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.     

Institutional Investor Trading in a Short Investment Horizon: Evidence from the Korean Stock Market

We examine the weekly trading activities of institutional investors in the Korean stock market. First, we find that average net trades by institutional investors this week are negatively related to one-week lagged returns, suggesting that they could be contrarian traders. Second, our finding shows that institutional investors’ net trades this week are positively related to the net trades next week, consistent with persistent trading and/or herding behavior. Third, we find that institutional net trades are positively related to the post one-week returns. Finally, our findings are most pronounced in the group of short-term institutional investors.     

Institutional Investor Participation and Stock Market Anomalies

This paper investigates the impact of institutional trading volume on stock market anomalies. The paper proposes a measure that evaluates the percentage of total trading volume of a stock accounted for by institutional trades. The empirical analyses using a large sample of firms from 1980–2005 provide strong evidence that the strength of stock market anomalies such as price momentum, post‐earnings announcement drift, the value premium, and the investment anomaly is decreasing in institutional trading volume. Additionally, the effects of institutional trading volume are stronger than those of institutional ownership, the major measure of institutional investor participation in the finance literature. These findings suggest that institutional trading significantly improves stock price efficiency.     

Institutional Herding in the ADR Market

This study examines institutional herding in the ADR market between 1985 and 1998. We find a significant positive relation between changes in institutional ownership and ADR returns over the same period. The positive relation persists after we control for the momentum effect in the US stock markets. We also find that in the ADR market, past winners (losers) in the herding period continue to be the winners (losers) in the post-herding period. The lack of a returns reversal suggests institutional herding is related to momentum trading. However, the positive relation between institutional ownership changes and ADR returns remains after controlling for momentum trading in the ADR market. Our results also rule out that positive feedback trading is related to institutional herding in the ADR market.     

Daily Stock Trading by Investor Type and Information Asymmetry: Evidence from the Korean Market

We examine the influence of trading by heterogeneous investors on information asymmetry in the Korean stock market, which includes domestic and foreign institutional investors and individual investors. In particular, we examine the relationship between the daily trading volume and the level of information asymmetry reflected in the stock price. The results reveal that high-volume daily trading by domestic institutional and individual investors increases the degree of information asymmetry in the short term, but is more evident for individual investors. Foreign institutional investors tend to mitigate the information asymmetry. Finally, our findings are robust to an alternative measure of investor trading.     

Investor Sentiment,Trading Behavior and Informational Efficiency in Index Futures Markets

This paper shows that traders in index futures markets are positive feedback traders—they buy when prices increase and sell when prices decline. Positive feedback trading appears to be more active in periods of high investor sentiment. This finding is consistent with the notion that feedback trading is driven by expectations of noise traders. Consistent with the noise trading hypothesis, order flow in index futures markets is less informative when investors are optimistic. Transitory volatility measured at high frequencies also appears to decline in periods of bullish sentiment, suggesting that sentiment‐driven trading increases market liquidity.     

Informed Futures Trading and Price Discovery: Evidence from Taiwan Futures and Stock Markets

This article focuses on the information effects between the futures market and its spot market. Intraday data are used to investigate the lead-lag relationships between the returns and trading activity of Taiwan stock index futures and the spot returns. We focus on the transmission direction and the sources of information. Consistent with most previous studies, our results show that other than the contemporaneous relationship predicted by carry-cost theory and efficient market theory, futures returns significantly lead spot returns, which implies that informed trades may occur in the futures market. Using private transaction information, net open buy, as a proxy for futures trading activity and distinguishing different types of futures traders, we find that foreign institutional traders are the major source of informed trades because their trading has predictive power for future movements in both spot and futures prices. Traders in other categories are information laggards.     

