Portfolio diversification benefits within Europe: Implications for a US investor

This paper investigates the possibility of cointegration between the United States and 11 European equity markets before and after the convergence period of 1995. The results indicate that during the preconvergence and postconvergence periods, some country groups, with and without the US equity market, exhibited cointegration while others did not. For the European Union markets, however, at least one cointegrating vector emerged in either period, but no cointegration among them surfaced during the Euro introduction period of 1999. These results suggest that a US investor can still benefit from country diversification within the European Union markets.     

Exploring the diversification benefits of US international equity closed-end funds

Financial Markets and Portfolio Management - I use the simulation approach of Jobson and Korkie (J Portfolio Manag 7:70–74, 1981), combined with Michaud optimization (Michaud and Michaud,...     

Testing for international equity market integration using regime switching cointegration techniques

Using MSCI total return index data, this paper analyses the degree of international equity market integration using modern cointegration techniques. The existence of a long run equilibrium across equity markets is important since it implies a violation of weak form market efficiency. Short run deviations away from equilibrium can be expected to reverse, thereby implying a degree of market predictability. This analysis adds to the existing literature by considering a regime switching cointegration relationship that allows for multiple structural breaks over time. The analysis provides scant evidence in favour of market integration with a single regime treatment. There is, however, significant evidence to support a two-regime Markov switching long-run equilibrium relationship that has evolved since the 1970s.     

Is the long-run underperformance of seasoned equity issues irrational? Evidence from Spain

We investigate if the long-run underperformance in the year after the issue of a sample of Spanish SEO firms is related to behavioural biases that lead investors to slowly adjust their pre-issue overoptimism. We also examine the existence of arbitrage costs that preclude mispricing from being corrected rapidly by sophisticated investors who act as arbitrageurs. Our findings support the contention that small SEO firms are overpriced at the time of the issue and suggest that their post-underperformance is related to arbitrage costs, where transaction costs play an important role although holding costs do not.     

Financial market integration and the value of global diversification: Evidence for US acquirers in cross-border mergers and acquisitions

In contrast to the previously documented cross-border discount, we find that there is positive cross-border effect for US acquirers during late 1990s and early 2000s. This is especially particular the case for those that acquire/merge with targets from segmented financial markets where acquirers experience significantly higher positive abnormal returns than those that acquire targets from integrated financial markets. Furthermore, firms acquiring segmented-market targets are also characterized by significantly higher post-merger operating performance improvement. The results indicate that the observed positive cross-border effect is mainly due to the increase in the number of transactions involving targets from segmented markets, in which the average firm experience significant financial constraints. We contend that value is created by a combination of firms with different financial market integration status, in which funds are provided to high cost firms. The finding that the value creation is even higher within the group of acquirers with a lower cost of capital provides additional support for our conjecture.     

International portfolio diversification benefits: Cross-country evidence from a local perspective

We investigate how the benefits of international portfolio diversification differ across countries from the perspective of a local investor. We find that the benefits of investing abroad are largest for investors in developing countries, including when controlling for currency effects. Most of the benefits are obtained from investing outside the region of the home country. These global diversification benefits remain large when controlling for short-sales constraints in developing stock markets. The gains from international portfolio diversification appear to be largest for countries with high country risk. In addition to this cross-sectional evidence, we also provide evidence that diversification benefits vary over time as country risk changes. We find that diversification benefits have decreased for most countries in our sample over the past two decades.     

Performance of technical analysis in growth and small cap segments of the US equity market

A large universe of technical trading rules applied to a set of technology industry and small cap sector portfolios over the 1995-2010 period yields superior predictability after adjusting for data snooping bias in the first half of the sample period and delivers statistically significant profits for a number of portfolios when the transaction cost is assumed to be of small to moderate size. Technical analysis is not able to outperform the buy-and-hold approach for any portfolio in the set in the second half of the sample period. The finding that the short-term return predictability becomes much weaker in the more recent period suggests that the underlying segments of the equity market have become more efficient over time. The fact that mechanical trading strategies have been futile after adjusting for data snooping bias for two samples of portfolios where technical analysis is most anticipated to succeed suggests that it is unlikely to have delivered abnormal returns in any other segment of the domestic equity market in the last decade.     

