Optimal portfolio choice in real terms: Measuring the benefits of TIPS

In this paper we solve an optimal portfolio choice problem to measure the benefits of Treasury Inflation Indexed Securities (TIPS) to investors concerned with maximizing real wealth. We show how the introduction of a real riskless asset completes the investor asset space, by contrasting optimal portfolio allocations with and without such assets. We use historical data to quantify gains from availability of TIPS in the presence of other asset classes such as equities, commodities, and real estate. We draw a distinction between buy-and-hold long-term investors for whom TIPS fully displace nominal risk-free assets and short-term investors for whom TIPS improve the investment opportunity set of real returns. Finally, we show how gains from TIPS are tempered by the availability of alternative assets that covary with inflation, such as gold and real estate.     

The capital gain lock-in effect with short sales constraints

This paper develops a post-tax asset pricing model under the assumption that investors cannot defer the taxation of capital gains by costlessly short selling tax exempt perfect substitute securities. Contrary to existing literature, it is demonstrated that trading rules of immediate realization of losses and voluntary deferral of gains may not be optimal. Further, equilibrium prices are shown to be higher for stocks held by investors with large accrued capital gains and lower for stocks held by investors with small accrued capital gains or losses.     

Mutual funds' capital gains lock-in and earnings management

Capital gains taxation creates a lock-in effect, increasing investors' incentives to monitor and decreasing portfolio firms' incentives to cater to short-term investors. We show a negative relation between lock-in and portfolio firms' earnings management, and this relation is stronger for capital gains held by tax-sensitive investors. Further, the relation between lock-in and earnings management is stronger when the capital gains tax rate is higher. We show that locked-in funds vote against management and against audit committee members' reappointment following earnings management. Locked-in funds are less likely to exit a position following disappointing earnings announcements, reducing firms' incentive to manage earnings.     

Optimal tax-timing and asset allocation when tax rebates on capital losses are limited

This article studies the portfolio problem with realization-based capital gain taxation when limited amounts of losses qualify for tax rebate payments, as is the case under current US tax law. When the tax rate applicable to realized losses exceeds that on realized capital gains, it can be optimal to realize capital gains immediately and pay capital gain taxes to regain the option to use potential future losses against a higher tax rate. This incentive adds an entirely new and as yet unstudied dimension to the portfolio problem. It causes risk averse investors to hold more equity and attain higher welfare levels than is the case when trading under a tax system that seeks to collect the same amount of taxes, but does not allow for tax rebate payments. This is because the benefit to these investors from having their losses subsidized is greater than the suffering from having profits taxed at a higher rate.     

Security Analysis and Trading Patterns When Some Investors Receive Information Before Others

In existing models of information acquisition, all informed investors receive their information at the same time. This article analyzes trading behavior and equilibrium information acquisition when some investors receive common private information before others. The model implies that, under some conditions, investors will focus only on a subset of securities (“herding”), while neglecting other securities with identical exogenous characteristics. In addition, the model is consistent with empirical correlations that are suggestive of oft-cited trading strategies such as profit taking (short-term position reversal) and following the leader (mimicking earlier trades).     

Tax-Induced Trading: The Effect of the 1986 Tax Reform Act on Stock Market Activity

The end of favorable tax treatment for long-term capital gains caused investors to reassess traditional tax-induced trading strategies. This study compares trading behavior in December 1986 and January 1987 with previous years. Our results indicate that these tax code changes had a powerful effect on trading behavior. Relative trading volume was considerably higher in December 1986 for long-term winners but not significantly lower for long-term losers. Results also indicate altered trading patterns based on short-term gains in December 1986 and for long-term winners in January 1987.     

Risk aversion, liquidity, and endogenous short horizons

We analyze a competitive model in which different informationsignals get reflected in value at different points in time.If investors are sufficiently risk averse, we obtain an equilibriumin which all investors focus exclusively on the short term.In addition, we show that increasing the variance of informationlesstrading increases market depth but causes a greater proportionof investors to focus on the short-term signal, which decreasesthe informativeness of prices about the long run. Finally, wealso explore parameter spaces under which long-term informedagents wish to voluntarily disclose their information.     

