Momentum and reversals in Taiwan index futures returns during periods of extreme trading imbalance

The study analyzes the relation between a trading imbalance metric that captures data observable by investors, and future momentum and reversals in Taiwan index futures returns. Standard regression analyses do not show any significant dynamic relations between daily index futures returns and the trading imbalance, regardless of whether the trading imbalance metric is lagged, contemporaneous, or leads the index futures return. However, when the analyses are focused on periods with extreme trading imbalances I find that the daily index futures returns exhibit significant reversals following periods of extreme (low) trading imbalances and low returns. I also find some evidence of residual momentum in consecutive daily index futures returns following periods of extreme (high) trading imbalances and high returns. Trading simulation, directional accuracy, and market timing tests show these effects to be economically significant, even after accounting for transaction costs.     

Idiosyncratic volatility and the cross-section of anomaly returns: is risk your Ally?

Due to arbitrage risk asymmetries, the relationship between idiosyncratic risk and expected returns is positive (negative) among overpriced (underpriced) stocks. We offer a new active anomaly-selection strategy that capitalizes on this effect. To this end, we consider 11 equity anomalies in the U.S. market for years 1963–2016. Buying (selling) long (short) legs of the anomaly portfolios with the highest idiosyncratic volatility produces monthly abnormal returns ranging from 0.97% to 1.14% per month, outperforming a naive benchmark that equally weights all the anomalies by 45–70%. The effect cannot be subsumed by any other established anomaly-return predictor, such as momentum or seasonality. The results are robust to many considerations, including different numbers of anomalies in the portfolios, subperiod analysis, as well as estimation of idiosyncratic risk from the alternative models and throughout different periods.     

The winner-loser anomaly: recent evidence from Greece

This article finds evidence of significant reversals in returns over the medium term in Greek stocks. In contrast with previous research, return reversals are more pronounced for past winners, suggesting that the market overreacts to a greater extent to good news. These contrarian returns are particularly elevated when portfolios are formed using quartiles and during tranquil and bull markets. The optimum contrarian strategy involves skipping the first 6 months of the holding period and implementing the contrarian strategy for a period of 18 months, as returns exhibit continuation followed by reversal. The profitability of the contrarian investment strategy is robust to adjustments for risk and seasonalities. It is the tranquil times and not the crisis/volatile times that generates a significant and profitable contrarian strategy. The recent credit crisis and resulting stock market falls, resulted in extreme movements in some Greek stocks and testing of the contrarian strategy problematic, especially when portfolios are decile ordered. Our findings also highlight the importance of survivorship bias and also suggest that contrarian strategies that just use market beta may be ill-equipped to take into consider extreme market movements, illiquidity and short-sales constraints.     

The January effect in the foreign exchange market: Evidence for seasonal equity carry trades

In this study, we investigate monthly seasonality in the foreign exchange market. Given the well-known recurrent higher returns in some month than in others in stock markets around the world, we consider it likely that a seasonal outperformance of a country’s stock market over another is associated with similar seasonal patterns in capital flows and exchange rates. A seasonal profit (carry trade) opportunity can be created by the simultaneous appreciation of a country’s currency and the outperformance of its stock market. By focusing on the world’s key currency pairs, the US dollar-Deutsche mark and the US dollar-euro, and by using a Markov-switching framework, we document persistent January and December effects in the foreign exchange market from 1971 to 2017. Analysis of the German-US stock returns differential and their bilateral capital flows reveal similar month effects in 65% of the whole sample.     