A finite-time singularity in the dynamics of the US equity market: Will the US equity market eventually collapse?

Fitting Dow Jones 30 index data for the 1790–1999 period into a log-periodic power-law singularity (LPPLS) model, the seminal paper by Johansen and Sornette (2001) was the first to show that the US equity growth rate is accelerating such that the market is growing as a power law toward a spontaneous singularity. Their model suggests that the US equity market will reach this critical point in the year 2052 ± 10 years, signaling an abrupt transition to a new regime. This study re-examines this important issue using (i) a novel approach to calibrate the LPPLS model and (ii) a different data set including >20 years of additional data. The extended data account for the dot.com bubble burst (2000), the Global Financial Crisis period (2008–2009), the COVID−19 crisis (2020−2022), and the ongoing Russian–Ukrainian war (starting in 2022), which are all events with severe consequences for the global economy. The calibrated LPPLS model suggests that the US equity market will reach a singularity condition by June 2050.     

On the diversification benefits of commodities from the perspective of euro investors

This paper investigates the diversification contribution of several commodities to a portfolio of traditional assets from the perspective of a euro investor. The approach applied in our analysis has high informational content as it differentiates between the sources of the diversification benefits in a statistically significant way. The results indicate that the diversification contribution varies greatly amongst the different commodities. Industrial metals, agriculturals and livestock contribute to the reduction of risk, while energy and precious metals contribute to both the reduction of the level of risk and to the improvement of return. The differentiation between bull and bear markets reveals that investors can enhance the portfolio performance by changing exposure into individual commodities. Investors can benefit from the diversification gains through financial instruments as the diversification gains hold both in the sample of physical commodity and commodity futures. Overall, the results confirm that commodities are valuable investments from the perspective of diversification.     

An empirical investigation of investor expectations in the currency market

Using a new theoretical model of investor expectations in the foreign exchange market, this research finds investor forecasts to be rational. For instance, expectations are not characterized by fat-tailed distributions that might reflect optimistic bubbles and panic. They are also found to rationally predict a correlation between exchange rates and political factors such as modeled “pain” indexes and currency bands. Most importantly, the model detects an ex-ante investor prediction of a small probability of a large currency change that empirically explains ex-post forecasting biases.     

The dynamics among G7 government bond and equity markets and the implications for international capital market diversification

This paper investigates potential international capital market diversification gains from relationships between global government bond and equity markets. Its primary contributions are (1) including both government debt and equity markets in the investigation of global diversification gains, (2) basing the analysis on real, risk-adjusted returns, and (3) evaluating both variance decompositions and impulse responses, as well as long-term relationships for international U.S. dollar investors. We find the cointegration, variance decomposition, and impulse response function results indicate interdependence and reduction in gains to international diversification.     

Funding liquidity and equity liquidity in the subprime crisis period: Evidence from the ETF market

Using index and financial exchange-traded funds (ETFs), this study explores the relation between funding liquidity and equity liquidity during the subprime crisis period. Our empirical results show that a higher degree of funding illiquidity leads to an increase in bid–ask spread and a reduction in both market depth and net buying imbalance. Such findings indicate that an increase in funding liquidity can improve equity liquidity, with a stronger effect for the financial ETFs than for the index ETFs. Our study provides a better overall understanding of the effect of the liquidity–supplier funding constraint during the subprime crisis period.     

A new approach to measuring riskiness in the equity market: Implications for the risk premium

We introduce a new approach to measuring riskiness in the equity market. We propose option implied and physical measures of riskiness and investigate their performance in predicting future market returns. The predictive regressions indicate a positive and significant relation between time-varying riskiness and expected market returns. The significantly positive link between aggregate riskiness and market risk premium remains intact after controlling for the S&P 500 index option implied volatility (VIX), aggregate idiosyncratic volatility, and a large set of macroeconomic variables. We also provide alternative explanations for the positive relation by showing that aggregate riskiness is higher during economic downturns characterized by high aggregate risk aversion and high expected returns.     

