Turnover and return in global stock markets

I study how growth affects liquidity of global stock exchanges and how liquidity determines cross-sectional returns on those stock exchange index portfolios. I measure portfolio liquidity by turnover ratio computed as value of shares traded over the market capitalization. I obtain data from FIBV, an association of global stock exchanges. In a multiple regression model for turnover ratio, I find age, size, type of exchange, competition for order flow, and growth rate to be significant determinants of portfolio liquidity; however, exchange- and time-specific effects are more appropriate for modeling portfolio liquidity. The time effects yield to three distinct regimes, while the exchange-specific effects are surrogates for the legal systems, English common law, and Civil laws of the countries. I estimate the parameters of a multiple regression model in a two-stage GLS framework in which index return is a function of turnover. The GLS method is preferable since a turnover ratio may have a non-stationary, random component. The significant determinants of index return are turnover and volatility, although some of the volatility effect may be a spillover from a January effect. Investors expect higher return from high turnover markets. However, the positive turnover expected return relation is true only in emerging markets; in developed markets expected return is a function of volatility. This result confirms existing empirical evidence that high turnover stock portfolios generate superior returns and further the sources and pricing of risk in emerging and developed markets are different.     

Liquidity and macroeconomic management in emerging markets

Emerging markets have received considerable attention for foreign investment and international diversification due to the possibility of higher earnings and a low level of integration with global equity markets. These high returns often need to be balanced by the high liquidity costs of trading in illiquid emerging markets. Several studies have shown that central bank and government policies are significant determinants of market liquidity. We investigate the influence of monetary and fiscal policy variables on the market and firm level liquidity of eight emerging stock markets of Asia. Using four different (il)liquidity measures and nine macroeconomic variables, we find that changes in the money supply, government expenditure and private borrowing significantly affect stock market liquidity. Illiquidity is also strongly affected by the bank rate, short-term interest rate and government borrowing. We demonstrate that ‘crowding out’ and ‘cost of funds’ effects exist in these markets. Other major findings are that some markets are more sensitive to local macroeconomic news than world factors, the impact on size based portfolios largely depends on the instruments used by the central banks and government, the liquidity of the manufacturing sector is affected by changes in any policy variables, financial institutions are only influenced by monetary policy variables, and the service sector is least affected.     

Size, value and liquidity. Do They Really Matter on an Emerging Stock Market?

The paper extends the evidence on factors determining stock prices on emerging markets by focusing on the most advanced stock market in Central and Eastern Europe, the Polish market. Besides market, size and value factors, we investigate whether liquidity is a priced risk factor, addressing the hypothesis of its particular relevance in emerging markets. Our results support existing evidence for developed markets regarding market, size, and value factors. Contrary to the expectation that liquidity is a priced factor on emerging markets, we do not find evidence supporting this hypothesis. Analyzing specific market characteristics, we consider possible explanations behind these findings.     

The nature and determinants of comovement between developed,emerging and frontier equity markets: Europe versus Asia‐Pacific

International investors are increasingly attracted towards emerging and frontier markets because of their potential to enhance diversification benefits of a global portfolio. This calls for a rigorous analysis of the nature and determinants of stock market comovement between developed, emerging, and frontier markets in Europe and Asia‐Pacific regions. The findings suggest that unlike their Asia‐Pacific counterparts, European developed, emerging, and frontier stock markets display a higher degree of comovement. Although Asia‐Pacific frontier markets provide good diversification opportunities, investors must be cautioned against their weak financial system. The volatility of returns, gross domestic product growth rate, and the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC) are the key determinants of stock market comovement in Europe. The mechanisms by which comovement in the Asia‐Pacific region is strengthened differ across markets. Comparative analysis of comovement and its determinants across different classes of equity markets and geographies is expected to provide valuable perspectives to global investors, portfolio managers, and policymakers.     

Is there an illiquidity premium in frontier markets?

