Professional stock analysts' recommendations: Implications for individual investors

Conclusions regarding analyst performance often depend on the evaluation technique employed. Using a wide variety of techniques, we find that although there is some evidence that analysts do have the ability to identify undervalued and overvalued securities, individual investors generally experience inferior portfolio performance by following analyst recommendations published in the “Market Highlights” section of USA Today (even before transaction costs are included). As a result, individual investors should view studies that purport to show superior performance with skepticism. This statement is particularly true when the assertions are based on stock index comparisons.     

Random walk versus breaking trend in stock prices: Evidence from emerging markets

This paper investigates whether stock-price indexes of seventeen emerging markets can be characterized as random walk (unit root) or mean reversion processes. We implement a test that can account for structural breaks in the underlying series and is more powerful than standard tests. We find that for fourteen countries, stock prices exhibit structural breaks. Furthermore, for ten countries, the null hypothesis of a random walk can be rejected at the one or 5% significance level. Our results indicate that ignoring structural breaks that arise from the liberalization of emerging markets can lead to incorrect inference that these indices are characterized by random walks, and are consistent with the points made by Bekaert et al. [J. Int. Money Finan. 21 (2002) 295]. Our findings hold true regardless of whether stock indexes are denominated in US dollar terms, in local currencies terms, or in real terms.     

The reputational effects of analysts' stock recommendations and credit ratings: Evidence from operational risk announcements in the financial industry

This paper investigates whether more favorable stock recommendations and higher credit ratings serve as a reputational asset or reputational liability around reputation-damaging events. Analyzing the reputational effects of operational risk announcements incurred by financial institutions, we find that firms with a “Buy” stock recommendation or “Speculative Grade” credit rating are more likely to incur an equity-based reputational damage. In addition, firms with lower credit ratings incur a much more severe debt-based reputational damage. Moreover, credit ratings are more instrumental in mitigating the debt-based reputational damage caused by fraud incidents or incurred in non-banking activities. Furthermore, the misconduct of senior management could demolish the reputation of firms with less heterogeneous stock recommendations. Finally, credit ratings serve as an equity-based reputational asset in the short term but turn into an equity-based reputational liability in the long term. Overall, our analysis reveals that stock recommendations represent a reputational burden and credit ratings act as a reputational shield; however, the persistence and magnitude of such reputational effects are moderated by time and event characteristics.     

Integration of emerging stock markets with global stock markets

Financial integration for emerging economies should be seen as a long-term objective. In this paper, we examine stock market integration among five selected emerging stock markets (Brazil, China, Mexico, Russia and Turkey) and developed markets of the US, UK and Germany. The bounds testing approach to cointegration and error-correction modeling are used on monthly data from January 2001 to December 2014 to determine the short-run and long-run relationship between emerging stock market returns and the returns of the developed stock markets. The results show evidence of the existence of short-run integration among stock markets in emerging countries and the developed markets. However, the long-run coefficients for stock market returns in all emerging countries show a significant relationship only with Germany stock market return. The empirical findings in this study have important implications for academicians, international investors, and policymakers in emerging markets.     

Which trades move prices in emerging markets?: Evidence from China's stock market

This paper extends Barclay and Warner's [Barclay, M.J. and J.B. Warner (1993), ‘Stealth trading and volatility: which trades move prices?’, Journal of Financial Economics, vol. 34, pp. 281–306.] original work on stealth trading by analysing which trades move price for the emerging Chinese stock market. A large block trade/manipulation hypothesis is proposed in addition to the stealth and public information hypotheses examined by Barclay and Warner. Using high-frequency data the results show that while medium and large-size trades are associated with disproportionately large, overall, cumulative stock price changes, it is the large-size trades (in terms of the number of transactions) which have the largest effect on cumulative price increases. Thus, while there is some support for stealth trading in the Chinese market, there are other effects in operation such as large block trades/price manipulation.     

Reverse innovation and firm value in emerging markets: Evidence from China

Reverse innovation (RI) patents, which apply to intellectual property that is created in an emerging country but patented in a developed country, are better representatives of innovation value than domestic patents in emerging economies. We argue that RI patents contribute to firm value by proxying for the private value of innovation, generating product market value, and signalling firms’ capabilities. Using a sample of Chinese-listed companies, we find RI patents positively relate to firms’ short- and long-term market value. This effect is stronger for firms with high innovative intensity and managerial ability. We also explore the mechanisms behind the relationship between RI and firm value. We demonstrate that, in addition to the domestic patent functions of creating value and capturing innovation rent, RI patents can further leverage firm value by signalling firm quality to customers and investors in developed markets, a function that is unique to RI patents.     

