The effect of sequential information releases on trading volume and price behaviour

This paper examines a two-period setting in which each trader receives a private signal, possibly different, in each period before he trades. The principal objectives are threefold. First, we describe the risky asset demands and price reactions in a noisy rational expectations equilibrium where the time 1 average private signal is not revealed by the price sequence but the time 2 average private signal is. Secondly, we analyse how informed trading volume is affected by the revealed information and supply shocks when pure noise trading volume is uncorrected with observable market variables. Our result indicates that no trade occurs for informed traders when net supply remains fixed across rounds of trade. And, when supply shocks are random, trading volume is induced by the informed and the noise traders, but noise trading is not predictable. Finally, we investigate these properties in the case when pure noise trading volume is correlated with observable market variables. It is shown that no informed trading takes place when there is no supply shock. However, when net supply contains random shocks, trading volume consists of noise and informed trading, both of which can be estimated.     

Information, trade, and derivative securities

Hellwig's (1980) model is used to analyze the value of improvingtrading opportunities by more frequent trading in the underlyingasset, or by trading in a derivative asset. With multiple tradingsessions, uninformed investors behave as rational trend followers,while more informed investors follow a contrarian strategy.As trading becomes continuous, Pareto efficiency is achieved.With trading in an appropriate derivative security, Pareto efficiencymay be achieved in only a single round of trading. All derivativeclaims are then priced on Black and Scholes (1973) principlesand, in the absence of further supply shocks, no trading willtake place in subsequent trading rounds.     

Stabilizing non-fundamental asset price movements under discretion and limited information

Inflation, output and interest rate stabilization are all potential central bank objectives. We explore whether monetary policy should respond to asset price fluctuations when they are driven by irrational expectational shocks to the future returns to capital. In our model, an optimistic shock to future returns generates both an increase in equity prices and physical investment. The increased investment is inefficient and, thus, a central bank optimally responds to this expectations shocks. This induces a trade-off between stabilizing nominal prices and non-fundamental asset price movements. We compare the optimal policy under different assumptions: full versus limited information and commitment versus discretion. If the central bank has limited information about whether an asset price movement has a fundamental or non-fundamental origin, then the central bank responds less aggressively to the non-fundamental exuberance shocks than under full information. Without commitment, a central bank responds more aggressively to non-fundamental exuberance shocks.     

Asset price dynamics,inflation and sectoral composition of output: a dependent economy model

This article develops a dependent economy model that focuses on the interactions between inflation and asset price dynamics under a flexible exchange rate and rational expectation. We assume that money wage adjusts instantaneously to clear the labour market. The asset prices are represented by the Tobin’s q and exchange rate. Using this framework, we will examine implications of monetary policy, fiscal policy, tariff liberalization and exogenous capital flows for inflation and asset prices, which in turn determine the allocation of labour and the sectoral composition of output. The effects of different exogenous and policy-induced shocks critically depend on the difference in the speeds of adjustment in commodity price and asset prices and multiple cross effects generated by changes in these prices.     

Investor Attention and Time‐varying Comovements

This paper analyses the effect of an increase in market‐wide uncertainty on information flow and asset price comovements. We use the daily realised volatility of the 30‐year treasury bond futures to assess macroeconomic shocks that affect market‐wide uncertainty. We use the ratio of a stock's idiosyncratic realised volatility with respect to the S&P500 futures relative to its total realised volatility to capture the asset price comovement with the market. We find that market volatility and the comovement of individual stocks with the market increase contemporaneously with the arrival of market‐wide macroeconomic shocks, but decrease significantly in the following five trading days. This pattern supports the hypothesis that investors shift their (limited) attention to processing market‐level information following an increase in market‐wide uncertainty and then subsequently divert their attention back to asset‐specific information.     

Flight-to-safety and retail investor behavior

Flight-to-safety (FTS) episodes are associated with substantial yet short-lived changes in expected returns on equities and bonds. These price changes are typically surrounded by active trading and/or risk transfer between different investors. Using aggregate net exchanges, flows from bond to equity mutual funds, in the US for a period 1984 until 2015, I empirically investigate retail investor behavior around FTS episodes. Overall, I find a reversal statistical relation between net exchanges and market excess returns. A one-standard-deviation shock to net exchanges leads to an increase of market excess return of 1.75%, of which 72% is reversed within 5 months. In particular, FTS episodes are preceded by periods where more risk averse investors, e.g. retail investors, rebalance their portfolios towards risky assets. A trading strategy that is based on signals from past net exchanges outperforms the market portfolio, significantly during FTS periods by 1.4% monthly. However, I find that the observed reversal relationship is not necessarily due to price ‘noise’ induced by uninformed trading. It is more reasonable that the sudden increase in market stress and selling of risky assets is caused by other demand/supply shocks driven by increased economic uncertainty.     