We perform a comprehensive examination of the role of stock-level liquidity in the cross-section of frontier market stock returns. Using several popular liquidity measures and a battery of asset pricing tests, we investigate the illiquidity premium in 22 countries for the years 1991–2019. Contrary to typical relationships in developed and emerging markets, we find no evidence of illiquidity premium in frontier equities. Our findings support the hypothesis that for countries not fully integrated with the global economy, the diversification benefits offset the illiquidity, which, in turn, proves less important.     

Limits to Arbitrage and Value Investing: Evidence From Brazil

ABSTRACT

In this article we show that the results obtained by accounting-based fundamental analysis strategies observed in the US market cannot be directly extended to emerging markets with less developed institutional environments and narrow equity markets as found in Latin America. We use Brazil as a special case and through standard tests show the apparent usefulness of financial statement analysis as an effective investment tool. We show that an investor could have changed his/her high book-to-market (HBM) portfolio one-year (two years) market-adjusted returns from 5.7% (42.4%) to 26.7% (120.2%) by selecting financially strong HBM firms listed on the São Paulo Stock Exchange. Our tests were performed using stock returns from 1995 to 2007 and financial and accounting data from 1994 to 2004. When one considers low book-to-market (LBM) firms, the results of the study indicate that an investor could change his/her mean (median) one-year market adjusted return from ?11.9% (?7.4%) to 8.1% (2.5%) by adopting the strategy proposed. However, additional investigation demonstrates that the returns generated by these strategies are significantly dependent on stock's liquidity, and when we consider only stocks where arbitrage is possible, the previous results do not hold. These findings contribute to the literature that tries to address the impact of limits to arbitrage on some well reported capital markets phenomena related to financial reporting.     

Military regimes and stock market performance

We examine whether military regimes harm stock market performance by investigating stock returns in ten emerging markets under military and civilian rule. We find no evidence of military regimes having a significantly negative impact on stock returns. In the case of Thailand and Pakistan, we find a significant positive military return premium. These returns cannot be explained by economic cycles, stock market cycles, or returns volatility. Our findings are robust to worldwide stock market movements, tests for spurious regression bias and randomization-bootstrap tests. Our results contradict the common view that military rule has a negative impact on stock market performance.     

Law,finance, and emerging market returns

This paper investigates how legal foundation influences the return distribution, the growth rate of market capitalization, the ratio of market capitalization to gross domestic product (GDP) and the correlation structure of emerging market indices with developed market indices. Using a sample of 24 emerging markets, we find that emerging markets from the French [civil] law systems earned higher returns, have higher correlations with the world market portfolio, higher average growth rates in market capitalization and lower average market capitalization to GDP than their English common law counterparts. Finally, most emerging markets returns are more highly correlated to the returns of developed markets with an English common law tradition. Our results suggest that diversification potential is highest with the English common law emerging markets but that the diversification benefits come at the cost of reduced returns.     

Abnormal trading volume and autoregressive behavior in weekly stock returns in the Saudi stock market

This paper examines the relationship between the abnormal change in trading volume of both individual stocks and portfolios and short-term price autoregressive behavior in the Saudi stock market (SSM). Our objective is to investigate the informational role that trading volume plays in predicting the direction of short-term returns. We evaluate whether the abnormal change in lagged, contemporaneous, and lead turnovers affects serial correlation in returns. Specifically, we examine if and when the change in volume produces momentum (positive correlation) or reversal (negative autocorrelation) in consecutive weekly stock returns.We find a reversal in weekly stock returns when conditioned on the change in lagged volume in the SSM. Our results are consistent for the whole sample, the two sub-sample periods, and the large- and small-firm portfolios. The results are consistent with Campbell, Grossman, and Wang [Campbell, J. Y., S. J. Grossman, and J. Wang, 1993, Trading volume and serial correlation in stock returns, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108, 905–939], who present a model in which risk-averse market makers accommodate the selling pressure of liquidity or non-informational traders. We also find that reversal is more pronounced with the loser portfolio as specified by filter-based methodology. The overall result of this paper is also consistent with the empirical findings of Conrad, Hameed, and Niden [Conrad, J., A. Hameed, and C. Niden, 1994, Volume and autocovariances in short-horizon individual security returns, Journal of Finance 49, 1305–1329.] and Gebka [Gebka, B., 2005, Dynamic volume-return relationship: evidence from an emerging market, Applied Financial Economics, 15, 1019–1029] in which they report price reversal for stock with high trading volume.     

