Forecasting commodity price indexes using macroeconomic and financial predictors

Using a long sample of commodity spot price indexes over the period 1947–2010, we examine the out-of-sample predictability of commodity prices by means of macroeconomic and financial variables. Commodity currencies are found to have some predictive power at short (monthly and quarterly) forecast horizons, while growth in industrial production and the investment–capital ratio have some predictive power at longer (yearly) horizons. Commodity price predictability is strongest when based on multivariate approaches that account for parameter estimation error. Commodity price predictability varies substantially across economic states, being strongest during economic recessions.     

Can structural change explain the Meese-Rogoff puzzle?

This paper provides empirical evidence suggesting that fundamentals matter for stock price fluctuations once temporal instability underpinning stock price-relations is accounted for. Specifically, this study extends the out-of sample forecasting methodology of Meese and Rogoff (J Int Econ 14:3–24 (1983)) to the stock market after explicitly testing for parameter nonconstancy using recursive techniques. The predictive ability of a present value model based on Imperfect Knowledge Economics (IKE) is found to match that of the pure random walk benchmark at short forecasting horizons and to perform significantly better at medium to longer-run horizons based on conventional measures of predictability and direction of change statistics. In addition, the presence of a cointegrating relation is found only within regimes of statistical parameter constancy. Augmenting the MR methodology in a piecewise linear fashion yields empirical results in favor of a fundamentals-based account of stock price behavior overturning the recent results of Flood and Rose (2010).     

Motives and consequences of IPOs in cold periods

We analyze the motives and long-term stock price performance of firms that pursue IPOs in cold IPO periods. We find that firms are more likely to engage in an IPO during a cold period when their earnings are relatively high and are expected to decline in the future. We also find that IPO firms during a cold period are more likely to have managed their earnings prior to the IPO. Furthermore, we find that cold IPO firms experience significantly weaker stock price performance than hot IPO firms, and results are robust to different criteria for defining hot and cold IPO periods, different measures of stock price performance, and different investment holding periods. We find that investment opportunities, the backing of a venture capitalist, and an increase in earnings in the year of the IPO lead to significantly higher long term stock price performance of IPO firms. Our multivariate models confirm the adverse cold IPO period effect on stock price performance even after controlling for the IPO motives and the firm's earnings performance. Our results also hold within the post-Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) era.     

The Information Content of Concurrently Announced Earnings, Cash Dividends, and Stock Dividends: An Investigation of the Chinese Stock Market

The firms listed on China's stock market are less than ten years old and to date there has been relatively little research on the usefulness of their accounting disclosures for investors. This study focuses on the information content of annual earnings and dividend announcements made by listed Chinese companies. Earnings, cash dividends, and stock dividends are announced concurrently in China and so this allows for tests of their information usefulness and of the interactions between the three signals. Based on a data set of up to 1,232 announcements, we find that unexpected earnings, proxied by earnings changes, are positively related to abnormal returns. Thus, earnings are used by investors in setting market prices. Stock dividends corroborate or attenuate the earnings signal. If the sign of the unexpected stock dividend (increase, decrease) is the same as the sign of the unexpected earnings, then the earnings signal is stronger. If the signs are opposite, the earnings signal is weaker. Unexpected cash dividends have little impact on the earnings signal. Stock dividends per se have a small association with stock returns. In contrast, cash dividends have no discernible association with stock returns and this is consistent with dividend irrelevance arguments. Our results are robust across a number of sensitivity tests.     

