Style investing,comovement and return predictability

Barberis and Shleifer (2003) argue that style investing generates momentum and reversals in style and individual asset returns, as well as comovement between individual assets and their styles. Consistent with these predictions, in some specifications, past style returns help explain future stock returns after controlling for size, book-to-market and past stock returns. We also use comovement to identify style investing and assess its impact on momentum. High comovement momentum portfolios have significantly higher future returns than low comovement momentum portfolios. Overall, our results suggest that style investing plays a role in the predictability of asset returns.     

Location and excess comovement

Firms that switch from NASDAQ to the NYSE between 1988 and 2000 show an increase in the comovement of their order flows with aggregate NYSE order flow, and a decline in comovement with NASDAQ order flow. These changes in comovement are coincident with the switch, large relative to firms that remain on NASDAQ and the NYSE, and not explained by the growth in indexing over the sample period, a possible selection bias inherent in the decision to switch to the NYSE or a delayed response to cross-market information. Cross-sectional analysis shows that large, institutionally owned, value-oriented and dividend paying firms experience greater changes in comovement following the move to the NYSE. Our evidence is consistent with an important role for style investing in generating excess comovement, as in Barberis and Shleifer (2003).     

Momentum strategies based on reward–risk stock selection criteria

In this paper, we analyze momentum strategies that are based on reward–risk stock selection criteria in contrast to ordinary momentum strategies based on a cumulative return criterion. Reward–risk stock selection criteria include the standard Sharpe ratio with variance as a risk measure, and alternative reward–risk ratios with the expected shortfall as a risk measure. We investigate momentum strategies using 517 stocks in the S&P 500 universe in the period 1996–2003. Although the cumulative return criterion provides the highest average monthly momentum profits of 1.3% compared to the monthly profit of 0.86% for the best alternative criterion, the alternative ratios provide better risk-adjusted returns measured on an independent risk-adjusted performance measure. We also provide evidence on unique distributional properties of extreme momentum portfolios analyzed within the framework of general non-normal stable Paretian distributions. Specifically, for every stock selection criterion, loser portfolios have the lowest tail index and tail index of winner portfolios is lower than that of middle deciles. The lower tail index is associated with a lower mean strategy. The lowest tail index is obtained for the cumulative return strategy. Given our data-set, these findings indicate that the cumulative return strategy obtains higher profits with the acceptance of higher tail risk, while strategies based on reward–risk criteria obtain better risk-adjusted performance with the acceptance of the lower tail risk.     

The Market Impact of Trends and Sequences in Performance: New Evidence

Bloomfield and Hales (2002) find strong evidence that experimental market subjects are influenced by trends and patterns in a manner supportive of the shifting regimes model of Barberis, Shleifer, and Vishny (1998) . We subject the model to further empirical scrutiny using the football wagering market as our price laboratory. Sports betting markets have several advantages over traditional capital markets as an empirical setting, and commonalities with traditional markets allow for useful insights. We find scant evidence that investors behave in accordance with the model.     

The Benefits of Overvaluation: Evidence from Mergers and Acquisitions

Theoretical and empirical evidence debates whether acquirers can exploit their overvalued equity and create value by purchasing less overvalued or undervalued target firms. Shleifer and Vishny (2003) and Savor and Lu (2009) argue in favor of this, while Fu, Lin, and Officer (2013) and Akbulut (2013) provide evidence against. I revisit this issue and develop a quasi-experimental design. The misvaluation effect for stock acquirers that are more overvalued than their targets is isolated and measured. My findings offer direct evidence in favor of the Shleifer and Vishny (2003) market-timing hypothesis.     

European Momentum Strategies,Information Diffusion,and Investor Conservatism

In this paper we conduct an out‐of‐sample test of two behavioural theories that have been proposed to explain momentum in stock returns. We test the gradual‐information‐diffusion model of Hong and Stein (1999) and the investor conservatism bias model of Barberis et al. (1998) in a sample of 13 European stock markets during the period 1988 to 2001. These two models predict that momentum comes from the (i) gradual dissemination of firm‐specific information and (ii) investors’ failure to update their beliefs sufficiently when they observe new public information. The findings of this study are consistent with the predictions of the behavioural models of Hong and Stein's (1999) and Barberis et al. (1998) . The evidence shows that momentum is the result of the gradual diffusion of private information and investors’ psychological conservatism reflected on the systematic errors they make in forming earnings expectations by not updating them adequately relative to their prior beliefs and by undervaluing the statistical weight of new information.     

Impact of US and UK macroeconomic news announcements on the return distribution implied by FTSE-100 index options

This study investigates the effect of scheduled US and UK macroeconomic news announcements on the return distribution implied by FTSE-100 option prices. The results provide new evidence for the whole implied return distribution being systematically affected by certain macroeconomic news announcements. After controlling the unexpected content of the news announcement for quality (good vs. bad news) it is found that good (bad) news causes implied volatility to decrease (increase), option-implied return distribution becomes less (more) left-skewed and kurtosis increases (decreases). The results are consistent with the behavioral model created by Barberis et al. [Barberis, N., Shleifer, A., and Vishny, R. (1998). A model of investor sentiment. Journal of Financial Economics, 49, 307-343.], in which good (bad) news is expected to be followed by good (bad) news.     