信息不确定、坏消息与投资者交易行为

本文以2000年至2010年的A股上市公司违法违规事件为样本,分析该类事件中信息不确定性的影响,以及市场反应中的投资者交易行为。研究发现:上市公司市场价值在事件日呈显著下跌;然而,与直觉有些相悖的是,信息不确定程度与超额累积收益呈显著正相关,这意味着在坏消息到来时,不确定性反而提高了股票的市场价值;最后,通过对各类投资者在此类事件中的净买入情况分析,我们发现不同投资者的交易行为有明显差异。机构投资者在坏消息中采用了反向交易策略,并且知情交易促进机构投资者的买入。     

Institutional Traders' Behavior in an Emerging Stock Market: Empirical Evidence on Polish Pension Fund Investors

Abstract:   In this paper, we contribute to the literature on institutional herding and feedback trading by analysing the investment behavior of pension funds on the Polish stock market. Pension funds entered into the stock market due to the national pension system reform in 1999, providing a unique opportunity to receive deeper insight into the behavior of institutional investors in an emerging capital market. Our results show that Polish pension fund investors are to a greater extent involved in herd‐like behavior and pursue feedback trading strategies more often than their counterparts in mature markets. This finding is primarily attributed to a stringent investment regulation and high market concentration. We do not detect, however, that trading by the pension funds exerts significant influence on the future stock prices.     

Feedback trading in stock index futures: Evidence from South Africa

This study tests whether investors and speculators in stock index futures contracts on the South African stock market use feedback trading strategies. Feedback trading can be destabilizing and impede on the risk mitigation and price discovery functions of futures contracts. Using the Sentana and Wadhwani (1992) model, and accounting for the global financial crisis, we find no evidence of feedback trading in the Top40 futures index or the Top40 mini futures index contracts. Our findings have important implications for investors who wish to use index futures to mitigate risk or exploit arbitrage opportunities and regulators concerned about the destabilizing effects of futures trading.     

中国个人投资者处置效应研究——一个非理性信念的视角

处置效应是指投资者过早卖出盈利股票而长期持有亏损股票的现象。大量文献表明金融市场投资者存在显著的处置效应,但其产生的原因和机理存在争议。本文在前景理论框架下,构建了包含投资者非理性预期的离散时间投资组合决策模型,发现处置效应随投资者情绪升高而减弱。本文使用我国某券商2007—2009年近177万个人投资者股票账户的交易数据进行了实证分析,得到与理论模型预测的一致结果,即投资者情绪与投资者处置效应之间呈现显著的负相关关系。而且,受情绪影响,投资者处置效应在估值难度较大的股票中更弱。本文结论对理解投资者处置效应、优化投资者卖出决策和加强资本市场基础制度建设具有一定理论和实践意义。     

Does Shareholder Composition Matter? Evidence from the Market Reaction to Corporate Earnings Announcements

We examine whether institutional ownership composition is related to parameters of the market reaction to negative earnings announcements. When firms report earnings below analysts' expectations, the stock price response is more negative for firms with higher levels of ownership by momentum or aggressive growth investors. There is no evidence, however, that these institutions cause an “overreaction” to earnings news. Ownership structure is also related to trading volume and to stock price volatility on days around earnings announcements. Our findings are consistent with the idea that the composition of institutional shareholders effects stock price behavior around the release of corporate information.     

The trading behavior of institutions and individuals in Chinese equity markets

This paper employs a unique data set to analyze the trading behavior of 4.74 million individual and institutional investors across Mainland China. Results show that groups of individual investors with varying trade values (as proxies for wealth levels) engage in different trading strategies. Chinese institutions are momentum investors, while less wealthy Chinese individual investors at large are contrarian investors. The results also indicate that a small group of wealthiest Chinese individuals tend to behave like institutions when they buy stocks, and behave like less wealthy individuals when they sell. Furthermore, only the trading activities of institutions and of wealthiest individuals can affect future stock volatility, but those of Chinese individual investors at large have no predictive power for future stock returns.     

The Effects of Stock Characteristics on the Direction and Extent of Herding by Foreign Institutional Investors in the Taiwan Stock Exchange

We use a dynamic herding measure to explore the causes of foreign institutional investor (FII) herding in the Taiwan stock market and examine the effects of stock characteristics on the direction and extent of such herding. We find that FII herding primarily results from cascades rather than habit investing or momentum trading. The result of a panel smooth transition regression shows that FIIs' negative cascades focus on their largest net purchases of stocks, but FIIs' positive cascades focus on winner and small-sized stocks. To increase portfolio returns, investors can use FIIs' cascades to inform their stock purchases.     

