The 52-week high momentum strategy in international stock markets

We study the 52-week high momentum strategy in international stock markets proposed by George and Hwang [George, T., Hwang, C.Y., 2004. The 52-week high and momentum investing. Journal of Finance 59, 2145-2176.]. This strategy produces profits in 18 of the 20 markets studied, and the profits are significant in 10 markets. The 52-week high momentum profits exist independently from the Jegadeesh and Titman [Jegadeesh, N., Titman, S., 1993. Returns to buying winners and selling losers: implications for market efficiency. Journal of Finance 48, 65-91.] individual stock and Moskowitz and Grinblatt [Moskowitz, T.J., Grinblatt, M., 1999. Do industries explain momentum? Journal of Finance 54, 1249-1290] industry momentum strategies. These profits do not show reversals in the long run. We find that the 52-week high is a better predictor of future returns than macroeconomic risk factors or the acquisition price. The individualism index, a proxy to the level of overconfidence, has no explanatory power to the variations of the 52-week high momentum profits across different markets. However, the profits are no longer significant in most markets once transaction costs are taken into account.     

A careful re-examination of seasonality in international stock markets: Comment on sentiment and stock returns

In questioning Kamstra, Kramer, and Levi’s (2003) finding of an economically and statistically significant seasonal affective disorder (SAD) effect, Kelly and Meschke (2010) make errors of commission and omission. They misrepresent their empirical results, claiming that the SAD effect arises due to a “mechanically induced” effect that is non-existent, labeling the SAD effect a “turn-of-year” effect (when in fact their models and ours separately control for turn-of-year effects), and ignoring coefficient-estimate patterns that strongly support the SAD effect. Our analysis of their data shows, even using their low-power statistical tests, there is significant international evidence supporting the SAD effect. Employing modern, panel/time-series statistical methods strengthens the case dramatically. Additionally, Kelly and Meschke represent the finance, psychology, and medical literatures in misleading ways, describing some findings as opposite to those reported by the researchers themselves, and choosing selective quotes that could easily lead readers to a distorted understanding of these findings.     

Stock market crashes,firm characteristics,and stock returns

A number of studies have investigated the causes and effects of stock market crashes. These studies mainly focus on the factors leading to a crash and on the volatility and co-movements of stock market indexes during and after the crash. However, how a stock market crash affects individual stocks and if stocks with different financial characteristics are affected differently in a stock market crash is an issue that has not received sufficient attention. In this paper, we study this issue by using data for eight major stock market crashes that have taken place during the December 31, 1962–December 31, 2007 period with a large sample of US firms. We use the event-study methodology and multivariate regression analysis to study the determinants of stock returns in stock market crashes.     

Multifrequency news and stock returns

Equity prices are driven by shocks with persistence levels ranging from intraday horizons to several decades. To accommodate this diversity, we introduce a parsimonious equilibrium model with regime shifts of heterogeneous durations in fundamentals, and estimate specifications with up to 256 states on daily aggregate returns. The multifrequency equilibrium has higher likelihood than the Campbell and Hentschel [1992. No news is good news: an asymmetric model of changing volatility in stock returns. Journal of Financial Economics 31, 281–318] specification, while producing volatility feedback 10 to 40 times larger. Furthermore, Bayesian learning about volatility generates a novel trade-off between skewness and kurtosis as information quality varies, complementing the uncertainty channel [e.g., Veronesi, 1999. Stock market overreaction to bad news in good times: a rational expectations equilibrium model. Review of Financial Studies 12, 975–1007]. Economies with intermediate information best match daily returns.     

Seasonality in the cross-section of stock returns

This paper presents a new pattern in the cross-section of expected stock returns. Stocks tend to have relatively high (or low) returns every year in the same calendar month. We recognize the annual cross-sectional autocorrelation pattern documented in Jegadeesh [1990. Evidence of predictable behavior of security returns. Journal of Finance 45, 881–898] at lags of 12, 24, and 36 months as part of a general pattern that lasts up to 20 annual lags, superimposed on the general momentum/reversal patterns. This pattern explains an economically and statistically significant magnitude of the cross-sectional variation in average stock returns. Volume and volatility exhibit similar seasonal patterns but they do not explain the seasonality in returns. The pattern is independent of size, industry, earnings announcements, dividends, and fiscal year. The results are consistent with the existence of a persistent seasonal effect in stock returns.     