US and Domestic Market Gains and Asian Investors’ Overconfident Trading Behavior

We find that subsequent to both US and domestic market gains, both Asian individual and institutional investors increase their trading and that this effect is more pronounced in bull markets, in periods of relatively favorable investor sentiment, in periods of extremely high market returns, and in markets with short‐sale constraints. We also find that individual investors trade more in response to market gains than institutional investors. Moreover, we find that further integration of Asian stock markets with US stock markets after the Asian financial crisis in 1998 is an important reason for Asian investors’ response to US market gains.     

Index futures and positive feedback trading: evidence from major stock exchanges

This paper tests the hypothesis that the introduction of index futures has increased positive feedback trading in the spot markets of six industrialized nations. The analysis is based on a model that assumes two different groups of investors, i.e., risk averse expected utility maximizing investors and positive feedback traders. There is evidence consistent with positive feedback trading before the introduction of index futures across all markets under investigation. In the period following the introduction of index futures, there is no evidence supporting the hypothesis that positive feedback trading drives short-term dynamics of stock returns. The possibility that this is due to possible migration of feedback traders from the spot to the futures markets is also tested. The results show no evidence of positive feedback trading in the futures markets. Overall, the findings support the view that futures markets help stabilize the underlying spot markets by reducing the impact of feedback traders and thus attracting more rational investors who make the markets more informationally efficient and thus providing investors with superior ways of managing risk.     

Permanent and Transitory Driving Forces in the Asian-Pacific Stock Markets

This paper uses weekly data from November 1987 through May 1999 to examine whether U.S. or the Japan stock market (or both) is the main driving force behind major movements in eleven emerging Asian-Pacific stock markets. We find a robust cointegrating relation linking each of the emerging market with the two matured markets of the U.S. and Japan. The results also show that the U.S., rather than Japan, is the main permanent force driving the equilibrium relations across all Asian-Pacific markets. In contrast, the effect of the Japanese market on the Asian-Pacific region is only transitory. Therefore, strategic asset portfolios in the Asian-Pacific region should include Japanese stocks to diversify any country specific risks. As to U.S. investors, the persistent influence of the U.S. market may limit long-run diversification gains from Asian-Pacific stocks.     

High Idiosyncratic Volatility and Low Returns: A Prospect Theory Explanation

The well‐documented negative relationship between idiosyncratic volatility and stock returns is puzzling if investors are risk‐averse. However, under prospect theory, while investors are risk‐averse in the domain of gains, they exhibit risk‐seeking behavior in the domain of losses. Consistent with risk‐seeking investors’ preference for high‐volatility stocks in the loss domain, we find that the negative relationship between idiosyncratic volatility and stock returns is concentrated in stocks with unrealized capital losses, but is nonexistent in stocks with unrealized capital gains. This finding is robust to control for short‐term return reversals and maximum daily return, among other variables.     

On the short-term predictability of exchange rates: A BVAR time-varying parameters approach

In this paper we propose a Bayesian vector autoregressive model with time-varying parameters (BVAR-TVP) to examine the short-term predictability of exchange rates. An important contribution of the paper is the application of the BVAR-TVP model, for the first time, to daily data using information from financial markets. Another contribution is the production of forecasts in real time at the very short horizon of one-trading day-ahead typically used by traders and investors in financial markets. We employ financial criteria and recently developed statistical tests to assess the exchange rate predictability. We find that the BVAR-TVP model outperforms the random walk for all exchange rates. These forecast gains are due primarily to the time-variation of coefficients, and secondly to information from other financial markets. It is shown that international investors could have made statistically significant excess profits if they had followed an inter-day trading strategy based on the buy/sell signals generated by the model’s one-day-ahead exchange rate forecasts, even after allowing for transaction costs and risk factors.     

Ex-dividend day trading: Who,how, and why? : Evidence from the Finnish market

This study examines the ex-dividend day trading behavior of all investors in the Finnish stock market. Consistent with dynamic dividend clientele theories, investors with a preference for dividend income buy shares cum-dividend and sell ex-dividend; the reverse is true for investors with the opposite preference. Investors also engage in overnight arbitrage, earning on average a 2% overnight return on their invested capital. Trades at the investor-level reveal that idiosyncratic risk is an important determinant in the choice of stock for short-term ex-day trading. Furthermore, transaction costs and dividend yield jointly determine whether the volume of short-term trading activity is nonzero.     