Forecasting stock prices with commodity prices: New evidence from Feasible Quasi Generalized Least Squares (FQGLS) with non-linearities

The complexities in modern stock markets make it imperative to unravel the possible predictors of their future values. This paper thus provides insights into the predictability of stock prices of the BRICS countries with large dependence on commodities either for foreign exchange earnings or industrial while accounting for the role of asymmetries. Essentially, empirical evidence abound for the high volatility in world commodity markets, thus making us to determine if positive and negative changes in commodity prices predict stock prices differently. In addition, unlike the traditional forecast models, our choice of forecast models additionally addresses certain statistical features, including conditional heteroskedasticity, serial dependence, persistence and endogeneity, inherent in the predictors, which have the potential of causing estimation bias. In all, we find evidence in favour of the ability of commodity prices to predict stock prices of Brazil, Russia and South Africa. Also, both the in-sample and out-of-sample forecast performances of the predicted models support asymmetries in a number of commodity prices in each of these three countries. Our results are robust to different data samples and forecast horizons.     

The role of text-extracted investor sentiment in Chinese stock price prediction with the enhancement of deep learning

Whether investor sentiment affects stock prices is an issue of long-standing interest for economists. We conduct a comprehensive study of the predictability of investor sentiment, which is measured directly by extracting expectations from online user-generated content (UGC) on the stock message board of Eastmoney.com in the Chinese stock market. We consider the influential factors in prediction, including the selections of different text classification algorithms, price forecasting models, time horizons, and information update schemes. Using comparisons of the long short-term memory (LSTM) model, logistic regression, support vector machine, and Naïve Bayes model, the results show that daily investor sentiment contains predictive information only for open prices, while the hourly sentiment has two hours of leading predictability for closing prices. Investors do update their expectations during trading hours. Moreover, our results reveal that advanced models, such as LSTM, can provide more predictive power with investor sentiment only if the inputs of a model contain predictive information.     

Stock price reactions to stock dividend announcements: A case from a sluggish economic period

The 2007 financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed resulted in a loss of confidence among investors, and regaining their full trust and confidence has been a challenge for companies. Although economic growth has been volatile throughout the postwar World War II period, recent growth (2008–2015) has been remarkably weaker than in the previous low-growth period (1974–1995). The 2006–2015 period is often characterized by sluggish economic growth. This study investigates stock price reactions to stock dividend announcements, 30 days before and after the announcement dates, of publicly traded companies in the period 2006–2012. We use an event study methodology for 460 events and daily stock price data for companies in the CRSP historical data set. The study shows a significant reaction in stock prices around the event date. On average, stock prices reacted positively to stock dividend announcements. However, compared to previous findings of abnormal returns (5.9%), results from this study show small abnormal returns (about 1.81%) attributable to stock dividend announcements that are cumulative of the announcement day and up to 3-day post-announcement days. Our estimates are even lower than the 2.01% stock price reaction obtained in the 1987–1996 period.     

Earnings announcements and the variability of stock returns

This article is concerned with the dissemination process of firm-specific annual earnings information in the Norwegian capital market. We find a significant reduction in stock price volatility in the post-announcement period relative to the pre-announcement period for companies traded on the Oslo Stock Exchange in the period 1990–1995. Potential explanations for this phenomenon are tested by relating the observed return volatility to changes in the volatility of the underlying business, the speed at which information is incorporated into stock prices, and the amount of noise in the price process. The empirical analyses reveal no significant changes in either the underlying business variance or the price adjustment coefficients. However, we find a significant decline in the noise term for the largest companies after the earnings release date, supporting the hypothesis that earnings announcements reduce informational asymmetries among investors.     

Miller and Modigliani,Predictive Return Regressions and Cointegration*

This paper investigates the use of alternative measures of dividend yields to predict US aggregate stock returns. Following Miller and Modigliani [Journal of Business (1961), Vol. 34, pp. 411–433] we construct a cashflow yield that includes both dividend and non‐dividend cashflows to shareholders. Using a data set covering the course of the 20th century, we show in a cointegrating vector autoregression framework that this measure has strong and stable predictive power for returns. The weak predictive power of standard measures of the dividend yield is explained by the strong rejection of the implied cointegrating and causality restrictions on the impact of non‐dividend cashflows.     