中国股市价值反转投资策略有效性实证研究

本文以中国深沪A股股票市场为考察对象 ,分析了价值反转投资策略的有效性。作者通过实证分析发现 :在中国深沪A股股票市场上 ,以帐面价值与市场价值比 (B M)、B M GS等指标构造的价值反转投资策略可以产生显著的超额收益率 ,并且其显著程度因持有期不同而不同。接着 ,作者利用CAPM模型、Fama French三因素模型并引入了协偏度 (coskewness)和协峰度 (cokurtosis) ,构造出多风险因子模型来解释价值反转投资策略超额收益率。我们发现 :在经过传统风险因素调整后 ,价值反转投资策略效果依然明显 ;CAPM模型无法解释价值反转投资策略超额收益率 ;Fama French三因素模型对价值反转投资策略超额收益率的解释能力最为显著 ,但对于有些价值投资策略 ,在Fama French三因素基础上加上协偏度和协峰度因子后 ,模型的解释能力有所提高     

Are exchange rates interdependent? Evidence using wavelet analysis

We examine the co-movement in daily returns of USD–INR, EUR–INR, GBP–INR, and JPY–INR currency pair futures contracts traded on the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) using the wavelet cohesion approach. This study contributes to the literature by examining the scantly studied area of co-movement in exchange rates and using the wavelet approach, which allows us to analyse time–frequency-wise co-movement of the time series. The empirical results indicate that the currency futures markets are nearly perfectly integrated in the long run (monthly, quarterly and biannual scales) offering little potential gains from international portfolio diversification. The discrepancies between currency futures markets are small and almost fade away within 3–6 months. Moreover, international currency diversification might offer relatively higher potential gains at intraweek, weekly, and fortnightly time horizons owing to lower correlations among the currencies under consideration. Finally, our multiple-wavelet correlation and cross-correlation analysis shows that GBP acts as a potential leader/follower across scales. The results of our analysis indicate the dynamic pattern of co-movement among the major currency futures contracts, which provides several implications for portfolio managers and international investors participating in the Indian market.     

Product market competition and productivity shocks

I investigate the interaction effects of competition and productivity shocks on stocks’ earnings and returns. I find that the sensitivities of earnings and returns to productivity shocks are negatively associated with competition intensity. I also find that the excess returns of productivity shocks-sorted portfolios are lower when competition intensity is high, even after controlling for known return predictors. Overall, the empirical evidence shows firms are less exposed to productivity shocks when competition is high. As such, this study provides a possible mechanism through which the structure of product markets affects stock returns.     

Modeling the volatility of futures return in rubber and oil—A Copula-based GARCH model approach

This paper attempts to make use of a Copula-based GARCH (Generalized AutoRegressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity) Model to find out the relationships between the volatility of rubber futures returns in the Agricultural Futures Exchange of Thailand (AFET) and other four main markets, namely, the volatility of rubber futures returns in the Singapore Commodity Exchange (SICOM), the volatility of rubber futures returns, crude oil returns, and gas oil returns in the Tokyo Commodity Exchange (TOCOM). The results illustrate that the Student-t dependence only shows better explanatory power than the Gaussian dependence structure and the persistence pertaining to the dependence structure between rubber futures returns in AFET and oil futures returns, namely, crude oil futures returns and gas oil futures returns in TOCOM. Whereas, the Gaussian dependence shows better explanatory ability between rubber futures returns in AFET and other rubber futures returns, namely, the volatility of rubber futures in SICOM and TOCOM. For the multivariate Copula model, all the parameters between AFET and other variables are significant. Based on these results, with the liberalization of agricultural trade and the withdrawal of government support to agricultural producers, there is in many countries a new need for price discovery and even physical trading mechanisms, a need that can often be met by commodity futures exchanges. Hence, this paper recommends that the government supports the hedge mutual funds that can be invested in every commodities futures exchange in the world. It can also put the funds together that will contribute farmers to invest in each commodities futures market.     

Can investors of Chinese energy stocks benefit from diversification into commodity futures?

We attempt to evaluate the diversification potential of commodity futures for energy stocks in China. With a variety of copula functions and three risk-based dynamic measures, our results show that even though commodity futures are not helpful in improving the risk-adjusted returns of energy stocks, they can significantly reduce the volatilities and expected-shortfalls of the diversified portfolios. Such diversification benefits are much larger during large market downturns than during normal times. In particular, gold (copper) futures are the most (least) attractive in diversifying risks of energy stocks in most cases. The results also highlight that the non-linear dependence cannot be ignored when estimating the diversification benefits, and more various risk hedging strategies are expected for investors holding energy stocks, especially coal company stocks.     