Time-varying rare disaster risk and stock returns

This study provides empirical support for theoretical models that allow for time-varying rare disaster risk. Using a database of 447 international political crises during the period 1918-2006, we create a crisis index that shows substantial variation over time. Changes in this crisis index, our proxy for changes in perceived disaster probability, have a large impact on both the mean and volatility of world stock market returns. Crisis risk is positively correlated with the earnings-price ratio and the dividend yield. Cross-sectional tests also show that crisis risk is priced: Industries that are more crisis risk sensitive yield higher returns.     

Extreme downside risk and expected stock returns

We propose a measure for extreme downside risk (EDR) to investigate whether bearing such a risk is rewarded by higher expected stock returns. By constructing an EDR proxy with the left tail index in the classical generalized extreme value distribution, we document a significantly positive EDR premium in cross-section of stock returns even after controlling for market, size, value, momentum, and liquidity effects. The EDR premium is more prominent among glamor stocks and when high market returns are expected. High-EDR stocks are generally characterized by high idiosyncratic risk, large downside beta, lower coskewness and cokurtosis, and high bankruptcy risk. The EDR premium persists after these characteristics are controlled for. Although Value at Risk (VaR) plays a significant role in explaining the EDR premium, it cannot completely subsume the EDR effect.     

Accruals,cash flows,and aggregate stock returns

This paper examines whether the firm-level accrual and cash flow effects extend to the aggregate stock market. In sharp contrast to previous firm-level findings, aggregate accruals is a strong positive time series predictor of aggregate stock returns, and cash flows is a negative predictor. In addition, innovations in accruals are negatively contemporaneously correlated with aggregate returns, and innovations in cash flows are positively correlated with returns. These findings suggest that innovations in accruals and cash flows contain information about changes in discount rates, or that firms manage earnings in response to marketwide undervaluation.     

Weather and intraday patterns in stock returns and trading activity

We examine the relation between weather in New York City and intraday returns and trading patterns of NYSE stocks. While stock returns are found to be generally lower on cloudier days, cloud cover has a significant influence on stock returns only at the market open. There are significantly more seller-initiated trades when there is more cloud cover at the market open, which is consistent with the return results. Cloudy skies are associated with higher volatility and less market depth over the entire trading day. Finally, cloud cover is not significantly correlated with spread measures and turnover ratios. The findings overall suggest that weather has a significant influence on investors’ intraday trading behavior.     

Cashflow risk,systematic earnings revisions,and the cross-section of stock returns

The returns of stocks are partially driven by changes in their expected cashflow. Using revisions in analyst earnings forecasts, we construct an analyst earnings beta that measures the covariance between the cashflow innovations of an asset and those of the market. A higher analyst earnings beta implies greater sensitivity to marketwide revisions in expected cashflow, and therefore higher systematic risk. Our analyst earnings beta captures exposure to macroeconomic fluctuations and has a positive risk premium that provides a partial explanation for the value premium, size premium, and long-term return reversals. From 1984 to 2005, 55.1% of the return variation across book-to-market, size, and long-term return reversal portfolios is captured by their analyst earnings betas.     

Liquidity risk and stock returns around the world

The recent global financial crisis demonstrates that market liquidity is a prominent systematic risk globally. We find that local liquidity risk, in addition to the local market, value and size factors, demands a systematic premium across stocks in 11 developed markets. This local pricing premium is smaller in countries where the country-level corporate boards are more effective and where there are less insider trading activities. We also discover that global liquidity risk is a significant pricing factor across all developed country market portfolios after controlling for global market, value, and size factors. The contribution of this risk to the return on a country market portfolio is economically and statistically significant within and across regions.     

Incomplete information,idiosyncratic volatility and stock returns

When investors have incomplete information, expected returns, as measured by an econometrician, deviate from those predicted by standard asset pricing models by including a term that is the product of the stock’s idiosyncratic volatility and the investors’ aggregated forecast errors. If investors are biased this term generates a relation between idiosyncratic volatility and expected stocks returns. Relying on forecast revisions from IBES, we construct a new variable that proxies for this term and show that it explains a significant part of the empirical relation between idiosyncratic volatility and stock returns.     

Sentiment and stock returns: The SAD anomaly revisited

Widely-cited research by Kamstra et al. (2003) argues that changes in mood resulting from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) drive changes in investor risk aversion and cause seasonal patterns in aggregate stock returns around the world. In this paper we reexamine the so-called SAD effect by replicating and extending Kamstra et al. (2003). We study the psychological underpinnings of the SAD hypothesis and show that the time-series predictions of the SAD model do not correspond to the seasonal patterns in depression found in the general population. We also investigate the cross-sectional prediction that SAD has a greater effect on stock markets in countries where SAD is more prevalent and find no relation between the prevalence of SAD and stock returns. Finally, we document that the SAD effect is mechanically driven by an overlapping dummy-variable specification and higher returns around the turn of the year.     