The impact of aggregate uncertainty on herding in analysts' stock recommendations

This study examines whether aggregate uncertainty affects the herding tendency among analysts. The results show that, in addition to market risk and firm-level uncertainty, analysts' tendency to herd increases with aggregate uncertainty. These results are robust with respect to excluding common and earnings information, as well as using different measurements of consensus recommendation, risk and aggregate uncertainty. Herding among analysts is stronger when downgrading a stock. The tendency of herding clearly increases in tandem with aggregate uncertainty. The results are more prevalent for small stocks and inexperienced analysts.     

Financial analysts' bundling across firms: Target prices and stock recommendations

A rising trend is that analysts bundle earnings forecasts for multiple firms on the same day, and such forecast bundling is associated with low-quality forecasts. We explore target price bundling and recommendation bundling. Factors driving bundling revisions of an output for multiple firms vary across three outputs: forecasts, target prices, and recommendations. Target price (recommendation) revisions bundled for firms are less informative than stand-alone revisions. Although consistency in the direction of revisions between different outputs is typically associated with higher perceived quality, consistent revisions between outputs are not associated with higher informativeness of revisions bundled for multiple firms.     

Evaluating analysts' value: evidence from recommendation revisions around stock price jumps

Recent studies document that analyst recommendation revisions tend to coincide with important corporate events, but offer mixed evidence on whether these revisions still contain significant information content. In this paper, we use large discontinuous changes, known as jumps, in stock prices as proxy for significant events and examine the information content of analyst revisions. We find that although recommendation revisions are more likely to be clustered around stock price jumps, they still contain significant information, especially those issued prior to jumps.     

The performance of frequent acquirers: Evidence from emerging markets

This study examines the returns to 2340 merger deals conducted by 1122 frequent acquirers in 17 emerging markets, during the period 1985 to June 2008. Our primary findings are as follows. Serial acquirers in emerging countries on average experience a declining pattern in returns with subsequent deals, but the pattern is not strong. However, conditional on successful initial deals, the declining pattern is strong for the majority of countries, is large in terms of the magnitude, and is significant in the multivariate regression analysis. We interpret the results as somewhat supportive of the hubris behavior as a factor in serial acquisitions (Roll, J Business 59, 1986). We also find a stronger declining pattern for more developed markets but no substantial difference between civil and common-law countries; the former might be explained by generally greater and increasing competition for control in more developed markets.     

Price limit bands,asymmetric volatility and stock market anomalies: Evidence from emerging markets

I investigate the effects of imposing different bands of price limits on stock returns and volatility in the Egyptian (EGX), Thai (SET) and Korean (KRX) stock exchanges. In addition, the paper examines whether the switch from narrow price limits (NPL) to wider price limits (WPL) structurally alters volatility and the day of the week anomaly. Using the extended EGARCH and PARCH asymmetric volatility models, I found that the switch from NPL to WPL structurally altered both asymmetric volatility and the day of the week anomaly in the EGX, SET and KRX. I argue that the price discovery mechanism is disrupted due to the switch as closing prices do not fully reflect all information arrived in the market when prices hit the limits and that is reflected on volatility and market efficiency.     

Interest rate dynamic effect on stock returns and central bank transparency: Evidence from emerging markets

Interest rate dynamic effect on stock returns is examined under different levels of central bank transparency under an asset pricing context. Using a large set of emerging countries in a panel data framework, we provide evidence for a negative link between stock returns and interest rate differences. However, this negative effect is reduced significantly under a transparent central bank, underlying a non-linear impact on stock returns. Our study is focused on a period from 1998 to 2008 where fundamental changes in the level of central banks’ transparency were occurred. Our findings imply that restrictive monetary policies under high levels of transparency lead to smoother reductions on stock returns with significant benefits for financial stability.     

Disruption and stock markets: Evidence from Hong Kong

We examine the impact of disruption on stock markets using the 2019 Hong Kong protests for identification. We find that greater protest intensity corresponds to higher bid–ask spreads, lower trading volume, and greater return volatility for dual-listed Chinese firms’ Hong Kong (H) shares but not their home (A) shares. We also document negative abnormal returns only for these firms’ H-shares around major protest events, which shortly after exhibit reversal. Next, we validate our main findings by documenting similar results using Hong Kong-listed firms only. Overall, we provide new evidence highlighting the impact of protest-induced disruption on financial markets.     

