Short-term overreaction to specific events: Evidence from an emerging market

This paper investigates the short-term overreaction to specific events and whether stock prices are predictable in the Egyptian stock exchange (EGX). We find evidence of the short-term overreaction in the EGX. Losers (“bad news” portfolios) significantly outperform winners (“good news” portfolios) and investors can earn abnormal return by selling the winners and buying losers. Terrorist attacks have negative and significant abnormal returns for three days post event followed by price reversals on day four post event. Whereas, the tensions in the Middle East region have a negative and significant abnormal returns on event day followed by price reversals on day one post event. Moreover, the formation of a new government has no effect on the average abnormal returns post event in the EGX. The results also show that small firms tend to have greater price reversals compared to large firms. Overall, our results provide evidence of the leakage of information in the EGX.     

Insiders’ incentives for asymmetric disclosure and firm-specific information flows

Recent research suggests that insiders’ incentives for capturing cash flows affect price formation process in which insiders are inclined to withhold good news and to accelerate the release of bad news (Jin and Myers, 2006). We investigate whether insiders’ incentives for private control benefit, proxied by control-ownership wedge, affect firm-specific return characteristics. We find that control-ownership wedge is negatively related to the likelihood of positive return jumps and positively related to the extent of asymmetric market reaction to good news rather than to bad news. Overall, our results support the notion that corporate insiders increase opaqueness and withhold good news in order to capture unexpected cash flow.     

The Predictability of Short-Horizon Stock Returns

This examines the predictability of short-horizon stock returnsin the UK. We show that the subsequent return reversal of previousextreme performers is unlikely to be caused by either lead-lageffects or inventory imbalances, the most likely explanationbeing market overreaction. A market or trading based explanationis reinforced by the finding that these return reversals areasymmetric, being less significant after bad news. Further,we find that the lower transacting stocks exhibit the strongerreturn reversals, in direct contrast to both the existing USevidence and the implication that liquidity effects can explainthe return reversals. JEL Classification: G10, G11, G12     

News Arrival, Jump Dynamics, and Volatility Components for Individual Stock Returns

This paper models components of the return distribution, which are assumed to be directed by a latent news process. The conditional variance of returns is a combination of jumps and smoothly changing components. A heterogeneous Poisson process with a time‐varying conditional intensity parameter governs the likelihood of jumps. Unlike typical jump models with stochastic volatility, previous realizations of both jump and normal innovations can feed back asymmetrically into expected volatility. This model improves forecasts of volatility, particularly after large changes in stock returns. We provide empirical evidence of the impact and feedback effects of jump versus normal return innovations, leverage effects, and the time‐series dynamics of jump clustering.     

Distinguishing Between Rationales for Short‐Horizon Predictability of Stock Returns

In this paper, we shed light on short‐horizon return reversals. We show theoretically that a risk‐based rationale for reversals implies a relation between returns and past order flow, whereas a reversion in beliefs of biased agents does not do so. The empirical results indicate that returns are more strongly related to own‐return lags than to lagged order imbalances. Thus, the evidence suggests that monthly reversals are not completely captured by inventory effects and may be driven, in part, by belief reversion. We do find that returns are cross‐sectionally related to lagged imbalance innovations at horizons longer than a month.     

Currency jumps,cojumps and the role of macro news

This study investigates the impact of macro news on currency jumps and cojumps. The analysis uses intra-day data, sampled at 5-min frequency, for four currencies for the period 2005–2010. Results indicate that currency jumps are a good proxy for news arrival. We find 9–15% of currency jumps can be directly linked to U.S. announcements. Notably, news can explain 22–56% of the 5-min jump returns, and there is evidence that better-than-expected news about the U.S. economy has a negative impact on currency jumps. Cojump statistics suggest close dependencies among European currencies, especially between the euro and the Swiss franc. We also provide evidence on the uncertainty resolution to news.     