Dependence dynamics of stock markets during COVID-19

Stock markets have exhibited increased returns connectedness during the COVID-19 period. We examine the returns dependence among 42 stock markets classified under various emerging and developed groupings. We apply several dependence measures to examine the returns connectedness among the markets. Our results show that stock markets from the G-7 and Emerging Frontier and Asian (EFA) region exhibit high connectedness with other international markets, while Middle East and North African (MENA) and Latin American (LA) stock markets offer high diversification opportunities through low returns connectedness. The returns coherence of Central and East European (CEE) and G-7 markets increase significantly during the COVID-19 period which supports the hypothesis of contagion. However, during the pandemic MENA stock markets (excluding Greece) and most EFA markets (excluding China, Singapore and Korea) remain less cointegrated with other international equity markets. Our results have implications for individual and institutional investors, fund managers and other financial market stakeholders.     

Common risk factors in returns in Asian emerging stock markets

This paper examines the application of the Fama and French's (1993) three-factor model in three Asian emerging markets (Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan). The empirical evidence is consistent with the US findings that the model can explain most of the variations in average returns. However, we find that the main contributing factor is the contemporaneous market excess returns. The impact of the size effect and book-to-market (BE/ME) factor is limited and in some cases insignificant. When the three-factor model is modified by using lagged market excess returns instead in order to check for the predictability of the market factor, the explanatory power of the model drops substantially but both the risk factors for size and BE/ME are now able to contribute significantly in explaining the cross-sectional variations of stock returns. Their explanatory powers are strongest for small-size with high BE/ME portfolios. The robustness of our results is also checked for the separation of up and down markets periods and January effect.     

The cross-section of emerging market stock returns

Using monthly stock returns from 28 emerging market countries and a total sample period of 21 years, we investigate the predictive power of a broad set of factors. We document that the factor definitions of the Fama and French (2015) five-factor model are less robust compared to alternative factor definitions. In contrast, the anomalous returns associated with cash flow-to-price, gross profitability, composite equity issuance, and momentum are pervasive as they show up in equal- and value-weighted portfolio sorts as well as in cross-sectional regressions. In contrast to financial theory and in line with previous findings, we do not find a positive cross-sectional relationship between risk and return. Finally, return forecasts derived from the alternative factor definitions are superior in their out-of-sample predictive ability to the ones derived from the five-factor model.     

A risk-based explanation of return patterns—Evidence from the Polish stock market

Using both sorting and cross-sectional tests, this paper investigates the patterns in the average stock returns related to stock fundamentals, past return performance, idiosyncratic risk, and turnover in the Polish equity market for the period 2002–2011. To examine the persistence of the patterns, we apply the Monotonic Relation test of Patton and Timmermann (2010). The results favour the book-to-market ratio as a determinant of the cross-sectional variation of stock returns while momentum remains insignificant. The Fama and French (1993) three-factor model, which uses local size and value risk premiums adjusted for the skewed size distribution of the sample, captures most of the recognised anomalies. Further, we show that Polish domestic SMB and HML factors are not correlated with their U.S. and German counterparts.     

Further evidence on Asian stock return behavior

This paper examines the relationship between expected stock returns and size, and market-to-book ratio in five Asian emerging markets: India, Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan and Thailand. Overall, we find a strong size effect in all markets and a significant market-to-book effect in Korea, Malaysia and Thailand. When the tests allow for both variables, the negative relationship between size and average return is less robust; the inclusion of market-to-book equity seems to absorb the role of size in Asian stock returns. Our finding for the Asian market applies to the post-1984 period, thus questioning the assertion of Black [J. Portfolio Manage. 20 (1993) 8] and MacKinlay (1995) that “the value premium is sample-specific”. Although small firms have—to a certain extent—higher average returns than large firms in Asian markets, the market-to-book variable seems to have a consistently stronger role in average returns and would suggest that value stocks have higher average returns than growth stocks. Thus, the higher average return on value stocks in the Asian emerging markets can be considered as a local manifestation of a global phenomenon.     