Intra- and inter-regional return and volatility spillovers across emerging and developed markets: Evidence from stock indices and stock index futures

We provide empirical evidence on the patterns of intra- and inter-regional transmission of information across 10 developed and 11 emerging markets in Asia, the Americas, Europe and Africa using both stock indices and stock index futures. The main transmission channels are examined in the period from 2005 to 2014 through the analysis of return and volatility spillovers around the most recent crises based on the generalized vector autoregressive framework. Our findings demonstrate that markets are more susceptible to domestic and region-specific volatility shocks than to inter-regional contagion. A novel result reported in our study is a difference in patterns of international signals transmission between models employing indices and futures data. We conclude that futures data provide more efficient channels of information transmission because the magnitude of return and volatility spillovers across futures is larger than across indices. Our findings are relevant to practitioners, such as stock market investors, as well as policy makers and can help enhance their understanding of financial markets interconnectedness.     

Collateral-based lending in emerging markets: Evidence from Thailand

This paper examines the role and determinants of collateral in emerging markets compared to mature ones. Analyzing a data set of 560 credit files of Thai commercial banks, we find that both the incidence and degree of collateralization are higher there than in developed markets. Thai banks use collateral primarily to reduce the higher credit risks of small and relatively young firms. Long credit relationships do not reduce collateral requirements by lowering information asymmetry. Market imperfections result from housebanks demanding higher collateral than non-housebanks, suggesting a lock-in effect for their borrowers, and from larger banks realizing higher collateral claims.     

The practice of investment valuation in emerging markets: Evidence from Argentina

This paper discusses the challenges of applying traditional valuation techniques to emerging markets, and reports on how CFOs, financial advisors and private equity funds meet those challenges in Argentina, a major Latin American emerging economy. On many fronts, our findings show that there is substantial alignment with U.S. valuation practices. We find that: (a) discounted cashflow techniques like NPV, IRR and payback are very popular among corporations and financial advisors; (b) the CAPM is the most popular asset pricing model, yet it is frequently modified to account for country-specific risk; (c) capital budgeting analyses are performed in U.S. dollars by non-dollar companies; (d) financial advisors tend to apply U.S. betas to the emerging market, yet they rarely adjust betas for cross-border asymmetries; and (e) corporations tend to disregard the effects of small size and illiquidity. We provide tentative explanations for our findings.     

The cross-section of stock returns in frontier emerging markets

We are the first to investigate the cross-section of stock returns in the new emerging equity markets, the so-called frontier emerging markets. Our unique survivorship-bias free data set consists of more than 1400 stocks over the period 1997 to 2008 and covers 24 of the most liquid frontier emerging markets. The major benefit of using individual stock characteristics is that it allows us to investigate whether return factors that have been documented in developed countries also exist in these markets. We document the presence of economically and statistically significant value and momentum effects, and a local size effect. Our results indicate that the value and momentum effects still exist when incorporating conservative assumptions of transaction costs. Additionally, we show that value, momentum, and local size returns in frontier markets cannot be explained by global risk factors.     

Liquidity and short-run predictability: Evidence from international stock markets

This study investigates the determinants of short-run predictability in international stock markets, where predictability is defined as the accuracy of the best-combined daily forecasts. Contrary to popular belief, illiquid markets, characterized by high transaction costs and large price impact, are not necessarily highly predictable. Instead, markets with larger trading volume are more predictable, especially after the global financial crisis and in emerging markets. Those with larger market capitalization, steeper upward trends, and positively skewed returns are less predictable. Company financial strength has limited influence. During the COVID-19 pandemic the markets have become more predictable, with stronger price trends. Emerging markets are less predictable when relatively over- or undervalued.     

The conservatism bias in an emerging stock market: Evidence from Taiwan

Behavioral theories predict that investors underreact to earnings announcements stemming from the conservatism bias and overreact to a string of earnings news due to representativeness heuristic. This paper thus examines trading strategies of buying past high EPS growth stocks and selling past low EPS growth stocks over 4 to 20 quarters. The results generally support conservative reactions in the medium-term horizon, but provide little support for the over-use of representativeness heuristic on the long-term horizon. Moreover, we find that investors react differently to the consistency sequences of the two extreme earnings growth portfolios.     

Portfolio selection and skewness: Evidence from international stock markets

This paper finds that the returns of the world's 14 major stock markets are not normally distributed, and that the correlation matrix of these stock markets was stable during the January 1988–December 1993 time period. Polynomial goal programming, in which investor preferences for skewness can be incorporated, is utilized to determine the optimal portfolio consisting of the choices of 14 international stock indexes. The empirical findings suggest that the incorporation of skewness into an investor's portfolio decision causes a major change in the construction of the optimal portfolio. The evidence also indicate that investors trade expected return of the portfolio for skewness.