The long-term performance following dividend initiations and resumptions revisited

Previous studies have documented that an announcement of dividend initiation and resumption is associated with an increase in stock price, while Boehme and Sorescu (J Finance 47:871–900, 2002) argue that the dividend anomaly only occurs by chance. However, their sample contains firms listed within 3 and/or 5 years of their respective initial public offering (IPO) dates, as well as regulated firms. We conjecture that the confounding effects of IPOs and regulated firms may interfere with the increase in stock prices due to dividend initiations and resumptions and bias their results. We thus reexamine the long-term stock performance following dividend initiations and resumptions by excluding newly IPO firms and regulated firms. We find no evidence that the non-robust positive price drifts for firms, which initiate or resume cash dividends, is due to the confounding effects of IPOs and regulated firms. Therefore the price drifts after dividend initiation and resumption announcements may be a sample-specific result of chance, even after controlling for possible sample selection biases.     

Alternative estimation method of earnings growth rate for PEGR strategy

The ambiguous return pattern for the PEGR (the ratio of the stock’s price/earnings to its estimated earnings growth rate) strategy has been documented in literature for the US stock markets. As stock prices and earnings per share (EPS) are objective data, earnings growth rate, however, is estimated by analyst whose method partial explains the PEGR vague return pattern. The purpose of this study is not to deny or substitute analysts’ estimation, but rather, to provide a simple and popular method, log-linear regression model, to forecast the earnings growth rate (G), and examine whether the typical PEGR effect, such as PER (price/earnings ratio) or PBR (price/book ratio) effect, exists by using our alternative estimation method. Our evidence indeed shows that returns on the lowest PEGR portfolio not only dominate over all higher PEGR portfolios, but also beat the market with stochastic dominance (SD) analysis, which is consistent with our prediction. Our results, at least, imply that using the log-linear regression model to construct the PEGR-sorted portfolios can benefit investors and the model is also a good choice for analysts in their forecasting.     

上市公司股利政策的特点、成因及对策

股利政策是上市公司将税后收益在股东所得股利和留存收益之间进行的合理配置的策略,会对公司的股票市价和公司的市场形象产生巨大的影响。本文主要根据上市公司股利政策分配方案,全面客观地对我国的股票市场进行分析,并为公司今后制定出合理的股利分配政策提出参考意见。     

Do liquidity induced changes in aggregate dividends signal aggregate future earnings growth?

Extant empirical literature does not provide abundant evidence for the information content hypothesis regarding firm-level dividend signaling. Although this is consistent with the argument against an optimal firm-level dividend policy, this does not imply an absence of an optimal aggregate dividend level. Aggregate dividends and earnings may exhibit stronger associations if aggregation filters out firm-specific earnings information and indicates macroeconomic trends. Using macroeconomic data, we show that aggregate payout ratios signal aggregate future earnings growth for horizons up to 4 years, and that excess aggregate liquidity plays an important role in this relationship.

Heterogenous beliefs with sentiments and asset pricing

We present a dynamic equilibrium model with two irrational investors: an extrapolator and a contrarian, whose beliefs regarding the growth rate of dividend stream are biased by their sentiments. The key contribution is to connect two disagreements with the degree of irrationality of investors and to provide novel insights into the predictability of stock return. We show that the higher level of sentiment disagreement is, the more stock price is overvalued. However, the future stock price will decline because the extrapolator’s sentiment will cool down over time. Therefore, the sentiment disagreement negatively predicts future return. At the meanwhile, our model not only shows that the survey expectations about cashflows increase the variations in asset price and dampen the corresponding volatility, but also helps to explain the mixed results about the relationship between the investors’ belief dispersions and stock return predictability.     

On the differential market reaction to dividend initiations

The finance literature documents substantial positive stock price reaction to dividend initiations. Most dividend initiation studies focus on the average positive reaction; however, 40 percent of the firms that initiate dividends experience negative abnormal returns at announcement. This paper focuses on the apparent heterogeneity in the stock price reaction to dividend initiation. I find that the observed negative market reaction reflects the market’s economic assessment of the impact of the event on these firms, and that it is not caused by anticipation or confounding events. The result is also supported by the fact that the market reaction to dividend initiation for these firms is negatively related to initial dividend yield. Both the positive and negative observed reactions are consistent with conventional arguments regarding the information content of dividends, and their role in mitigating agency problems.     