Oil prices and UK industry-level stock returns

In this article, we study whether the behaviour of oil prices can be used as a reliable predictor for the disaggregated industry-level stock market indices. We find strong evidence for the relevance of changes in oil price as a predictor for the returns of UK industry portfolios, while this relevance is heterogeneous across industries. In an out-of-sample framework, we find that both the contemporaneous and lagged oil price changes do predict UK industry stock market returns. The predictive power is more transient for the latter case, and mostly appearing after allowing for time variation in the relative performance. In addition, we find some evidence of asymmetry in the oil–stock price relationships.     

非同步交易下股指期货与股票市场开收盘收益率间引导关系的实证研究

运用Granger因果检验、脉冲响应函数分析和方差分解,基于819组5分钟高频数据,对沪深300股指期货及其股票指数的开盘价格、收盘价格之间的引导关系进行检验。结果表明:期货市场与股票市场的开盘收益率相互引导;期货市场收盘收益率引导现货市场的收盘收益率和第二天开盘收益率;期货市场受自身和现货市场新息的冲击;现货市场受自身新息的冲击较大;期货市场对现货市场新息的变动更敏感;期货与现货的开盘收益率变化的总方差主要来自于现货市场,期货与现货的收盘收益率变化的总方差主要来自于期货市场。     

Market moves and the information content of option prices

In this paper we estimate risk-neutral returns distributions using the prices of options written on S&P 500 index futures and investigate whether or not specific characteristics of the returns distributions might be useful information for the purpose of predicting changes in market direction. The key distributional characteristics we focus on are skewness, kurtosis, and the probability weight in the extreme tails of the implied risk-neutral returns distributions. We find that, with one possible exception, the characteristics we considered are unlikely to improve a trader's ability to predict market moves.     

Common risk factors in the returns on cryptocurrencies

This paper identifies three common risk factors in the returns on cryptocurrencies, which are related to cryptocurrency market return, market capitalization (size) and momentum of cryptocurrencies. Investigating a collection of 78 cryptocurrencies, we find that there are anomalous returns that decrease with size and increase with return momentum, and the momentum effect is more significant in small cryptocurrencies. Moreover, Fama-Macbeth regressions show the size and momentum combine to capture the cross-sectional variation in average cryptocurrency returns. In the tests of the three-factor model, we find most cryptocurrencies and their portfolios have significant exposures to the proposed three factors with insignificant intercepts, demonstrating that the three factors explain average cryptocurrency returns very well.     

When Do Opening Stock Returns Tend to be Higher?

Abstract

In this study, I make an effort to formulate a trading rule that would make use of some systematic interday patterns in individual stocks’ opening returns. I analyze intraday price data on all the stocks that were S&P 500 Index constituents during the period from 1993 to 2012. I document that if the general market direction of the previous day's opening session is controlled for, then a stock's opening return tends to be higher if, on the previous trading day, its opening return was relatively high (either positive, or higher than the same day's opening market return) and its open-to-close return was relatively low (either non-positive, or lower than or equal to the same day's open-to-close market return). Finally, for the sampling period, I construct two different investment portfolios involving a long position in the stocks on the days when, according to the findings, their opening returns are expected to be high and a short position in the stocks on the days when, according to the findings, their opening returns are expected to be low. Both portfolios are found to yield significantly positive returns, providing evidence for the practical applicability of the documented patterns in opening stock prices.     