The Predictability of Short-HorizonStock Returns

This examines the predictability of short-horizonstock returns in the UK. We show that the subsequentreturn reversal of previous extreme performers isunlikely to be caused by either lead-lag effects orinventory imbalances, the most likely explanationbeing market overreaction. A market or trading basedexplanation is reinforced by the finding that thesereturn reversals are asymmetric, being lesssignificant after bad news. Further, we find that thelower transacting stocks exhibit the stronger returnreversals, in direct contrast to both the existing USevidence and the implication that liquidity effectscan explain the return reversals.     

News-driven return reversals: Liquidity provision ahead of earnings announcements

This study documents a six-fold increase in short-term return reversals during earnings announcements relative to non-announcement periods. Following prior research, we use reversals as a proxy for expected returns market makers demand for providing liquidity. Our findings highlight significant time-series variation in the magnitude of short-term return reversals and suggest that market makers demand higher expected returns prior to earnings announcements because of increased inventory risks that stem from holding net positions through the release of anticipated earnings news. Collectively, our findings suggest that uncertainty regarding anticipated information events elicits predictable increases in the compensation demanded for providing liquidity and that these increases significantly affect the dynamics and information content of market prices.     

Model-free jump measures and interest rates: common patterns in US and UK monetary policy around major economic events

We employ model-free jump measures to study monetary policy operations in the UK and USA around major economic events by exploiting the relationship between jumps, interest rates, and macroeconomic news releases related to monetary policy. In our analysis, we explicitly account for the timing of jumps in UK and US interest rates and the correlation across jumps in the same two interest rates and whether these match Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)/Monetary Policy Committee news releases. We find that FOMC news releases lag jumps in US interest rates, but lead jumps in UK Gilt rates. Overall, our analysis suggests that US Treasury Bills react to information in the aforementioned news releases before their announcement while UK Gilt yields react after them and that the Fed and Bank of England react similarly around major economic events.     

Price reversal,transaction costs,and arbitrage profits in the real estate securities market

This paper studies the return reversals of exchange traded real estate securities using an arbitrage portfolio approach. Using the approach, we find that there exist significant return reversals in such securities. These return reversals could be exploited by arbitrage traders if trading costs can be ignored. However, the arbitrage profits disappear after deducting trading costs and taking into account the implicit cost of bid-ask spread. Thus, the real estate securities market is efficient at weekly intervals in the sense that one could not exploit the price reversals via some simple trading rules.     

Are idiosyncratic volatility and MAX priced in the Canadian market?

The negative relationship between realized idiosyncratic volatility (RIvol) and future returns uncovered by Ang et al. (2006) for the U.S. market has been attributed to return reversals. For the Canadian market where return reversals are considerably less important, we find that RIvol is positively related to future returns, even after controlling for risk loadings, illiquidity and reversals. Unlike the findings of Bali et al. (2001) for the U.S. market, we find that the relationship between extreme positive returns (MAX) and future returns for the Canadian market is positive and that idiosyncratic volatility continues to be consistently positively related to future returns after controlling for MAX. We find evidence that suggests that reversals for stocks with extreme daily returns are confined to (typically small) stocks with low institutional holdings.     

Impact of macro-economic surprises on carry trade activity

Can official news and policy announcements affect foreign exchange speculation? A widespread speculative strategy in foreign exchange markets is carry trade. This paper explores the links between macro-economic news and foreign exchange options to identify macro-economic fundamentals most relevant to the pricing of downside risk – measured by risk reversals options contracts – to carry trade activity. Focusing primarily on the Japanese yen carry trade, we identify a significant impact of macro-economic surprises on dollar/yen risk reversals. The effect is sizeable, with news related to bilateral trade balance of particular concern. Moreover, there is a close link between risk reversals and speculative futures positions in Japanese yen. This allows us to quantify a substantial effect of macro-economic news on carry trade activity, with the cost of hedging as the transmission mechanism.     