Stock market dynamics with rational liquidity traders

In the Kyle (1985) finite horizon model of stock market dynamics with a trader who holds long-lived information, informed trading intensities rise with time, and the slopes of the equilibrium price schedules fall. This paper shows that this result depends crucially on the irrational liquidity trader assumption. We replace the irrational noise traders with a sequence of rational, risk averse, liquidity traders who receive endowment shocks to their holdings of the risky asset. We demonstrate that unless liquidity traders are sufficiently risk averse, the slope of equilibrium price schedule rises over time, while informed trading intensities fall. In particular, Kyle's result holds only when liquidity traders are so risk averse that they ‘over-rebalance’ their portfolio's holdings of the risky asset, so that their final holdings of the risky asset have the opposite sign of their initial position.     

Equilibrium Indeterminacy and Asset Price Fluctuation in Japan: A Bayesian Investigation

This paper investigates sources of asset price fluctuation in Japan using an estimated financial accelerator model. For explicit treatment of expectational beliefs characterized by sunspots, the model is analyzed over the parameter space where the equilibrium can be indeterminate. We show that indeterminacy arises if the financial accelerator effect is sufficiently large. According to our Bayesian estimation results, Japan's economy was affected by sunspot shocks; however, the contribution of the sunspots to asset price volatility was low. Rather, net worth and cost shocks drove the asset price fluctuation. We find, however, that the sunspots substantially affected capital investment.     

Does Anticipated Information Impose a Cost on Risk‐Averse Investors? A Test of the Hirshleifer Effect

This paper theoretically and empirically investigates how the risk of future adverse price changes created by the anticipated arrival of information influences risk‐averse investors’ trading decisions in institutionally imperfect capital markets. Specifically, I examine how the selling activity of individual investors immediately following an earnings announcement is influenced by the tradeoff between risk‐sharing benefits of immediate trade and explicit transaction costs imposed on such trades. Consistent with my theoretically derived predictions, I find that investors’ current trading decisions are less sensitive to the incremental transaction costs created by short‐term capital gains taxes on trading profits, as both the duration and intensity of the risk of future adverse price changes increase. This evidence is consistent with an incremental cost to investors that results from the revelation of precise information, which is commonly referred to as the Hirshleifer Effect.     

A structural analysis of price discovery measures

We analyze the structural determinants of two widely used measures of price discovery between multiple markets that trade closely related securities. Using a structural cointegration model, we show that both the information share (IS) and component share (CS) measures account for the relative avoidance of noise trading and liquidity shocks, but that only the IS can provide information on the relative informativeness of individual markets. In particular, the IS of one market is higher if it incorporates more new information and/or impounds less liquidity shocks. Use of the CS in conjunction with the IS can help sort out the confounding effects of the two types of shocks. Furthermore, we find that the IS only accounts for the immediate (one-period) responses of market prices to the news innovation, which implies that the IS estimates based on high sampling frequencies may be distorted by transitory frictions and may miss important price discovery dynamics.     

Feedback trading and intermittent market turbulence

This paper studies the potential for complex asset return dynamics in a high-frequency, non-fundamental feedback trading model. Price adjustment is driven by the time-varying price impact of net orderflow. In tranquil times feedback trading has no impact on the price level. Given feedback trading intensities, as asset liquidity declines the market progressively becomes stressed and turbulent. Returns and absolute returns persistence are found to display power-law features, and episodes of turbulence are intermittent.     

Capital inflows and asset prices: Evidence from emerging Asia

The withdrawal of foreign capital from emerging countries at the height of the recent financial crisis and its quick return sparked a debate about the impact of capital flow surges on asset markets. This paper addresses the response of property prices to an inflow of foreign capital. For that purpose we estimate a panel VAR on a set of Asian emerging market economies, for which the waves of inflows were particularly pronounced, and identify capital inflow shocks based on sign restrictions. Our results suggest that capital inflow shocks have a significant effect on the appreciation of house prices and equity prices. Capital inflow shocks account for – roughly – twice the portion of overall house price changes they explain in OECD countries. We also address cross-country differences in the house price responses to shocks, which are most likely due to differences in the monetary policy response to capital inflows.     

Venture capital trusts and the expiration of IPO lock-up provisions

Venture capital trusts (VCTs) were introduced to provide private equity capital for small expanding companies and to promote innovation. Investors in initial public offerings are rewarded with tax relief on the cost of lock-up provisions to stabilize the market. This paper examines the market reaction and trading activity around the expiration of lock-up provisions of 148 VCTs listed on the London Stock Exchange from 1995 to 2006. Downward-sloping demand curve theory suggests that an increased supply of VCT shares at the expiry date could shift their value to a new equilibrium at a lower price. Supporting this prediction, we document evidence of negative abnormal returns as well as permanent increases in the price discount relative to net asset value and trading volumes at and around the expiries of the required holding periods of VCTs. In addition, less negative abnormal returns, lower abnormal discounts and lower abnormal trading volumes are associated with VCTs that invest in AIM-listed companies due to lower information asymmetry, that experience lower prior performance due to a less pronounced disposition effect, and that are subject to a shorter lock-up horizon or are offering more generous tax benefits.     