The impact of public and semi-public information on cotton futures market

This study estimated the impact of all major public and semi-public reports on the cotton futures market from 1995 through 2012. The estimation was based on the event study approach with the events measured by the release of five major reports: Export Sales, Crop Progress, World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) and Prospective Plantings (public reports from US Department of Agriculture) and Cotton This Month (semi-public report from International Cotton Advisory Committee). The best-fitting IGARCH(1,1)-t model that accounted for the day-of-week, seasonality and stock levels was used to measure the report effects on daily nearby cotton close-to-close futures returns. Prospective Plantings and WASDE reports appeared to be the most important sources of information in the cotton markets moving the conditional standard deviation of returns by an average of 14.4 and 9.6 percentage points, respectively. However, significant market reaction was not found for the other three reports. Our analysis revealed that, in the presence of clustering, ignoring the impact of other reports would have resulted in about 18% overestimation of WASDE impact.     

New estimates of time-varying currency betas: A trivariate BEKK approach

This paper examines the conditional time-varying currency betas from five developed markets and four emerging markets. We employ a modified trivariate BEKK-GARCH-in-mean model of Engle and Kroner (1995) to estimate the time-varying conditional variance and covariance of returns of stock index, the world market portfolio and changes in bilateral exchange rate between the US dollar and the local currency. It is found that currency betas are more volatile than those of the world market betas. Currency betas in emerging markets are more volatile than those in the developed markets. Moreover, we find evidence of long-memory in currency betas. The usefulness of time-varying currency betas are illustrated by two applications.     

Economic Significance of the Predictable Movements in Futures Returns

This paper tests whether the variation in expected futures returns reflects rational pricing in an efficient market or weak-form market inefficiency. The issue is investigated by looking at the abnormal performance of a trading rule based on available information. Once one allows for time-varying risk and time-varying risk premia, the investment strategy can be used consistently to generate abnormal returns in seven out of 26 markets. With relatively few exceptions therefore, the predictable movements in futures returns reflect weak-form market efficiency. The paper also shows that wrongly assuming constant expected returns may lead to incorrect inferences regarding market efficiency.
(J.E.L.: G14, G12).     

Performance of value- and size-based strategies in the Italian stock market

This paper investigates the performance of size- and value-based strategies in the Italian stock market in the period 2000–2018. Previous research argued the impossibility to define properly value-sorted portfolios due to the inaccuracy of book-to-market ratios available for Italian listed stocks. Using more accurate data, we implement portfolios sorting based on value and growth stocks, to assess the relevance of the value factor in the Italian stock market. We find that the capital asset pricing model fails to explain the cross-section of returns on the different strategies while the Fama and French three-factor model provides a better fit. The results show that all three factors are significant in explaining Italian stock returns during the sample period. Unlike previous studies, which either found no value effect at all or no clear-cut results when testing the book-to-market variable, we find that the value factor is statistically significant and the associated risk premium is of a considerable size.     

Does economic policy uncertainty matter for commodity market in China? Evidence from quantile regression

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on China’s agricultural and metal commodity futures returns across quantiles. We address this issue using the panel quantile regression approach, which allows for a more complete analysis of various conditions in the commodity market (i.e. bearish, normal, and bullish markets). Our empirical results reveal that domestic EPU shocks have a significantly negative effect on agricultural futures returns in bearish markets and a significantly positive effect on metal futures returns in bullish markets. The impacts of both domestic and U.S. EPU shocks on commodity markets are heterogeneous across quantiles and are sector specific. Additionally, by isolating positive and negative EPU shocks, the regression and test results indicate an asymmetric response of commodity futures prices in bullish markets. Moreover, our findings indicate that the metal futures market has a higher financialisation level than the agricultural futures market. The findings can be utilized by policymakers and investors.     

Forecasting volatility of futures market: the S&P 500 and FTSE 100 futures using high frequency returns and implied volatility

We show that historical volatility from high frequency returns outperforms implied volatility when standardized returns by historical volatility tends to be normally distributed. For the FTSE 100 futures, we find that historical volatility using high frequency returns outperforms implied volatility in forecasting future volatility. However, we find that implied volatility outperforms historical volatility in forecasting future volatility for the S&P 500 futures. The results also indicate that historical volatility using high frequency returns could be an unbiased forecast for the FTSE 100 futures.