Diversification potential of Asian frontier,BRIC emerging and major developed stock markets: A wavelet-based value at risk approach

This study examines the portfolio risk and the co-movements between each of the BRIC emerging and South Asian frontier stock markets and each of the major developed stock markets (U.S., UK and Japan), using the wavelet squared coherence approach as well as the wavelet-based Value at Risk (VaR) method. The results show that the co-movements and diversification benefits between these markets vary over time and across frequencies. Additionally, the co-movements are intensified in the wake of the recent global financial crisis (GFC) and the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis (ESDC). More precisely, the wavelet-based VaR ratio indicates that including a BRIC or a South Asian (particularly Pakistan and Sri Lanka at both the short- and long-term) stock market in a portfolio of the developed stock markets reduces the resulting portfolio's VaR. Specifically, adding China in the medium term to this portfolio reduces risk in the pre- and during both the GFC and ESDC periods. By assigning optimal weights to the different market assets in the portfolio formulation, the analysis thus has implications for international investors.     

A Study of Correlation Between International Equity Markets Using Exchange-Traded Funds

ABSTRACT

This study utilized weekly closing prices data from three Exchange-Traded Funds representing American, Japanese and European equity markets. The purpose was to examine the joint impact of any two on the third market. Ishares Russell 3000 (IWV), Ishares MSCI Japan (EWJ) and Ishares S&P Europe 350 (IEV) were used to represent the U.S., Japan, the European stock markets, respectively. While the findings indicate that the interdependences among the three markets are significant, there is still room for international portfolio diversification: for example, Japanese investors can realize diversification benefits by investing both in Europe and in the U.S. European and American investors, on the other hand, can diversify portfolios by investing in Japan. The application of multivariate- autoregressive-moving-aver-ages (MARIMA) to the data confirmed the above findings. Finally, the study supported the hypothesis that the international market correlations increase during times of volatility.     

Volatility and shock interactions and risk management implications: Evidence from the U.S. and frontier markets

The study affords comprehensive evidence of shock and volatility interactions between stock markets of each of the twenty four frontier markets and the U.S. for the period 2006:01 to 2015:07. The results from the recent EDCC-GARCH model of Nakatani and Teräsvirta (2009), which permits for concurrent estimation of shock and volatility interactions as well as dynamic conditional correlations (DCC) across assets, shows unidirectional shock and volatility transmissions from the U.S. to the frontier markets. The conditional correlation between the U.S. and each frontier market is very low or negative, offering diversification benefits to U.S. investors. The DCC exhibits slow decay and is insignificantly impacted by previous period's shocks. The results are very intuitive for optimal portfolio allocations using the traditional capital-based as well as the risk-based allocations. The risk parity approach to portfolio management increases (reduces) allocations to lower (higher) risk assets to improve portfolio diversification while increasing the risk-adjusted returns.     

A Framework for Assessing Global Imbalances1

Since the mid‐1990s and prior to the financial crisis external balances of systemically important economies widened significantly. This paper takes a long‐run perspective and reviews the main determinants of widening global imbalances. To this aim, we first provide a set of newly derived statistical measures: while large external imbalances are not new in economic history, their persistence, their concentration on one economy (the United States) and the specific role of emerging market economies make the present episode rather unique. Second, we argue that the observed pattern of imbalances can be mostly understood as a result of various structural changes in the global economy, which have allowed a widening trend of external positions. Three main features set the most recent period apart from past episodes of growing external imbalances: (i) the emergence of new players, in particular emerging market economies such as China and India, which are quickly catching up with the advanced economies; (ii) an unprecedented wave of financial globalisation, with more integrated global financial markets and increasing opportunities for international portfolio diversification, also characterised by considerable asymmetries in the level of market completeness across countries; and (iii) the favourable global macroeconomic and financial environment, with record high global growth rates in recent years, low financial market volatility and easy global financing conditions over a long period of time, running until the outburst of the financial crisis during the summer of 2007. These structural changes that have been supplemented by cyclical or policy‐induced factors ultimately facilitated the sudden, disorderly unwinding of global imbalances that is reflected in the current financial crisis.     