Strategic returns to international diversification: An application to the equity markets of Europe,Japan and North America

We undertake a decomposition of the risk factor loadings of 15 national stock market returns from 1972 to 1990, using a variant of the Campbell-Shiller (1988) linearisation. (Campbell, John Y. and Shiller, Robert J., ‘The dividend-price ratio and expectations of future dividends and discount factors’, Review of Financial Studies, Vol. 1, 1988, pp. 195–228.) We find considerable variation among countries in the relative importance of a cash flow component and a discount rate component in determining the beta with the world equity index return and with other risk factors. Also, the substantial international heterogeneity in factor loadings suggests that a global portfolio allows ample hedging opportunities, presumably deriving from differences in underlying economic structure.     

Information friction and investor home bias: A perspective on the effect of global IFRS adoption on the extent of equity home bias

This paper provides a perspective on the effect of IFRS adoption on the tendency of investors to under-invest in foreign equities. We consider explanations for the equity home bias described in prior research and discuss research relevant to the informational consequences of global adoption of IFRS. Specifically, we evaluate whether IFRS adoption reduces information processing costs or decreases investor uncertainty about either the quality of financial reporting or the distribution of future cash flows. We predict that the effect of any reduction in information processing costs from the adoption of IFRS is likely to be small relative to the effects of other determinants of home bias such as the strength of investor protection mechanisms in foreign countries, behavioral biases toward familiar equities, and informational advantages related to geographical proximity. We argue that the quality of the information that investors have (or perceive they have) decreases with distance, conclude that global IFRS adoption is unlikely to affect home bias, and propose avenues for future research.     

Overconfident individual day traders: Evidence from the Taiwan futures market

A specific day-trading policy in Taiwan futures market allows an investigation of the performance of day traders. Since October 2007, investors who characterize themselves as “day traders” by closing their day-trade positions on the same day enjoy a 50% reduction in the initial margin. Because we can identify day traders ex ante, we have a laboratory to explore trading behavior without the contamination of potential behavioral biases. Our results show that the 3470 individual day traders in the sample incur on average a significant loss of 61,500 (26,700) New Taiwan dollars after (before) transaction costs over October 2007–September 2008. This implies that day traders are not only overconfident about the accuracy of their information but also biased in their interpretations of information. We also find that excessive trading is hazardous only to the overconfident losers, but not to the winners. Last, we provide evidence that more experienced individual investors exhibit more aggressive day trading behavior, although they do not learn their types or gain superior trading skills that could mitigate their losses.     

The long-run reversal in the long run: Insights from two centuries of international equity returns

We perform the most comprehensive test of long-term reversal in national equity indices ever done. Having examined data from 71 countries for the years 1830 through 2019, we demonstrate a strong reversal pattern: the past long-term return negatively predicts future performance. The phenomenon is not subsumed by other established cross-sectional return patterns, including the value effect. The long-term reversal is robust to many considerations but highly unstable through time. Finally, our findings support the overreaction explanation of this anomaly.     

Day-of-the-week effect in the Taiwan foreign exchange market

This study uses stochastic dominance with and without risk-free assets to examine whether trading days can affect patterns of the day-of-the-week effect in the Taiwan foreign exchange market. Our results generally indicate that higher returns appear on the first three days of the week across different trading-day regimes in the Taiwan foreign exchange market, confirming day-of-the-week effect. Allocating part of investors’ assets in risk-free assets is useful in distinguishing returns among weekdays for all currencies.     

Information shares in the US Treasury market

This paper highlights the previously neglected role of the futures markets in US Treasury price discovery. The estimates of 5- and 10-year GovPX spot market information shares typically fail to reach 50% from 1999 on. The GovPX information shares for the 2-year contract are higher than those of the 5- and 10-year maturities but also decline after 1998. Relative bid-ask spreads, number of trades, and realized volatility are statistically significant and explain up to 21% of daily information shares. In roughly 1/4 of cases when public information is released, the futures market gains information share, but macroeconomic announcements rarely explain information shares independently of liquidity.     

The impact of naked short selling on the securities lending and equity market

This paper examines the impact of naked short selling on equity markets where it is restricted to securities on an approved list. Consistent with Miller's (1977) intuition, stocks with the highest dispersion of opinions and short sale constraints are the only stocks to exhibit significant and negative abnormal returns in the post-event period. We also find slightly higher stock return volatility and a small reduction in liquidity when naked short sales are allowed. Overall, it impairs market quality (liquidity and volatility), although there appears to be some improvement in price efficiency in stocks with high short sale constraints.