Short-sale inflow and stock returns: Evidence from Japan

Using a 10-year panel of flow-based information on stock borrowings and constructing a flow-based measure for shorting demand, I examine the relation between shorting demand and subsequent stock price movements. I find that the least heavily shorted stocks tend to outperform the most heavily shorted stocks and that this outperformance persists up to three months. In addition, using proxies for information asymmetry derived from the market microstructure literature, I find that this outperformance is not confined to stocks with high information asymmetry. These empirical findings indicate that short sellers act not only as informed investors who gain negative news but also as skillful investors who detect stock price deviations from fundamental values.     

Sell-order liquidity and the cross-section of expected stock returns

We estimate buy- and sell-order illiquidity measures (lambdas) for a comprehensive sample of NYSE stocks. We show that sell-order liquidity is priced more strongly than buy-order liquidity in the cross-section of equity returns. Indeed, our analysis indicates that the liquidity premium in equities emanates predominantly from the sell-order side. We also find that the average difference between sell and buy lambdas is generally positive throughout our sample period. Both buy and sell lambdas are significantly positively correlated with measures of funding liquidity such as the TED spread as well option implied volatility.     

Risk factor and industry effects in the cross-country comovement of momentum returns

This paper examines the sources of cross-country comovement of momentum returns over the 1975–2004 period. Using data on more than 17,000 individual firms across 100 industries from 40 countries, we document the profitability of country-neutral individual firm, industry, and industry-adjusted return momentum. We show that country-neutral momentum returns are significantly correlated across countries, the correlation is time-varying, and that comovement among industries cannot explain the comovement of country-neutral momentum returns. However, we find that standard risk factor models do explain a significant portion of the cross-country comovement of momentum returns, even though they do not explain average momentum returns.     

Lack of consumer confidence and stock returns

This paper investigates the link between the lack of consumer confidence and stock returns during market fluctuations. Using a Markov-switching framework, we first focus on whether the shock to consumer confidence has asymmetric effects on stock returns. We also examine whether the decreased confidence pushes the stock market into bear territory. Empirical evidence using monthly returns on Standard & Poor's S&P 500 price index suggests that market pessimism has larger impacts on stock returns during bear markets. Moreover, the lack of consumer confidence leads to a higher probability of switching to a bear market regime.     

Caught on tape: Institutional trading,stock returns,and earnings announcements

Many questions about institutional trading can only be answered if one tracks high-frequency changes in institutional ownership. In the United States, however, institutions are only required to report their ownership quarterly in 13-F filings. We infer daily institutional trading behavior from the “tape”, the Transactions and Quotes database of the New York Stock Exchange, using a sophisticated method that best predicts quarterly 13-F data from trades of different sizes. We find that daily institutional trades are highly persistent and respond positively to recent daily returns but negatively to longer-term past daily returns. Institutional trades, particularly sells, appear to generate short-term losses—possibly reflecting institutional demand for liquidity—but longer-term profits. One source of these profits is that institutions anticipate both earnings surprises and post-earnings announcement drift. These results are different from those obtained using a standard size cutoff rule for institutional trades.     

Composition of wealth,conditioning information,and the cross-section of stock returns

Value stocks covary with aggregate consumption more than growth stocks during periods when financial wealth is low relative to consumption. However, the conditional value premium does not exhibit such countercyclical behavior. Consequently, a one-factor conditional consumption-based asset pricing model can be rejected without making any arbitrary assumptions on the dynamics of the price of risk or the conditional moments. Empirical evidence is somewhat more consistent with a consumption-based model augmented with an aggregate wealth growth factor, which can be motivated by either recursive preferences or relative wealth concerns.     

Asymmetric stock market volatility and the cyclical behavior of expected returns

Recent explanations of aggregate stock market fluctuations suggest that countercyclical stock market volatility is consistent with rational asset evaluations. In this paper, I develop a framework to study the causes of countercyclical stock market volatility. I find that countercyclical risk premia do not imply countercyclical return volatility. Instead, countercyclical stock volatility occurs if risk premia increase more in bad times than they decrease in good times, thereby inducing price–dividend ratios to fluctuate more in bad times than in good. The business cycle asymmetry in the investors’ attitude toward discounting future cash flows plays a novel and critical role in many rational explanations of asset price fluctuations.