Characteristic-based mean-variance portfolio choice

We study empirical mean-variance optimization when the portfolio weights are restricted to be direct functions of underlying stock characteristics such as value and momentum. The closed-form solution to the portfolio weights estimator shows that the portfolio problem in this case reduces to a mean-variance analysis of assets with returns given by single-characteristic strategies (e.g., momentum or value). In an empirical application to international stock return indexes, we show that the direct approach to estimating portfolio weights clearly beats a naive regression-based approach that models the conditional mean. However, a portfolio based on equal weights of the single-characteristic strategies performs about as well, and sometimes better, than the direct estimation approach, highlighting again the difficulties in beating the equal-weighted case in mean-variance analysis. The empirical results also highlight the potential for ‘stock-picking’ in international indexes using characteristics such as value and momentum with the characteristic-based portfolios obtaining Sharpe ratios approximately three times larger than the world market.     

Investor and price response to patterns in earnings surprises

As part of their model to explain short-term positive and long-term negative auto-correlation in stock returns, Barberis, Shleifer, and Vishny [1998. A model of investor sentiment. Journal of Finance 49, 307–345] suggest that investors may extrapolate trends in earnings performance. I test this portion of their model by examining investor trading patterns in firms that experience consecutive same-sign earnings surprises. Consistent with their model, after controlling for regularities in trading activity, I find that the net buying of small investors increases with the number of consecutive positive earnings surprises. I further find that purchasing activity of small investors subsequent to consecutive positive surprises is significantly negatively correlated with returns throughout the remainder of the year. These results suggest that such investors are not simply rationally updating after public news announcements. My results are robust to controlling for auto-correlation in earnings surprises.     

The coskewness puzzle

We propose a novel approach to testing non-linear stochastic discount factor (SDF) specifications that arise in rational representative investor models. Our approach does not require overly-restrictive assumptions about the shape of investors’ preferences, typically imposed by the extant literature, and is based instead on restrictions that rule out “good deals”, i.e., arbitrage opportunities as well as unduly large Sharpe ratios. We apply this framework to test the empirical admissibility of 3 and 4-moment versions of the CAPM. We find that, while coskewness and cokurtosis risk help price a number of stock strategies and portfolios, including static strategies based on a fine industry-level diversification, momentum strategies and portfolios managed on the basis of available information, the CAPM and its 3 and 4-moment versions cannot provide an exhaustive account of observed asset returns.     

The Dow Theory: William Peter Hamilton's Track Record Reconsidered

Alfred Cowles' test of the Dow Theory apparently provides strong evidence against the ability of Wall Street's most famous chartist to forecast the stock market. Cowles (1934) analyzes editorials published by the chief exponent of the Dow Theory, William Peter Hamilton. We review Cowles' evidence and find that it supports the contrary conclusion. Hamilton's timing strategies actually yield high Sharpe ratios and positive alphas for the period 1902 to 1929. Neural net modeling to replicate Hamilton's market calls provides interesting insight into the Dow Theory and allows us to examine the properties of the theory itself out of sample.     

Momentum in Australian style portfolios: risk or inefficiency?

Momentum strategies have been reported to be successful across a range of different markets and asset classes. Three possible explanations for momentum have been hypothesised: risk, return continuation and excessive co‐movement of stock returns compared with dividends. Lewellen (2002) adds to this literature by providing evidence of strong momentum returns in style portfolios that can be explained by negative cross‐serial correlation, a result which supports the excess co‐movement hypothesis. We report robust evidence of style momentum in the Australian market and use the Jegadeesh and Titman (1995) return decomposition to show that this momentum strategy is predominately explained by positive autocorrelation. Our results support the return continuation hypothesis and confirm Chen and Hong's (2002) assertion that Lewellen's (2002) explanation of style momentum returns does not stand up out‐of‐sample.     

Statistical arbitrage in the US equities market

We study model-driven statistical arbitrage in US equities. Trading signals are generated in two ways: using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) or regressing stock returns on sector Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). In both cases, the idiosyncratic returns are modelled as mean-reverting processes, which leads naturally to ‘contrarian’ strategies. We construct, back-test and compare market-neutral PCA- and ETF-based strategies applied to the broad universe of US equities. After accounting for transaction costs, PCA-based strategies have an average annual Sharpe ratio of 1.44 over the period 1997 to 2007, with stronger performances prior to 2003. During 2003–2007, the average Sharpe ratio of PCA-based strategies was only 0.9. ETF-based strategies had a Sharpe ratio of 1.1 from 1997 to 2007, experiencing a similar degradation since 2002. We also propose signals that account for trading volume, observing significant improvement in performance in the case of ETF-based signals. ETF-strategies with volume information achieved a Sharpe ratio of 1.51 from 2003 to 2007. The paper also relates the performance of mean-reversion statistical arbitrage strategies with the stock market cycle. In particular, we study in detail the performance of the strategies during the liquidity crisis of the summer of 2007, following Khandani and Lo [Social Science Research Network (SSRN) working paper, 2007].     