Financial crises and contagion vulnerability of MENA stock markets

This paper examines contagion vulnerability and the international and regional financial linkages of the MENA stock markets. The degree of vulnerability of those markets to global and regional financial crises will have important bearings on the respective economies' growth rate, and on their ability to diversify international and regional portfolios. Granger causality tests and impulse response functions reveal that while the GCC equity markets still offer international investors portfolio diversification potentials, those markets are relatively less vulnerable to global and regional financial crises. Moreover, even though the remaining MENA stock markets of Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia have matured and are now financially integrated with the world stock markets, they tend to exhibit more vulnerability to regional and international financial crises. Their vulnerability to international financial crises is due, on the one hand, to weak regional integration, and to greater economic and financial integration with the more advanced economies on the other.     

Regime switching in the reactions of stock markets in Saudi Arabia to oil price variations

The study revisits the stock–oil nexus by examining the reactions of equity markets to oil price shocks at national and sectoral levels for Saudi Arabia in a time‐varying framework by employing the Markov switching EGARCH model developed by Henry (2009, Journal of Banking and Finance, 33, 405). Based on weekly data, the findings reveal that the behaviour of all stock markets switches between an expansion regime and a recession regime, with more persistence for the expansion state. Additionally, influential international events associated with stock market drops are clearly identified in the recession regime. Furthermore, there is evidence of asymmetric reactions of the equity index returns and the probabilities of transition from one state to another to oil price variations, with heterogeneous impacts across sectors and regimes. The stock markets are more sensitive to oil price decreases than to oil price increases. Although the evidence of relatively slight differences in some findings across weekdays, the study allows investors and policymakers to understand well the interactions of stock sector markets vis‐à‐vis the world oil market in a regime‐switching framework, in order to make the right decision as regards portfolio diversification and regulation of the stock markets.     

Industry and country factors in emerging market returns: Did the Asian crisis make a difference?

Should investors diversify across emerging stock markets or across industries to achieve improvements in their risk–return tradeoffs especially during financial crisis periods? We examine the issue using individual firm data from a selection of emerging markets and including the period of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. We find that country effects were the dominant force behind the low co-movements among emerging stock market returns. There is evidence of increased industry effects beginning at the time of the Asian financial crisis, but this may have been a temporary phenomenon associated with contagion effects during the crisis.     

Does socially responsible investment equity indexes in emerging markets pay off? Evidence from Brazil

This paper explores the financial performance of a mainstream socially responsible investment equity index in emerging markets: the Brazilian Corporate Sustainability Index. The results indicate that investors in emerging markets could accommodate their ethical values while at the same time not scarifying their overall portfolio performance in bullish market periods. However, the financial crisis led ethical investors to take a riskier and less profitable portfolio. These results seem to be due to socially responsible investment in Brazil that, as with other emerging markets, is highly influenced by social and institutional factors.     

Dependence of stock and commodity futures markets in China: Implications for portfolio investment

We examine the recent trends in dependence structure between the fast-growing commodity markets and the stock markets in China. We address this issue by using copula functions that allow for measuring both average and tail dependence. Our results provide evidence of low and positive correlations between these markets, suggesting that commodity futures are a desirable asset class for portfolio diversification. By comparing the market risks of alternative portfolio strategies, we show that Chinese investors can take advantage of commodity futures during different times to realize risk diversification and downside risk reduction benefits.     

Liquidity and macroeconomic management in emerging markets

Emerging markets have received considerable attention for foreign investment and international diversification due to the possibility of higher earnings and a low level of integration with global equity markets. These high returns often need to be balanced by the high liquidity costs of trading in illiquid emerging markets. Several studies have shown that central bank and government policies are significant determinants of market liquidity. We investigate the influence of monetary and fiscal policy variables on the market and firm level liquidity of eight emerging stock markets of Asia. Using four different (il)liquidity measures and nine macroeconomic variables, we find that changes in the money supply, government expenditure and private borrowing significantly affect stock market liquidity. Illiquidity is also strongly affected by the bank rate, short-term interest rate and government borrowing. We demonstrate that ‘crowding out’ and ‘cost of funds’ effects exist in these markets. Other major findings are that some markets are more sensitive to local macroeconomic news than world factors, the impact on size based portfolios largely depends on the instruments used by the central banks and government, the liquidity of the manufacturing sector is affected by changes in any policy variables, financial institutions are only influenced by monetary policy variables, and the service sector is least affected.     