Financial globalization, financial crises and contagion

Two observations suggest that financial globalization played an important role in the recent financial crisis. First, more than half of the rise in net borrowing of the U.S. non-financial sectors since the mid-1980s has been financed by foreign lending. Second, the collapse of the U.S. housing and mortgage-backed-securities markets had worldwide effects on financial institutions and asset markets. Using an open-economy model where financial intermediaries play a central role, we show that financial integration leads to a sharp rise in net credit in the most financially developed country and to large asset price spillovers of country-specific shocks to bank capital. The impacts of these shocks on asset prices are amplified by bank capital requirements based on mark-to-market.     

Asymmetric Information in Fads Models

Fads models were introduced by Shiller (Am Econ Rev 71:421–436, 1981) and Summers (J Finance 41:591–601, 1986) as plausible alternatives to the efficient markets/constant expected returns assumptions. Under these models, logarithms of asset prices embody both a martingale component, with permanent shocks, and a stationary component, with temporary shocks. We study a continuous-time version of these models both from the point of view of informed agents, who observe both fundamental and market values, and from that of uninformed agents, who only observe market prices. We specify the asset price in the larger filtration of the informed agent, and then derive its decomposition in the smaller filtration of the uninformed agent using the Hitsuda representation of Gaussian processes. For uninformed agents we obtain a non-Markovian dynamics, which justifies the use of technical analysis in optimal trading strategies. For both types of agents, we solve the problem of maximization of expected logarithmic utility from terminal wealth, and obtain an explicit formula for the additional logarithmic utility of informed agents. Finally, we apply the decomposition result to the problem of testing the presence of fads from market data. An application to the NYSE-AMEX indices from the CRSP database shows that, if the fads component prevails, then the mean-reversion speed must be slow.     

Risk in Dynamic Arbitrage: The Price Effects of Convergence Trading

I develop an equilibrium model of convergence trading and its impact on asset prices. Arbitrageurs optimally decide how to allocate their limited capital over time. Their activity reduces price discrepancies, but their activity also generates losses with positive probability, even if the trading opportunity is fundamentally riskless. Moreover, prices of identical assets can diverge even if the constraints faced by arbitrageurs are not binding. Occasionally, total losses are large, making arbitrageurs' returns negatively skewed, consistent with the empirical evidence. The model also predicts comovement of arbitrageurs' expected returns and market liquidity.     

An evolutionary CAPM under heterogeneous beliefs

Heterogeneity and evolutionary behaviour of investors are two of the most important characteristics of financial markets. This paper incorporates the adaptive behaviour of agents with heterogeneous beliefs and establishes an evolutionary capital asset pricing model (ECAPM) within the mean-variance framework. We show that the rational behaviour of agents switching to better-performing trading strategies can cause large deviations of the market price from the fundamental value of one asset to spill over to other assets. Also, this spill-over effect is associated with high trading volumes and persistent volatility characterized by significantly decaying autocorrelations of, and positive correlation between, price volatility and trading volume.     

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.     

Asymmetric impacts of disaggregated oil price shocks on uncertainties and investor sentiment

This paper aims to examine short- and long-run asymmetries in the impacts of disaggregated oil price shocks on economic policy uncertainty, stock market uncertainty, treasury rates, and investor (bullish and bearish) sentiment in the US. To this end, we use a nonlinear auto-regressive distributed lag cointegration approach, which allows us to capture both positive and negative disaggregated oil shocks. We find that oil demand shocks are the main drivers of both measures of uncertainty, while oil supply shocks affect treasury rates. However, both oil demand shocks and oil supply shocks affect investor sentiment, with certain differences in the effects of positive and negative shocks. The overall effects of both oil demand and supply shocks—whether positive or negative—are stronger in the long-run than in the short-run. Additionally, we apply rolling causality and reveal evidence of a rather homogenous causal flow from disaggregated oil shocks to the variables studied, particularly around global stress periods. Our findings have implications for asset pricing and portfolio risk management and suggest policy formulations that differentiate between disaggregated positive and negative oil price shocks.

     

Tax distortions and the case for price stability

We investigate the case for price stability in the general version of the New Keynesian (NNS) model with capital and several shocks. The model includes, in addition to the standard imperfect competition and monetary frictions, a non-trivial, endogenous tax distortion. We find that the case for perfect price stability is not significantly weakened. Optimal policy tolerates a small amount of output gap and price variability by reacting less strongly to supply and fiscal shocks in comparison to a policy that aims at perfect price stabilization.