股市流动性与收益的Copula尾部相关性分析

将Copula函数引入风险管理,可以更加准确地反映变量间的相关结构,尤其是尾部相关特征,而混合Copula函数的使用又可以捕捉到不同的相关结构。应用Copula函数对中国股市收益和流动性在尾部的相关关系的实证研究结果表明:在中国证券市场上,收益和流动性存在同时发生极值的一致性,但拒绝了收益与流动性的尾部对称相关结构,上尾的相关系数大于下尾的相关系数。     

Macroeconomic factors and emerging market equity returns: a Bayesian model selection approach

Macroeconomics figures prominently in analyses of emerging markets, both as an asset class and for allocations within emerging markets. However, the literature on the drivers of emerging markets equity returns generally pays little attention to macroeconomic factors. This paper investigates the predictive power of several candidate macroeconomic factors for emerging market equity returns using the Bayesian model selection approach developed in Cremers [Cremers, K.J.M., 2002. Stock return predictability: a Bayesian model selection perspective. The Review of Financial Studies 15, 1223–1249]. The results provide strong evidence against all of the macro factors considered with the exception of exchange rate changes and, consistent with the existing literature, provide strong support for several financial factors, but not beta, as significant predictors of excess returns.     

Liquidity shocks,commodity financialization,and market comovements

We explore whether and how liquidity factors influence risk transfers between commodity and stock markets using a composite liquidity index and five different types of liquidity measures. We find that liquidity shocks, including both funding liquidity and market liquidity, are positively associated with comovements between commodity and stock markets after 2000, although the relationship is insignificant before 2000. The structural change indicates that financialization creates a role for adverse liquidity shocks to increase cross-market correlations. Further evidence shows that the effect of liquidity on cross-market correlations is state-dependent and intensifies when liquidity conditions deteriorate and asset returns sustain substantial declines. Our findings are not explained by business cycles.     

Stock liquidity and ownership structure during and after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis: Empirical evidence from an emerging market

This paper examines the impact of ownership structure, whether state owned, foreign owned or institutionally owned, on Vietnamese stock market liquidity in different market conditions. We find that state ownership is associated with lower liquidity after the 2008 financial crisis. Institutional ownership shows a weak influence on liquidity in the post-crisis period. During the financial crisis, however, liquidity declines could not be attributed to ownership structure. Our results imply that foreign investors have not yet played a significant role in driving stock market liquidity in Vietnam, which is counter to findings in the existing literature concerning liquidity in more developed markets. Our results are consistent across conventional liquidity measures and a composite liquidity measure.     

Size,value, and momentum in emerging market stock returns

In this paper, we examine value and momentum effects in 18 emerging stock markets. Using stock level data from January 1990 to December 2011, we find strong evidence for the value effect in all emerging markets and the momentum effect for all but Eastern Europe. We investigate size patterns in value and momentum. After forming portfolios sorted on size and book-to-market ratio, as well as size and lagged momentum, we use three well-known factor models to explain the returns for these portfolios based on factors constructed using local, U.S., and aggregate global developed stock markets data. Local factors perform much better, suggesting emerging market segmentation.     

What do we know about individual equity options?

This paper examines the empirical literature on individual equity options, discussing results in areas of consensus, showing findings in areas of disagreement and providing a guide for future research (especially highlighting analyses that cannot be performed with index options). Key topics include the impact of equity option listings on the underlying stock market, option market efficiency, anomalies in equity option returns, option market microstructure, investors’ behavioral biases, option price discovery, and private information revealed in equity option markets. Some directions for future research include the determinants of equity option returns and the effect of algorithmic trading in option markets.