中国A股上市公司股权分置改革前后盈余管理实证研究

本文以截至2005年底沪市和深市宣布进行股权分置改革的A股上市公司为样本,对股权分置改革过程中的盈余管理行为进行了研究。研究结果表明:股权分置改革方案出台的前一季度,股改公司的操控性应计利润显著为负;股改完成的后一季度,股改公司的操控性应计利润显著为正;股改后几批的公司比前几批的公司有更显著的操控性应计利润。进一步的研究表明,沪市的股改公司比深市的股改公司有更显著的操控性应计利润,低对价股改公司比高对价股改公司有更显著的操控性应计利润。     

Expected market returns: SVIX,realized volatility,and the role of dividends

This note provides a replication of Martin's (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2017, 132(1), 367–433) finding that the implied volatility measure SVIX predicts US stock market returns up to 12‐month horizons. I find that this result holds for both S&P 500 and CRSP market returns, regardless of whether returns include or exclude dividends. The predictability largely disappears after the SVIX index is replaced by an exponentially weighted moving average measure of realized volatility, suggesting that SVIX holds incremental forward‐looking information compared to realized volatility, despite the high correlation between the two volatility measures.     

Modelling oil price expectations: Evidence from survey data

Using Consensus Forecast survey data on WTI oil price expectations for 3- and 12-month horizons over the period November 1989 to December 2008, we find that the rational expectation hypothesis is rejected and that none of the traditional extrapolative, regressive and adaptive processes fits the data by itself. We suggest a mixed expectation model defined as a linear combination of these traditional processes, which we interpret as the aggregation of individual mixing behavior and of heterogenous groups of agents using these simple processes. This approach is consistent with the economically rational expectations theory. We show that the target oil price included in the regressive component of this model depends on the long-run marginal cost of crude oil production and on short term macroeconomic fundamentals whose effects are subject to structural changes. For the two horizons, estimation results provide evidence for our mixed expectation model incorporating this break-dependent target price.     

Multinationals' Offshore Operations,Tax Avoidance,and Firm‐Specific Information Flows: International Evidence

Using a large sample of multinational enterprises (MNEs) over the period 1999–2009, this study investigates whether and how offshore operations via offshore financial centers (OFCs) impact the extent to which firm‐specific information is incorporated into stock price, relative to common information. Our analyses show that, irrespective of whether a firm is a Type I offshore firm (directly having headquarters registered in OFCs) or a Type II offshore firm (indirectly setting up subsidiaries in OFCs), the amount of firm‐specific information flowing into stock price is lower for offshore firms than for non‐offshore firms. We also find that as offshore firms become more aggressive in their tax avoidance strategies, their stock prices impound a lower amount of firm‐specific information relative to common information. Finally, we find that a strong offshore proclivity also deters firm‐specific information flows, thereby driving up stock price synchronicity. Our results suggest that the opaque and complex nature of business and financial transactions in OFCs, coupled with their institutional characteristics, that is, weak and flexible legal enforcement, zero or extremely low taxation, and low litigation risk, provide offshore firms with not only stronger incentives but also the opportunities and means to adopt opaque disclosure policies and aggressive earnings management.     

Dispersion in analysts’ target prices and stock returns

We propose the dispersion in analysts’ target prices as a new measure of disagreement among analysts and a proxy of ex ante stock risk. In contrast to the negative return predictability of analysts’ earnings forecast dispersion but consistent with the risk hypothesis, we document a significant positive relation between the target price dispersion and future stock returns up to 24 months. The next-month return spread between the highest and lowest deciles sorted on the target price dispersion measures can be over 2%. Our findings cannot be explained by the standard risk factors and stock characteristics including the target price revision. Further supporting the risk hypothesis, the target price dispersion is positively related to future stock risk.