate measure of volatility in the jump intensity function. We also find that they can capture several distinguishing features of the return dynamics in emerging markets, such as, more volatility persistence, less leverage effects, fatter tails, and greater contribution and variability of the jump component.     

Commodity and equity markets: Some stylized facts from a copula approach

In this paper, we propose to identify the dependence structure that exists between returns on equity and commodity futures and its development over the past 20 years. The key point is that we do not impose any dependence structure, but let the data select it. To do so, we model the dependence between commodity (metal, agriculture and energy) and stock markets using a flexible approach that allows us to investigate whether the co-movement is: (i) symmetrical and frequent, (ii) (a) symmetrical and mostly present during extreme events and (iii) asymmetrical and mostly present during extreme events. We also allow for this dependence to be time-varying from January 1990 to February 2012. Our analysis uncovers three major stylised facts. First, we find that the dependence between commodity and stock markets is time-varying, symmetrical and occurs most of the time (as opposed to mostly during extreme events). Second, not allowing for time-varying parameters in the dependence distribution generates a bias towards an evidence of tail dependence. Similarly, considering only tail dependence may lead to false evidence of asymmetry. Third, a growing co-movement between industrial metals and equity markets is identified as early as 2003; this co-movement spreads to all commodity classes and becomes unambiguously stronger with the global financial crisis after Fall 2008.     

World markets for raising new capital

We examine the extent to which firms from different countries rely on alternative sources of capital, the locations in which they raise capital, and the factors that affect these choices. During the 1990–2001 period, firms raised about $25.3 trillion of new capital, including $4.9 trillion from abroad. International debt issuances are substantially more common than equity issuances, with debt (equity) issues accounting for 87% (9%) of all securities issued internationally, and about 20% (12%) of all public debt issuances. Market timing considerations appear to be important in security issuance decisions in most countries.     

Global private information in international equity markets

This paper studies international equity markets when some investors have private information that is valuable for trading in many countries simultaneously. We use a dynamic model of equity trading to show that global private information helps explain US investors’ trading behavior and performance. In particular, the model predicts global return chasing (positive co-movement of US investors’ net purchases with returns in many countries) which we show to be present in the data. Return chasing in our model can be due to superior performance of US investors, not inferior knowledge or naive trend-following. We also show that trades due to private information are strongly correlated across countries. A common (global) factor accounts for about half their variation.     

Correlation dynamics in European equity markets

We examine correlation dynamics using daily data from 1993 to 2002 on the five largest Euro-zone stock market indices. We also study, for comparison, the correlations of a sample of individual stocks. We employ both unconditional and conditional estimation methodologies, including estimation of the conditional correlations using the symmetric and asymmetric DCC-MVGARCH model, extended with the inclusion of a deterministic time trend. We confirm the presence of a structural break in market index correlations reported by previous researchers and, using an innovative likelihood-based search, we find that the it occurred at the beginning the process of monetary integration in the Euro-zone. We find mixed evidence of asymmetric correlation reactions to news of the type modelled by conventional asymmetric DCC-MVGARCH specifications.     

Stock returns and volatility following the September 11 attacks: Evidence from 53 equity markets

September 11 attacks matter, and why not? Given that globalization has integrated financial markets, the magnitudes of the effect of the September 11 attacks on global markets are expected to be pervasive. We used data from 53 equity markets to investigate the short term impact of the September 11 attacks on markets' returns and volatility. Our empirical findings indicate that the impact of the attacks resulted in significant increases in volatility across regions and over the study period. However, stock returns experienced significant negative returns in the short-run but recovered quickly afterwards. Nevertheless, we find that the impact of the attacks on financial markets varied across regions. The implication here is that the less integrated regions (e.g., Middle East and North Africa) are with the international economy, the less exposed they are to shocks.     

Hedging index exchange traded funds

This paper presents an empirical comparison of the out of sample hedging performance from naïve and minimum variance hedge ratios for the four largest US index exchange traded funds (ETFs). Efficient hedging is important to offset long and short positions on market maker’s accounts, particularly imbalances in net creation or redemption demands around the time of dividend payments. Our evaluation of out of sample hedging performance includes aversion to negative skewness and excess kurtosis. The results should be of interest to hedge funds employing tax arbitrage or leveraged long–short equity strategies as well as to ETF market makers.     

Dynamics of international integration of government securities’ markets

This paper investigates the dynamics of international government bond market integration in six of the G7 economies over two decades leading up to the global crisis. It examines whether such integration had been significant; the extent to which integration at the short and long end of the yield curve differed; the nature of such integration; and the extent of the decoupling of the long rates from short rates. These issues are investigated using the rigorous smooth-transition copula-GARCH model framework. The results show that integration at the long end of the yield curve had been increasing, had become pronounced, and was significantly greater than at the short end. Decoupling between the short and long end of the yield curve was notable, with important implications for the efficacy of monetary policy in the period before the crisis.