Daily institutional trades and stock price volatility in a retail investor dominated emerging market

We examine the short-run dynamic relation between daily institutional trading and stock price volatility in a retail investor-dominated emerging market. We find a significantly negative relation between volatility and institutional net trading that is mainly due to the unexpected institutional trading. The price volatility–institutional trade relation differs for institutional buys and institutional sells, and for small and large stocks. Institutional investors herd-trade in large stocks, but do not systematically engage in positive-feedback trading. We argue that the net impact of informational and noninformational institutional trades determines the relation between volatility and institutional trading, and that the relation is negative when informational trading by institutions prevails.     

Are investors consistent in their trading strategies? An examination of individual investor-level data

While it has been demonstrated that momentum or contrarian trading strategies can be profitable in a range of institutional settings, less evidence is available concerning the actual trading strategies investors adopt. Standard definitions of momentum or contrarian trading strategies imply that a given investor applies the same strategy to both their buy and sell trades, which need not be the case. Using investor-level, transaction-based data from China, where tax effects are neutral, we examine investors' buy-sell decisions separately to investigate how past returns impact differentially on the trading strategies investors adopt when buying and selling stock. After controlling for a wide range of stock characteristics, extreme price changes and portfolio value, a clear asymmetry in trading is observed; with investors displaying momentum behavior when buying stocks, but contrarian behavior when selling stocks. This asymmetry in behavior is not driven purely by reactions to stock characteristics or extreme stocks. We discuss behavioral and cultural explanations for our findings.     

Did institutions herd during the internet bubble?

We examine the trading behavior of institutional investors during the internet bubble and crash of 1998–2001, and its impact on stock prices. Similar to some recent findings concerning the trading behavior of hedge funds and NASDAQ 100 stocks, we find that during the bubble all types of institutions herded with great intensity into internet stocks for a comprehensive sample of institutional investors and internet stocks. In addition to this, we present three entirely new results. First, institutional herding was much greater than what can be explained by momentum trading. Second, institutions as a group continued to increase their holdings of internet stocks for two quarters past the market peak during the first quarter of 2000, and three quarters past the peak for individual stock prices, suggesting that institutions were unable to time the price peaks. Finally and most importantly, we find positive abnormal returns contemporaneous with institutional herding and negative abnormal returns (reversals) at the point that herding ceased. This finding suggests that institutions’ trading created temporary price pressures, and may have contributed to the bubble.     

Market sentiment in commodity futures returns

We identify a strong presence of sentiment exposure in commodity futures returns. Sentiment is able to provide additional explanatory power for comovement among commodity futures beyond the macro- and equity-related sources. Commodity futures with low open interest growth, high volatilities, low momentum, or low futures basis are more sensitive to change in sentiment. Similar to Baker and Wurgler (2006), we construct a market sentiment index by Partial Least Squares regressions (PLS) with non-return based stock market proxies, in particular higher moments of the option implied return distribution. Moreover, our sentiment index can be built on a daily basis.     

投资者情绪、期权隐含信息与股市波动率预测——基于上证50ETF期权的经验研究

在异质自回归模型(HAR-RV)中引入中国上证50ETF期权隐含信息和投资者情绪,本文分别对中国股票市场未来日、周和月波动率进行预测。研究发现,期权隐含信息和投资者情绪能够提高HAR-RV模型对股票市场未来波动率的预测效果。投资者情绪对未来波动率的影响存在两种机制:在情绪高涨期间,月已实现波动率与未来波动率正相关,说明以个人投资者占主体所引起的价格信息机制,在中国股票市场交易中占主导作用;风险中性偏度与未来波动率负相关,说明以个人投资者占主体所引起的噪声交易机制占主导作用。     

Investor sentiment and return predictability of disagreement

This study examines the influence of investor sentiment on the relationship between disagreement among investors and future stock market returns. We find that the relationship between disagreement and future stock market returns time-varies with the degree of investor sentiment. Higher disagreement among investors’ opinions predicts significantly lower future stock market returns during high-sentiment periods, but it has no significant effect on future stock market returns during low-sentiment periods. Our findings imply that investor sentiment is related to several causes of short-sale impediments suggested in the previous literature on investor sentiment, and that the stock return predictability of disagreement is driven by investor sentiment. We demonstrate that investor sentiment has a significant impact on the stock market return predictability of disagreement through in-sample and out-of-sample analyses. In addition, the profitability of our suggested trading strategy exploiting disagreement and investor sentiment level confirms the economic significance of incorporating investor sentiment into the relationship between disagreement among investors and future stock market returns.