Institutional investors,intangible information,and the book-to-market effect

This paper establishes a robust link between the trading behavior of institutions and the book-to-market effect. Building on work by Daniel and Titman (2006), who argue that the book-to-market effect is driven by the reversal of intangible returns, I find that institutions tend to buy (sell) shares in response to positive (negative) intangible information and that the reversal of the intangible return is most pronounced among stocks for which a large proportion of active institutions trade in the direction of intangible information. Furthermore, the book-to-market effect is large and significant in stocks with intense past institutional trading but nonexistent in stocks with moderate institutional trading. This influence of institutional trading on the book-to-market effect is distinct from that of firm size. These results are consistent with the view that the tendency of institutions to trade in the direction of intangible information exacerbates price overreaction, thereby contributing to the value premium.     

Disagreement and return predictability of stock portfolios

This paper provides evidence that portfolio disagreement measured bottom-up from individual-stock analyst forecast dispersions has a number of asset pricing implications. For the market portfolio, market disagreement mean-reverts and is negatively related to ex post expected market return. Contemporaneously, an increase in market disagreement manifests as a drop in discount rate. For book-to-market sorted portfolios, the value premium is stronger among high disagreement stocks. The underperformance by high disagreement stocks is stronger among growth stocks. Growth stocks are more sensitive to variations in disagreement relative to value stocks. These findings are consistent with asset pricing theory incorporating belief dispersion.     

Is the Value Spread a Good Predictor of Stock Returns? UK Evidence

Abstract:  This paper explores the predictive ability of the value spread in the UK. I replicate the US analysis of Liu and Zhang (2007) using UK data. In addition, I extend their work by exploring the predictive ability of the book-to-market, market-to-book and value spread on other size and value investment strategies, namely: large-caps only; small-caps minus large-caps (SML); value stocks only; growth stocks only; value stocks minus growth stocks (VMG) and a market portfolio that includes all stocks. The results are consistent with Liu and Zhang (2007) on the value spread. The value spread shows no predictive power for portfolio returns. Therefore, I show that the predictive power of book-to-market and market-to-book spreads depend on the portfolio formation strategies and the relative proportion of small-cap, large-cap, value and growth stocks in the portfolio.     

Higher-Order Systematic Comoments and Asset Pricing: New Evidence

We provide evidence supporting Rubinstein's (1973) model that if returns are not normal, measuring risk requires more than just measuring covariance. Higher-order systematic comoments should be important to risk-averse investors who are concerned about the extreme outcomes of their investments. Our paper shows that the Fama-French factors [SMB (return on small stocks less the return on big stocks), HML (return on high book-to-market stocks less the return on low book-to-market stocks)] as well as the momentum and market liquidity factors can be explained by the higher-order systematic comoments, and it lends support to the traditional covariance risk-based theory without having to resort to behavior assumptions.     

会计盈余的规模、账面／市值因素实证研究——来自中国上市公司的经验数据

本文尝试将资本资产定价三因素模型的思想运用于研究会计盈余的影响因素,通过对1991—2003年我国的上市公司会计盈余的实证分析,发现在A股市场:规模和账面/市值因素显著地存在于上市公司会计盈余当中;账面/市值因素的作用要更显著于规模因素;低账面/市值的上市公司倾向于保持强盈利能力;在账面/市值组的内部,资本市场化规模大的股票比小的会计盈余更高;在同一市场资本化规模组内部,随着账面/市值比率的提高,账面/市值对会计盈余的影响,由反向变为正向,影响力也逐步增强。     

The Cost of Firearm Deaths in the United States: Reduced Life Expectancies and Increased Insurance Costs

The United States remains far behind most other affluent countries in terms of life expectancy. One of the possible causes of this life expectancy gap is the widespread availability of firearms and the resulting high number of U.S. firearm fatalities: 10,801 homicides in 2000. The European Union experienced 1,260 homicides, Japan only 22. Using multiple decrement techniques, I show that firearm violence shortens the life of an average American by 104 days (151 days for white males, 362 days for black males). Among all fatal injuries, only motor vehicle accidents have a stronger effect. I estimate that the elimination of all firearm deaths in the United States would increase the male life expectancy more than the total eradication of all colon and prostate cancers. My results suggest that the insurance premium increases paid by Americans as a result of firearm violence are probably of the same order of magnitude as the total medical costs due to gunshots or the increased cost of administering the criminal justice system due to gun crime.     

On the relationship between concentration of prospect theory/mental accounting investors,cointegration, and momentum

We examine the role of cointegration between stock prices and their estimated fundamental values in return momentum. We find that the positive relationship between capital gains overhang and future stock returns in Grinblatt and Han (2005) is significantly stronger among the “non-cointegrated” group of stocks as compared with the “cointegrated” group of stocks. Further, for the cointegrated stocks, the slower the speed of adjustment to the cointegrating equilibrium, the greater (smaller) is the future return of stocks with unrealized capital gains (losses). These findings are robust to various firm characteristics including firm size, book-to-market ratio, past returns, idiosyncratic volatility, dispersion in analysts’ earnings forecasts, turnover, individual investor ownership, and industry returns.     