Cash Flow News and Stock Price Dynamics

We develop a new approach to modeling dynamics in cash flows extracted from daily firm-level dividend announcements. We decompose daily cash flow news into a persistent component, jumps, and temporary shocks. Empirically, we find that the persistent cash flow component is a highly significant predictor of future growth in dividends and consumption. Using a log-linearized present value model, we show that news about the persistent dividend growth component predicts stock returns consistent with asset pricing constraints implied by this model. News about the daily dividend growth process also helps explain concurrent return volatility and the probability of jumps in stock returns.     

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.     

An event study of price movements following realized jumps

Price jumps are mostly related to investor reactions to unexpected extreme news. We perform an event study of price movements after jumps to analyse if investors’ reactions are affected by psychological biases. We employ recent non-parametric methods based on intraday returns to separate large price movements that are related to unexpected news from those merely caused by periods of high volatility. In general, we find evidence for irrational pricing, which can be associated with investors’ optimistic behavior in a bull market and the pessimism prevailing in a bear market. Furthermore, our analysis confirms the conjecture that small firms are more subject to speculative trading than large firms.     

Momentum Strategies

We examine whether the predictability of future returns from past returns is due to the market's underreaction to information, in particular to past earnings news. Past return and past earnings surprise each predict large drifts in future returns after controlling for the other. Market risk, size, and book–to–market effects do not explain the drifts. There is little evidence of subsequent reversals in the returns of stocks with high price and earnings momentum. Security analysts' earnings forecasts also respond sluggishly to past news, especially in the case of stocks with the worst past performance. The results suggest a market that responds only gradually to new information.     

The Reversal of Large Stock-Price Decreases

Extremely large negative 10-day rates of return are followed on average by larger-than-expected positive rates of return over following days. This price adjustment lasts approximately 2 days and is observed in a sample of firms that is largely devoid of methodological problems that might explain the reversal phenomenon. While perhaps not representing abnormal profit opportunities, these reversals present a puzzle as to the length of the price adjustment period. Such a slow recovery is inconsistent with the notion that market prices quickly reflect relevant information.     

Does program trading contribute to excess comovement of stock returns?

Daily returns of stocks with high program trading comove more with each other but less with others. This significant comovement is disconnected with market movements and news of fundamentals and becomes stronger when market uncertainty is higher. It can be explained by neither the hypotheses of gradual information diffusion and liquidity provision nor the effects of quantitative trading signals, earnings announcements and index fund trading. Its non-fundamental nature is further demonstrated by the observation of program trading stimulating return reversals. Underlying this comovement is the high persistence of program trading. Our findings support the theory of habitat investing and demonstrate program trading creates a distinct source of excess return comovement.     

Intraday jumps and US macroeconomic news announcements

This paper applies recent non-parametric intraday jump detection procedures to investigate the presence and importance of intraday jumps in US futures markets. More importantly, the paper investigates the extent to which statistically significant intraday jumps are associated with US macroeconomic news announcements. Jumps are prevalent, large and contribute heavily to total daily price variation. Approximately one third of jumps correspond to US macroeconomic news announcements, with pure announcement effects causing large increases in the absolute sizes of jumps and the informational surprise of the announcement explaining large proportions of the jumps. The statistical and economic significance of news-related jumps is confirmed by results that show higher volatility persistence, predictability of lower frequency returns, larger effects on microstructure variables, jump clustering and co-jumps from these jumps versus non-news-related jumps, although there are some interesting variations across asset classes.     

Liquidity Dynamics Around Jumps: The Evidence from the Warsaw Stock Exchange

The aim of our study is to examine the dynamics of trading volume and the number of trades around jumps detected in intraday stock returns. We detect jumps in equally spaced 10-minute returns for most liquid stocks quoted on the Warsaw Stock Exchange within one-year sample period. We match jumps with macroeconomic and firm specific news. We find that only the minority of jumps is associated with public information releases, whereas the majority of them is motivated by liquidity shocks observed in the spreads, volume, and the number of trades. Our findings show that jumps are related to the inability of the market to absorb new and big orders. Liquidity shocks in volatility, volume, and quoted spread are the key drivers accompanying the occurrence of the jumps. Finally, the introduction of a faster and more efficient trading system improves the liquidity by increasing the depth of the market.