Market Efficiency and Returns to Simple Technical Trading Rules: Further Evidence from U.S., U.K., Asian and Chinese Stock Markets

Tian, Wan and Guo (2002) explored the predictability and profitability of technical trading rules in markets with different efficiency levels; namely, the U.S. and China. In the case of the U.S. they found rules to have no predictability after 1975, whereas their results give support to technical trading rules having both predictability and profitability for the Chinese markets across the 1990's. The purpose of this paper is to extend the analysis of Tian et al. in two ways. First, to see if the conclusions extend to other markets – namely, the U.K., Hong Kong and Japan. Second, in the case of China, to examine whether the predictability and profitability of technical trading rules changed across the 1990's. On the basis of daily data Tian et al's results for the U.S. market are supported by the results for a number of the main developed markets where the technical trading rules had predictive ability during the 1970's that disappeared by the 1990's. Furthermore, the results suggest that while technical trading rules had short term predictive ability and profitability in the Chinese stock markets during the 1990's, this lessened as the decade progressed. JEL Classification: G14, G15     

Information Content and Timing of Earnings Announcements

Abstract:   The China Securities Regulatory Commission requires all listed firms to make earnings announcements by the end of April each year. This requirement creates a unique opportunity for us to evaluate the timing of earnings announcements in a four‐month cluster. Firms, which are willing to make early announcements, tend to surprise the market, as indicated by the higher volume and price reactions. Later announcements are more predictable, as indicated by the lower volume and price reactions. These results indicate that an information asymmetry exists between early and late earnings announcements in Mainland China.     

Relationship Between Analyst Forecast Properties and Equity Bid‐Ask Spreads and Depths Around Quarterly Earnings Announcements

Abstract:   We study the relationships between three variables which proxy for the ex‐ante level of information asymmetry – forecast dispersion, forecast revision volatility, and the level of analyst coverage, and equity bid‐ask spread and depth changes around quarterly earnings releases. Kim and Verrecchia (1994) suggest that earnings releases increase the level of information asymmetry and lower the level of liquidity in the security market. Using both an OLS regression framework and a simultaneous equations model, we examine whether equity bid‐ask spreads increase and depths decrease as the level of information asymmetry increases. Our results indicate that spreads are higher (relative to a non‐event period) around earnings announcements when information asymmetry is more pronounced; however, depths are lower only on the day following the announcement when there is greater information asymmetry. Relative spreads have a significant positive relation with both forecast dispersion and revision volatility and a significant negative relation with analyst coverage. Relative depths have a significant negative relation with forecast dispersion and a significant positive relation with analyst coverage. Our findings indicate that the equity specialist adjusts both spreads and depths when confronting informed traders around earnings releases and that these adjustments are more pronounced when the level of information asymmetry is greater.     

Jump Tail Dependence in the Chinese Stock Market

The article examines the characteristics and implications of jump tail dependence in the Chinese stock market with high-frequency data. The results indicate that jumps contribute significantly to tail dependence between individual stocks and the aggregate market. Jumps are more tail dependent than raw returns and account for an average of 17 percent of the daily tail-dependence coefficient. We also find that jump tail dependence is asymmetric and substantially stronger in the lower tail than in the upper tail. Ignoring jump tail dependence may lead to underestimation of risks and produce inaccurate conclusions about the tail neutrality of a portfolio.     

Stock Returns and Volatility under Market Segmentation: The Case of Chinese A and B Shares

In most countries where firms list separate shares for trading by foreign and domestic investors, the prices of the foreign shares tend to be higher. In China, the reverse tends to be true. In this paper, we would like to focus on the information content in lagged premiums of Chinese A over B traded shares. The lagged premiums are found to have certain predictive power over the future returns and volatility of both A and B shares, with some interesting patterns. Specifically, an increase in the premium ratio of A shares will be followed by a rise in the return of A shares and a fall in the return of B shares. It is found that both of the investors in Chinese A- and B-share markets reveal positive feedback trading behavior. Moreover, the liquidity and information availability will affect the magnitude of such behavior especially in B-share markets. By using multivariate GARCH model, it is also demonstrated that the unexpected changes in the premium ratio of A-share price over B-share price contribute to the return volatility of both A shares and B shares. These patterns may provide foundations for the development of pricing models for equity shares under market segmentation.     

财政货币政策和我国股市关联性:基于脉冲响应函数和方差分解的对比检验

财政货币政策和股市关联性模型表明,宏观经济政策和股市可能存在强相关性。基于我国时序数据的脉冲响应函数检验结果显示,财政货币政策对股市作用存在阶段性并有着非中性和非对称性特征,即无论个体对政策冲击是否存在有效预期,政策变化对股市都将存在冲击效应。但二者对股市冲击持续时间有较大差异,财政政策冲击往往只存在短期效应,而货币政策冲击对股市长期波动却有显著影响。其中方差检验得出,财政政策对我国股市影响力相对更小。     

中国绿色债券市场与金融市场间的风险溢出效应研究

本文基于向量自回归模型的预测误差方差分解方法,研究中国绿色债券市场与传统固定收益市场、股票市场以及外汇市场等多种类型的金融市场间的风险溢出效应.实证结果表明,绿色债券市场与包括国债、高收益企业债券以及公司债券市场在内的传统固定收益市场的风险溢出效应最为显著,与股市和外汇市场间的风险溢出效应微弱;绿色债券市场的对外溢出效...     

Sources of the stock price fluctuations in Chinese equity market

This paper proposes a latent factor approach based on a state–space framework in order to identify which factor, if any, dominates price fluctuations in the Chinese stock markets. We also illustrate the connection of such stock price decomposition with several general equilibrium asset pricing models and show that the decomposition results can potentially offer useful insights with regard to the empirical relevance of asset pricing models. We use quarterly data of the Chinese A-Share equity market over the period 1995Q3–2011Q1 and find that the estimates of the state–space model suggest that the expected return is the primary driving force behind price fluctuations in the Chinese stock market. We show that the time-varying expected returns appear to be counter-cyclical and this result seems to be consistent with the habit formation model of Campbell and Cochrane [1999. By force of habit: A consumption-based explanation of aggregate stock market behavior. Journal of Political Economy 107, no. 2: 205–51.]. However, we also note that there is a great deal of uncertainty with respect to this variance decomposition due to the resulting small signal-to-noise ratio in the estimated state–space model.     

Implicit pricing across residential rental submarkets

This paper examines implicit price differences of rental housing characteristics across various property types to measure whether determinants of rents are valued in the aggregate or separately. The results show that hedonic price functions are not identical across property types, which suggests that ordinary least squares is not the appropriate estimation technique when modeling the implicit prices for an aggregate rental market. Generalized least squares estimation of a random coefficient model removes the restriction of fixed parameters imposed by OLS and allows estimation of implicit prices for rental markets containing multiple property types.     

Efficient Markets Hypothesis and the Emerging Capital Market in Sri Lanka: Evidence from the Colombo Stock Exchange – A Note

The behaviour of stock prices on the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) is examined with a view to determine its consistency with the weak form of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH). Runs, Autocorrelation and Cointegration tests are applied to daily, weekly and monthly CSE index data for the period of January 1991–November 1996. Results of Runs, Correlation and Cointegration tests overwhelmingly reject the serial independence hypothesis, leading to the conclusion that the behaviour of stock prices in the Colombo Stock Exchange is not consistent with the weak form of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis. Tests of the-day-of-the-week-effect, however, show that there is no evidence of such a phenomenon on the Colombo Stock Exchange stock prices. Results of the tests of the-month-of-the-year-effect lead to the conclusion that CSE prices do not display any month-specific behaviour.