Risk,Mispricing, and Value Investing

We evaluate the stock return performance of a modified version of the book-to-market strategy and its implications for market efficiency. If the previously documented superior stock return of the book-to-market strategy represents mispricing, its performance should be improved by excluding fairly valued firms with extreme book-to-market ratios. To attain this, we classify stocks as value or glamour on book-to-market ratios and accounting accruals jointly. This joint classification is likely to exclude stocks with extreme book-to-market ratios due to mismeasured accounting book values reflecting limitations underlying the accounting system. Using both 12-month buy-and-hold returns and earnings announcement returns, our results show that this joint classification generates substantially higher portfolio returns in the post-portfolio-formation year than the book-to-market classification alone with no evidence of increased risk. In addition, this superior stock return performance is more pronounced among firms held primarily by small (unsophisticated) investors and followed less closely by market participants (stock price <$10). Finally, and most importantly, financial analysts are overly optimistic (pessimistic) about earnings of glamour (value) stock, and for a subset of firms identified as overvalued by our strategy, the earnings announcement raw return, as well as abnormal return, is negative. These last results are particularly important because it is hard to envision a model consistent with rational investors holding risky stocks with predictable negative raw returns for a long period of time rather than holding fT-bills and with financial analysts systematically overestimating the earnings of these stocks while underestimating earnings of stocks that outperform the stock market.     

Share issuance and cross-sectional returns: International evidence

Share issuance predicts cross-sectional returns in a non-U.S. sample of stocks from 41 different countries. Issuance predictability has greater statistical significance than either size or momentum, and is similar to book-to-market. As in the U.S., the international issuance effect is robust across both small and large firms. Unlike the U.S., the effect is driven more by low returns after share creation rather than positive returns following share repurchases. Issuance return predictability is stronger in countries with greater issuance activity, greater stock market development, and stronger investor protection. The results suggest that the share issuance effect is related to the ease with which firms can issue and repurchase their shares.     

The Value Spread

We decompose the cross-sectional variance of firms' book-to-market ratios using both a long U.S. panel and a shorter international panel. In contrast to typical aggregate time-series results, transitory cross-sectional variation in expected 15-year stock returns causes only a relatively small fraction (20 to 25 percent) of the total cross-sectional variance. The remaining dispersion can be explained by expected 15-year profitability and persistence of valuation levels. Furthermore, this fraction appears stable across time and across types of stocks. We also show that the expected return on value-minus-growth strategies is atypically high at times when their spread in book-to-market ratios is wide.     

THE EFFECT OF SIZE,BOOK-TO-MARKET EQUITY,PRIOR RETURNS,AND BETA ON STOCK RETURNS: JANUARY VERSUS THE REMAINDER OF THE YEAR

Size and book-to-market equity are shown to transcend beta in explaining stock returns. One possible explanation of the book-to-market equity effect is overreaction. We investigate the effect of size, book-to-market equity, prior returns, and beta on stock returns. We find significant reversals in January consistent with overreaction. We find a strong positive relation between returns and prior returns for February through December. Both patterns are distinct from either a size or book-to-market equity effect. Book-to-market equity is significantly related to returns, with some evidence of a stronger effect in January.     

Evidence on the Characteristics of Cross Sectional Variation in Stock Returns

Firm sizes and book-to-market ratios are both highly correlated with the average returns of common stocks. Fama and French (1993) argue that the association between these characteristics and returns arise because the characteristics are proxies for nondiversifiable factor risk. In contrast, the evidence in this article indicates that the return premia on small capitalization and high book-to-market stocks does not arise because of the comovements of these stocks with pervasive factors. It is the characteristics rather than the covariance structure of returns that appear to explain the cross-sectional variation in stock returns.     

An Analysis of Contrarian Investment Strategies in the UK

The performance of contrarian, or value strategies – those that invest in stocks that have low market value relative to a measure of their fundamentals – continues to attract attention from researchers and practitioners alike. While there is much extant evidence on the profitability of value strategies, however, most of this evidence pertains to the US. In this paper, we provide a detailed characterisation of value strategies using data on UK stocks for the period 1975 to 1998. We first undertake simple one-way and two-way classifications of stocks in which value is defined using both past performance and expected future performance. Using sales growth as a proxy for past performance and book-to-market, earnings yield and cash flow yield as measures of expected future performance, we find that that stocks that have both poor past performance and low expected future performance have significantly higher returns than those that have either good past performance or good expected future performance. Allowing for size effects in returns reduces the value premium but it nevertheless remains significant. We go on to explore whether the profitability of value strategies in the UK can be explained using the three factor model of Fama and French (1996). Broadly consistent with the results for the US, we find that using the one-way classification the excess returns to almost all value strategies can be explained by their loading on the market, book-to-market and size factors. However, in contrast with the US, using the two-way classification there are excess returns to value strategies based on book-to-market and sales growth, even after controlling for their loading on the market, book-to-market and size factors.     

