Intraday jumps and US macroeconomic news announcements

This paper applies recent non-parametric intraday jump detection procedures to investigate the presence and importance of intraday jumps in US futures markets. More importantly, the paper investigates the extent to which statistically significant intraday jumps are associated with US macroeconomic news announcements. Jumps are prevalent, large and contribute heavily to total daily price variation. Approximately one third of jumps correspond to US macroeconomic news announcements, with pure announcement effects causing large increases in the absolute sizes of jumps and the informational surprise of the announcement explaining large proportions of the jumps. The statistical and economic significance of news-related jumps is confirmed by results that show higher volatility persistence, predictability of lower frequency returns, larger effects on microstructure variables, jump clustering and co-jumps from these jumps versus non-news-related jumps, although there are some interesting variations across asset classes.     

Intraday trading volume and international spillover effects

The objective of this paper is to explore whether lagged trading activity in one market contributes to the return and volatility process in other markets, using 5-min concurrent data from German and British equity market. Our results lend support to our initial premise that if international investors have access to the same information set as domestic traders, then after observing foreign trading activity, market makers adjust prices to reflect their expectation of the security value, conditional upon all available information, including prior trades. Our findings clearly indicate that intraday trading volume contains predictive power for cross-border return and volatility processes. Moreover, these volume effects are found to be asymmetric in the sense that the impact of positive volume changes upon foreign stock market volatility is greater than is the impact of negative changes.     

Dynamics and causality in industry-specific volatility

This paper presents comprehensive empirical evidence on the dynamics and causality within 30 US industry-specific volatilities during July 1963 and June 2008. We find that linear trends are present in 17 of the 30 industry volatilities. Granger-causality tests reveal that the industry of business supplies and the industry of finance are the most important lead indicators of industry volatilities. To uncover contemporaneous causal relationships in the market, we implement an emerging data-driven method of directed acyclic graphs. The results suggest that volatility shocks originating from business supplies, machinery, and consumer goods industries are sources of risks that affect most other industries. By contrast, volatilities in the two traditionally important industries, oil and autos, do not appear to have a substantial influence on other large industries in the contemporaneous time. Finally, business equipment and services, both containing information technology components, are the most important driving forces of the industry volatility surge in the late 1990s.     

Intraday technical analysis of individual stocks on the Tokyo Stock Exchange

This paper conducts an intraday technical analysis of individual stocks listed on the Nikkei 225. In addition to the price-based technical rules popularly examined in the literature, we uniquely propose and statistically investigate technical rules that utilize information regarding (1) the order-flow imbalance and (2) the order-book imbalance. Technical analysis using the imbalance-based trading rules is motivated by the evidence presented first in this paper that short-term returns can be predicted from the information regarding the order-flow and order-book imbalances for more than half of Nikkei 225-listed stocks. However, we demonstrate that no strategies, including limit order trading where trading signals are derived from the order-book imbalance, beat the buy-and-hold strategy within our sample. The results imply that past prices and demand/supply imbalances do not contribute to profiting in intraday trading and that non-execution and picking-off risks are too large for limit order trading to be profitable in our sample.     

The good news in short interest

Stocks with relatively high short interest subsequently experience negative abnormal returns, but the effect can be transient and of debatable economic significance. In contrast, relatively heavily traded stocks with low short interest experience both statistically and economically significant positive abnormal returns. These positive returns are often larger (in absolute value) than the negative returns observed for heavily shorted stocks. Thus, the positive information associated with low short interest, which is publicly available, is only slowly incorporated into prices, which raises a broader market efficiency issue. Our results also cast doubt on existing theories of the impact of short sale constraints.     

Can happiness predict future volatility in stock markets?

In this paper, we use the Twitter based happiness index as a proxy for investor sentiment in order to examine whether happiness influences future market volatility of country VIX indexes. Our sample includes the major stock markets of the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, China, Hong Kong, India, Brazil, South Korea, and South Africa. Using linear and nonlinear causality tests, we find that Twitter happiness significantly causes the future volatility of the sample countries. The robustness checks show no divergence from our primary findings and provide strong evidence of a nonlinear relationship between investor sentiment and future stock market volatility.     