Dynamic Global Linkages of the BRICS Stock Markets with the United States and Europe Under External Crisis Shocks: Implications for Portfolio Risk Forecasting

Crisis shocks often lead to changes in the interdependence across stock markets and thus affect risk assessment and management. This paper investigates the extent to which the global financial crisis of 2008–09, which was triggered by the US subprime crisis in 2007, and the European debt crisis that started at the end of 2009, affects the interdependence of the leading emerging markets of the BRICS countries with those of the United States and Europe. Our empirical analysis makes use of the FIAPARCH model combined with the Dynamic Equicorrelation (DECO‐FIAPARCH), which allows for the estimation of market linkage for a large group of countries as a whole, while controlling for asymmetric volatility and long memory. The results reveal the presence of important changes in the time‐varying linkages of the BRICS stock markets with the US and European ones. In particular, the average linkages have significantly been higher between 2007 and the first half of 2012 than the remaining part of the sample, and there is also evidence of a structural change around the Lehman Brothers collapse. We also show the effects of these stylised facts on portfolio risk assessment and forecasting.     

Emerging markets before the 1997 Asia Pacific financial crisis

This study investigates which Asia Pacific markets were driven by the US stock market and which by the Japanese stock market during the 1995-97 period, right before the 1997 Asia Pacific financial crisis. The results show that stock markets of Hong Kong, Indonesia and Malaysia shared a long-run equilibrium relationship with the US stock market. The stock market of the Philippines was linked with both the US stock market and the Japanese stock market, while stock markets of Thailand and South Korea did not appear to be influenced by either. Countries whose capital markets had a co-integrating relationship with the US market pegged their national currencies closely to the US dollar.     

Volatility spillover and hedging effectiveness among China and emerging Asian Islamic equity indexes

We study the volatility spillover between China and Asian Islamic stock markets. We use a sample of six Islamic MSCI indices from the Asian region, namely China, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea and Thailand obtained from MSCI (Morgan Stanley Capital International). In this paper we analyze the importance of considering spillover effects between emerging Asian Islamic indexes based on the Bivariate VARMA-BEKK-AGARCH model of McAleer et al. (2009), which includes spillover and asymmetric effects. We compute after the effectiveness of portfolio diversification based on the conditional volatility of returns series. Results show a significant positive and negative return spillover from China to selected Asian Islamic stock market and bidirectional volatility spillovers between China, Korea and Thailand Islamic market showing evidence of short-term predictability on Islamic Chinese stock market movements. However there is no short term volatility persistence in India, Indonesia and Malaysia. GARCH results show no persistence in volatility spillover effect in long term from Chinese to Indian, Indonesian and Korean Islamic stock market. Our findings are beneficial for international portfolio diversification for policy makers and investors since the results of portfolio management and hedging effectiveness ratio are different to previous studies.     

Including emerging markets in international momentum investment strategies

Momentum return investment strategies that diversify across countries provide lower portfolio standard deviations and/or increased expected returns. These diversification benefits are larger when adding emerging markets than when adding developed markets, and they are larger than would be suggested by diversifying with long-only portfolios. Using data on almost 16,000 firms from 22 developed and 18 emerging markets over the 1990–2004 period, we confirm the profitability of momentum trading strategies in both developed and emerging markets and document the diversification benefits of including emerging markets in an international momentum portfolio investment strategy.     