Glamour and Value Strategies on the Tokyo Stock Exchange

This paper evaluates the performance of glamour and value strategies and tests the extrapolation model for the Japanese equity market. In general, value stocks outperform glamour stocks by between 6 and 12 percent per annum for the five years after portfolio formation. Evidence from past, future and expected growth provides strong support for the story developed in Lakonishok, Shleifer and Vishny (1994). It is difficult to attribute the value premia to the difference, if any, in risk factors. In addition, the book-to-market premium is much closer to an arbitrage opportunity than the size premium.     

Tracking down distress risk

This paper shows that exposure to aggregate distress risk is the underlying source of the premiums for the Fama-French size (SMB) and value (HML) factors. Using a unique data set of aggregate business failures of both private and public firms from 1926 to 1997, I build portfolios that track news about future firm failures. These tracking portfolios optimally hedge aggregate distress risk and earn a Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) alpha of approximately −4% a year. Both HML and SMB predict changes in future failure rates. Small stocks have lower returns than large stocks and value stocks have lower returns than growth stocks when the market expects an increase in future failure rates. Finally, a two-factor model with the market and the tracking portfolio for aggregate distress as factors does as well as the Fama-French three-factor model in pricing the 25 size and book-to-market sorted portfolios.     

Why does book-to-market value of equity forecast cross-section stock returns?

In this paper, we derive a model of book-to-market value of equity based on the present value model and estimate it using panel data on individual stocks. We explicitly include in the model all the determinants of book-to-market except the firm-specific discount rate, which we capture using fixed individual effects in the panel data model. The model is particularly successful, explaining nearly 90% of the time series and cross-section variation in the ratio of book-to-market value of equity. Moreover, the estimated firm-specific fixed effects are more successful than the most recent book-to-market value of equity in forecasting subsequent returns. This is consistent with an efficient market in which book-to-market is a proxy for risk.     

Relations Between Stock Returns and Fundamental Variables: Evidence from a Segmented Market

This study examines relations between stock returns and potential explanatory factors in Korea, an important and segmented emerging market. Our results show that Korean stock returns in general and returns on stocks listed in Section 1 in particular are significantly positively related to book-to-market, sales-price, and debt-equity ratios, but not significantly related to market value of equity. Returns on stocks listed in Section 2 are, however, negatively related to market value of equity and not significantly related to the other three variables. Among the variables investigated by us, book-to-market ratio has the greatest explanatory power for stock returns and it indicates superior returns for value stocks. Our findings strengthen the international evidence of the role of book-to-market ratio in explaining stock returns by demonstrating its significance even in the segmented Korean market.     

Asymmetries in Stock Returns: Statistical Tests and Economic Evaluation

We provide a model-free test for asymmetric correlations inwhich stocks move more often with the market when the marketgoes down than when it goes up, and also provide such testsfor asymmetric betas and covariances. When stocks are sortedby size, book-to-market, and momentum, we find strong evidenceof asymmetries for both size and momentum portfolios, but noevidence for book-to-market portfolios. Moreover, we evaluatethe economic significance of incorporating asymmetries intoinvestment decisions, and find that they can be of substantialeconomic importance for an investor with a disappointment aversion(DA) preference as described by Ang, Bekaert, and Liu (2005).     

Information-based trading,price impact of trades,and trade autocorrelation

In this study we show that both the price impact of trades and serial correlation in trade direction are positively and significantly related to the probability of information-based trading (PIN). The positive relation remains significant even after controlling for the effects of stock attributes. Higher trading activity (i.e., shorter intervals between trades) induces both larger price impact and stronger positive serial correlation in trade direction. The effect of time interval between trades on quote revision is stronger for stocks with higher PIN values. These results provide direct empirical support for the information models of trade and quote revision.     

The cross-section and time series of stock and bond returns

Bond factors which predict future U.S. economic activity at business cycle horizons are priced in the cross-section of U.S. stock returns. High book-to-market stocks have larger exposures to these bond factors than low book-to-market stocks, because their cash flows are more sensitive to the business cycle. Because of this new nexus between stock and bond markets, a parsimonious three-factor dynamic no-arbitrage model can be used to jointly price book-to-market-sorted portfolios of stocks and maturity-sorted bond portfolios, while reproducing the time-series variation in expected bond returns. The business cycle itself is a priced state variable in stock and bond markets.