Robust performance hypothesis testing with the Sharpe ratio

Applied researchers often test for the difference of the Sharpe ratios of two investment strategies. A very popular tool to this end is the test of Jobson and Korkie [Jobson, J.D. and Korkie, B.M. (1981). Performance hypothesis testing with the Sharpe and Treynor measures. Journal of Finance, 36:889–908], which has been corrected by Memmel [Memmel, C. (2003). Performance hypothesis testing with the Sharpe ratio. Finance Letters, 1:21–23]. Unfortunately, this test is not valid when returns have tails heavier than the normal distribution or are of time series nature. Instead, we propose the use of robust inference methods. In particular, we suggest to construct a studentized time series bootstrap confidence interval for the difference of the Sharpe ratios and to declare the two ratios different if zero is not contained in the obtained interval. This approach has the advantage that one can simply resample from the observed data as opposed to some null-restricted data. A simulation study demonstrates the improved finite sample performance compared to existing methods. In addition, two applications to real data are provided.     

A latent factor model for the Chinese stock market

We propose a new latent factor model for the Chinese stock market based on an instrumented principal component analysis (IPCA). Compared with other common asset pricing models, the new latent factor model explains a larger proportion of individual and portfolio return variation and shows significant out-of-sample predictability. The long-short investment strategy formed by the IPCA factor also presents the highest average return and Sharpe ratio. Subsample and different horizon results are robust. Market beta, profitability and momentum emerge as the most important characteristics in driving the latent factors. We also provide evidence on the economic grounds of the new latent factor model.     

The effect of stock misvaluation and investment opportunities on the method of payment in mergers

This paper tests the effect of firms' mispricing and investment opportunities on the method of payment in mergers. Using a new proxy for investment opportunities and a sample of 1187 mergers completed between 1990 and 2005 among US publicly traded firms, I find that acquirers lead the decision on the method of payment, thus exploiting short-term market mispricing (in line with both the Rhodes-Kropf and Viswanathan, 2004 and Shleifer and Vishny, 2003 models). However, target managers believe in the quality of the merger and care about the long-term value of the merged entity's shares (as predicted by Rhodes-Kropf and Viswanathan, 2004 and contrary to Shleifer and Vishny, 2003). I also find that better investment opportunities lead to greater use of stock.     

中国个人投资者处置效应研究——一个非理性信念的视角

处置效应是指投资者过早卖出盈利股票而长期持有亏损股票的现象。大量文献表明金融市场投资者存在显著的处置效应,但其产生的原因和机理存在争议。本文在前景理论框架下,构建了包含投资者非理性预期的离散时间投资组合决策模型,发现处置效应随投资者情绪升高而减弱。本文使用我国某券商2007—2009年近177万个人投资者股票账户的交易数据进行了实证分析,得到与理论模型预测的一致结果,即投资者情绪与投资者处置效应之间呈现显著的负相关关系。而且,受情绪影响,投资者处置效应在估值难度较大的股票中更弱。本文结论对理解投资者处置效应、优化投资者卖出决策和加强资本市场基础制度建设具有一定理论和实践意义。     

Surprises,sentiments, and the expectations hypothesis of the term structure of interest rates

Between 2005 and 2009, we document evident time-varying credit risk price discovery between the equity and credit default swap (CDS) markets for 174 US non-financial investment-grade firms. We test the economic significance of a simple portfolio strategy that utilizes fluctuation in CDS spreads as a trading signal to set stock positions, conditional on the CDS price discovery status of the reference entities. We show that a conditional portfolio strategy which updates the list of CDS-influenced firms over time, yields a substantively larger realized return net of transaction cost over the unconditional strategy. Furthermore, the conditional strategy’s Sharpe ratio outperforms a series of benchmark portfolios over the same trading period, including buy-and-hold, momentum and dividend yield strategies.     

Does Stock Return Momentum Explain the “Smart Money” Effect?

Does the “smart money” effect documented by Gruber (1996) and Zheng (1999) reflect fund selection ability of mutual fund investors? We examine the finding that investors are able to predict mutual fund performance and invest accordingly. We show that the smart money effect is explained by the stock return momentum phenomenon documented by Jegadeesh and Titman (1993) . Further evidence suggests investors do not select funds based on a momentum investing style, but rather simply chase funds that were recent winners. Our finding that a common factor in stock returns explains the smart money effect offers no affirmation of investor fund selection ability.     

A stochastic dominance analysis of yen carry trades

Yen carry trades have made headline news for over a decade. We examine the profitability of such trades for the period 2001–2009. Yen carry trades generated high mean returns and Sharpe ratios prior to the recent financial crisis. They continued to outperform major stock markets for the full sample period. Given the non-normality of carry trade returns, we apply non-parametric tests based on stochastic dominance (SD) to evaluate whether the high returns of yen carry trades are compatible with risk as reflected in returns on US and global stock market indices. We apply a general test for SD developed recently by Linton, Maasoumi and Whang (2005) to six currencies as well as portfolios of these currencies. For a large class of risk-averse investors, profits from yen carry trades cannot be attributed to risks.