Shift‐contagion Vulnerability in the MENA Stock Markets

As part of a broader financial development reform agenda, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries have successfully expanded and revitalised their stock markets over the last decade. Whereas previous contributions have investigated efficiency, international integration and portfolio diversification opportunities, very little is known about these markets’ vulnerability to external financial crises. In this paper, we investigate shift‐contagion to the MENA region using a comprehensive battery of econometric tests for a number of different crises episodes: the 1997 Asian crisis, the 1998 Russian virus and its Brazilian sequel, the 2000 Turkish collapse, the 9/11 turmoil, the 2001 Argentinean crisis, the 2002 Enron/WorldCom scandal and the 2007–09 global financial crisis. We found that Turkey, Israel and Jordan were the most vulnerable markets over the 1997–2009 period, followed by Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and Lebanon. Our results also highlight heterogeneous but increasing levels of sensitivity to external financial shocks, especially during the recent global financial crisis. From a financial point of view, this suggests that MENA‐based diversification strategies may be relatively inefficient during periods of global turmoil. From an economic point of view, our results suggest that stock market development also involves potential destabilisation costs. This issue should be acknowledged and addressed by policymakers if these countries are to ensure a smooth transition towards international financial integration.     

Regional and global spillovers and diversification opportunities in the GCC equity sectors

This paper examines the international diversification benefits of bloc-wide equity sectors in the oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries by comparing alternative spillover models that encompass local, regional and global factors. Some GCC-wide equity sectors/subsectors are found to display segmentation from global markets during periods of high and extreme market volatility, and thus can serve as safe havens for international portfolio investors during such periods. The in- and out-of-sample portfolio analyses further suggest that supplementing global portfolios with positions in the GCC markets yields significant international diversification benefits, consistently offering much improved risk-adjusted returns across the alternative spillover models.     

Size, value and liquidity. Do They Really Matter on an Emerging Stock Market?

The paper extends the evidence on factors determining stock prices on emerging markets by focusing on the most advanced stock market in Central and Eastern Europe, the Polish market. Besides market, size and value factors, we investigate whether liquidity is a priced risk factor, addressing the hypothesis of its particular relevance in emerging markets. Our results support existing evidence for developed markets regarding market, size, and value factors. Contrary to the expectation that liquidity is a priced factor on emerging markets, we do not find evidence supporting this hypothesis. Analyzing specific market characteristics, we consider possible explanations behind these findings.     

Does corporate governance risk at home affect investment choices abroad?

Disparity between control and ownership rights gives rise to the risk of tunneling by the controlling shareholder, and is prevalent in many emerging market economies and present in some developed countries. At the same time, international investors come from different countries whose home markets are characterized by varying degrees of control–ownership disparity. This paper studies whether this difference in investors' home countries affects their portfolio choice in an emerging market. It combines two unique data sets on ownership and control in business groups, and investor-stock level foreign investment in Korea. A key finding is that investors from low-disparity countries disfavor high-disparity stocks in Korea, but investors from high-disparity countries are indifferent. Moreover, investors from low-disparity countries became averse to disparity only after the Asian financial crisis. These results suggest that the nature of corporate governance in international investors' home countries affects their portfolio choice abroad, and therefore these investors should not be lumped together in the analyses of their portfolio choice.     

Spillover Effects among European,the US and Moroccan Stock Markets before and after the Global Financial Crisis

ABSTRACT

This paper assesses return and volatility spillovers among stock markets in Morocco, the US, UK, France and Germany represented respectively by MASI, S&P 500, FTSE 100, CAC 40 and DAX 30 indices, both before and after the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008. The daily frequency data cover the period from January 2nd, 2002 to June 30th, 2016. Using the Diebold and Yilmaz approach, the results show varying financial connectedness between the Moroccan and the above mentioned developed stock markets. In fact, the significant increase of spillover index during the post-financial crisis period demonstrates that the US and European stock markets were the most affected. On the other hand, despite a relative increase of spillover effects coming from the US and German equity markets, our results show decline in the total net spillovers experienced by the Moroccan market after the recent financial crisis. These findings may provide some useful information to support decision-making and trading strategies for international investors.