Stock market volatility around national elections

This paper investigates a sample of 27 OECD countries to test whether national elections induce higher stock market volatility. It is found that the country-specific component of index return variance can easily double during the week around an election, which shows that investors are surprised by the election outcome. Several factors, such as a narrow margin of victory, lack of compulsory voting laws, change in the political orientation of the government, or the failure to form a government with parliamentary majority significantly contribute to the magnitude of the election shock. Furthermore, some evidence is found that markets with short trading history exhibit stronger reaction. Our findings have important implications for the optimal strategies of institutional and individual investors who have direct or indirect exposure to volatility risk.     

Size, book-to-market ratio and macroeconomic news

Little is known about the reactions of daily returns on portfolios with different characteristics to unexpected changes in macroeconomic conditions. This paper fills this void by analyzing the reactions of daily returns on portfolios formed on size and book-to-market ratio to news about a wide range of macroeconomic variables. Returns on different portfolios not only react to different news but also react differently to the same news. Reactions of portfolios to macroeconomic news also change over the business cycle. Results are strongest for news about Employees on Nonfarm Payrolls in expansions. Both at daily and monthly frequencies, large and growth firms react differently to employment news from small and value firms in expansions but not in recessions. Differences in the sensitivities of expected future cash flows to employment news in expansions can help explain differences in the observed reactions.     

Learning from experience and trading volume

We build a model where trading allows inexperienced agents to discern useful information sources. Upon losing money by trading on invalid information sources, investors learn from their experience and switch to alternative sources. Such activity leads to initial expected losses but later profitable trades. Trading activity is found to be increasing in the mass of such agents. Volume is greatest in firms with uncertain cash flows. Further, a greater number of information sources implies greater volume. This is consistent with the explosive growth in volume accompanying the growth of the internet, which presumably increases the number of heterogeneous information sources.     

Heterogeneous preferences and equilibrium trading volume

The representative-agent Lucas model stresses aggregate risk and hence does not allow us to study the impact of agents’ heterogeneity on the dynamics of equilibrium trading volume. In this paper, we investigate under what conditions non-informational heterogeneity, i.e., differences in preferences and endowments, leads to nontrivial trading volume in equilibrium. We present a non-informational no-trade theorem that provides necessary and sufficient conditions for zero equilibrium trading volume in a continuous-time Lucas market model with heterogeneous agents, multiple goods, and multiple securities. We explain in detail how no-trade equilibria are related to autarky equilibria, portfolio autarky equilibria, and peculiar financial market equilibria, which play an important role in the literature on international risk sharing.     

Information demand and stock market volatility

We study information demand and supply at the firm and market level using data for 30 of the largest stocks traded on NYSE and NASDAQ. Demand is approximated in a novel manner from weekly internet search volume time series drawn from the recently released Google Trends database. Our paper makes contributions in four main directions. First, although information demand and supply tend to be positively correlated, their dynamic interactions do not allow conclusive inferences about the information discovery process. Second, demand for information at the market level is significantly positively related to historical and implied measures of volatility and to trading volume, even after controlling for market return and information supply. Third, information demand increases significantly during periods of higher returns. Fourth, analysis of the expected variance risk premium confirms for the first time empirically the hypothesis that investors demand more information as their level of risk aversion increases.     

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.     

Explaining the idiosyncratic volatility puzzle using Stochastic Discount Factors

I use Stochastic Discount Factors to examine the sources of the idiosyncratic volatility premium. I find that non-zero risk aversion and firms’ non-systematic coskewness determine the premium on idiosyncratic volatility risk. The firm’s non-systematic coskewness measures the comovement of the asset’s volatility with the market return. When I control for the non-systematic coskewness factor, I find no significant relation between idiosyncratic volatility and stock expected returns. My results are robust across different sample periods and firm characteristics.     