Direct evidence of dividend tax clienteles

The paper is the first to evaluate the dividend tax clientele hypothesis using a data set of all domestic stock portfolios in the market. We find that investment funds that face a higher effective tax rate on dividend income than on capital gains tilt their portfolios away from dividend-paying stocks. These investors consequently earn a dividend yield that is about 35 basis points lower than that of investors who are tax neutral between dividends and capital gains (pension funds, unit-linked insurance, life insurance). Consistent with tax rules and charter provisions, we also find that private corporations prefer growth stocks, that foundations exhibit strong dividend preferences, and that partnerships rarely hold stocks portfolios.     

Capital Gains Taxation and Stock Market Activity: Evidence from IPOs

Prior to the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA '86), long-term capital gains were taxed at a lower rate than short-term gains, presenting investors with an opportunity to increase their after-tax return by delaying the sale of appreciated assets until after they qualified for long-term status and selling depreciated assets prior to long-term qualification. Using a sample of Initial Public Offerings, I find that stocks that appreciated prior to long-term qualification exhibit increased volume and decreased returns just after their qualification date, while stocks that depreciated prior to long-term qualification exhibit these effects just prior to their qualification date.     

Capital gains tax,managed funds and the value of dividends: The case of New Zealand

The taxation of capital gains for Managed Investment Funds in New Zealand was abolished in October 2007, putting these entities on a similar footing to private investors. Prior to this change most private investors were not taxed on capital gains from investments in New Zealand companies, whereas Managed Funds were taxed on these gains. New Zealand company dividends carry imputation tax credits and thus had a tax advantage for Managed Funds before October 2007. After the change the value of dividends relative to capital gains declined substantially for Managed Funds. The evidence is that the market value of the dividends, particularly for high dividends, also declined substantially subsequent to the tax change.     

Trading strategies with partial access to the derivatives market

This research analyzes trading strategies with derivatives when there are several assets and risk factors. We investigate portfolio improvement if investors have full and partial access to the derivatives markets, i.e. situations in which derivatives are written on some but not all stocks or risk factors traded on the market. The focus is on markets with jump risk. In these markets the choice of optimal exposures to jump and diffusion risk is linked. In a numerical application we study the potential benefit from adding derivatives to the market. It turns out that e.g. diffusion correlation and volatility or jump sizes may have a significant impact on the benefit of a new derivative product even if market prices of risk remain unchanged. Given the structure of risk investors may have different preferences for making risk factors tradable. Utility gains provided by new derivatives may be both increasing or decreasing depending on the type of contract added.     

Co-jumps in the U.S. interest rates and precious metals markets and their implications for investors

Using one-minute intraday data and wavelet decomposition of stochastic processes we obtain realised VCOV matrices with and without price discontinuities in the U.S. Treasuries and precious metals futures. Our work provides determinants of co-jumps in gold, silver and U.S. Treasuries across the yield curve and empirically demonstrates impact of price discontinues on hypothetical investor through realised correlations, hedging effectiveness ratios and several portfolio settings. We find that co-jumps in gold and silver have similar monetary characteristics to co-jumps in gold or silver with U.S. Treasuries futures. We further unpack investor choices between precious metals and U.S. bonds under the presence of high-frequency risks. We show that behaviour puzzle of simultaneous demand for safety and quality during market turmoils disappears if investors are seeking maximum diversification. We also find that runs to safety do not offer statistically significant improvements in diversification benefits unlike runs to short-term quality. Other results uncover higher investments to gold due to the shifts in the U.S. yield curve and potential gains in realised hedging effectiveness for the end of the yield curve investors through asymmetry in co-jumps of gold and U.S. Treasuries during periods of extreme market volatility such as beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.     

An empirical evaluation of the overconfidence hypothesis

Recently, several behavioral finance models based on the overconfidence hypothesis have been proposed to explain anomalous findings, including a short-term continuation (momentum) and a long-term reversal in stock returns. We characterize the overconfidence hypothesis by the following four testable implications: First, if investors are overconfident, they overreact to private information and underreact to public information. Second, market gains make overconfident investors trade more aggressively in subsequent periods. Third, excessive trading of overconfident investors in securities markets contributes to the observed excessive volatility. Fourth, overconfident investors underestimate risk and trade more in riskier securities. To document the presence of overconfidence in financial markets, we empirically evaluate these four hypotheses using aggregate data. Overall, we find empirical evidence in support of the four hypotheses.