VIX option pricing and CBOE VIX Term Structure: A new methodology for volatility derivatives valuation

This study integrates CBOE VIX Term Structure and VIX futures to simplify VIX option pricing in multifactor models. Exponential and hump volatility functions with one- to three-factor models of the VIX evolution are used to examine their pricing for VIX options across strikes and maturities. The results show that using exponential volatility functions presents an effective choice as pricing models for VIX calls, whereas hump volatility functions provide efficient out-of-sample valuation for most VIX puts, in particular with deep in-the-money and deep out-of-the-money. Pricing errors for calls can be further reduced with a two-factor model.     

Separating microstructure noise from volatility

There are two variance components embedded in the returns constructed using high frequency asset prices: the time-varying variance of the unobservable efficient returns that would prevail in a frictionless economy and the variance of the equally unobservable microstructure noise. Using sample moments of high frequency return data recorded at different frequencies, we provide a simple and robust technique to identify both variance components.     

Long memory in volatility and trading volume

We use fractionally-integrated time-series models to investigate the joint dynamics of equity trading volume and volatility. Bollerslev and Jubinski (1999) show that volume and volatility have a similar degree of fractional integration, and they argue that this evidence supports a long-run view of the mixture-of-distributions hypothesis. We examine this issue using more precise volatility estimates obtained using high-frequency returns (i.e., realized volatilities). Our results indicate that volume and volatility both display long memory, but we can reject the hypothesis that the two series share a common order of fractional integration for a fifth of the firms in our sample. Moreover, we find a strong correlation between the innovations to volume and volatility, which suggests that trading volume can be used to obtain more precise estimates of daily volatility for cases in which high-frequency returns are unavailable.     

ETF arbitrage: Intraday evidence

We use two extremely liquid S&P 500 ETFs to analyze the prevailing trading conditions when mispricing allowing arbitrage opportunities is created. While these ETFs are not perfect substitutes, our correlation and error correction results suggest investors view them as close substitutes. Spreads increase just before arbitrage opportunities, consistent with a decrease in liquidity. Order imbalance increases as markets become more one-sided and spread changes become more volatile which suggests an increase in liquidity risk. The price deviations are followed by a tendency to quickly correct back towards parity.     

The effect of mergers on implied volatility of equity options

This paper uses a sample of 25 large mergers from 1996 to 2004 to study the effect of mergers on the implied volatilities of equity options. The results indicate a statistically significant increase in volatility beyond the amount predicted if the transaction were effectively nothing more than a portfolio combination of the target and acquirer. The disparity suggests that, at least for the first 18 months after the transaction becomes effective, market participants expect mergers to increase risk. Integration risk and uncertainty about the extent to which efficiency gains and greater market power are realized are possible explanations for the discrepancy.     

Cashflow news,the value premium and an asset pricing view on European stock market integration

The decomposition of national CAPM market betas of European countries’ value and growth portfolio returns into cashflow and discount rate news driven components reveals that i) high average returns on value portfolios are associated with disproportionately high sensitivity to national cashflow news which corroborates recent evidence for the U.S. and ii) two-beta variants of national CAPMs capture the cross-sectional dispersion in European stock returns. The latter finding is suggestive of relatively well integrated stock markets among the core European countries and reflects basic asset pricing theory. One (national) discount factor should price any (international) asset.     

Financial crises in efficient markets: How fundamentalists fuel volatility

When a financial crisis breaks out, speculators typically get the blame whereas fundamentalists are presented as the safeguard against excessive volatility. This paper proposes an asset pricing model where two types of rational traders coexist: short-term speculators and long-term fundamentalists, both sharing the same information set. In this framework, excess volatility not only exists, but is actually fueled by fundamental trading. Consequently, efficient markets are more volatile with a few speculators than with many speculators. Regulators should therefore be aware that efforts to limit rational speculation might, surprisingly, end up increasing volatility.