On Testing the Arbitrage Pricing Theory: Inter-Battery Factor Analysis

This paper tests the Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) by estimating the factor loadings that are consistent between two industry groups of securities. One of the pitfalls in the study by Roll and Ross is that the factors estimated in one group may not be the same with the factors estimated in another group. This raises some concerns on the acceptability of their conclusions. For our study, we employ inter-battery factor analysis which enables us to estimate factor loadings by constraining the factors to be the same between two different groups. Our results show that there seem to be five or six inter-group common factors that generate daily returns for two industry groups of securities, and these inter-group common factors do not seem to depend on the size of groups. Also, based on our cross-sectional tests on the risk premia, we conclude that the APT should not be rejected.     

A Semiautoregression Approach to the Arbitrage Pricing Theory

This paper developes a semiautoregression (SAR) approach to estimate factors of the arbitrage pricing theory (APT) that has the advantage of providing a simple asymptotic variance-covariance matrix for the factor estimates, which makes it easy to adjust for measurement errors. Using the extracted factors, I confirm the finding that the APT describes asset returns slightly better than the CAPM, although there is still some mispricing in the APT model. I find that not only are the factors “priced” by the market, but the factor premiums move over time in relation to business cycle variables.     

New Tests of the APT and Their Implications

This paper provides new tests of the arbitrage pricing theory (APT). Test results appear to be extremely sensitive to the number of securities used in the two stages of the tests of the APT model. New tests also indicate that unique risk is fully as important as common risk. While these tests have serious limitations, they are inconsistent with the APT.     

Do Assumptions About Factor Structure Matter in Empirical Tests of the APT?

The effect of assumptions about factor structure on empirical tests of multifactor models such as the Arbitrage Pricing Policy Theory has received little attention in the literature. Using data on securities traded on the London Stock Exchange, we examine whether returns are best described by an approximate factor structure and whether assumptions about correlations across idiosyncratic returns have a significant impact on estimated prices of risk and their significance. Our findings suggest that returns are best described by an approximate factor structure and, if this is taken into account when empirically testing the APT, six factors carry significant prices of risk. However, if a strict factor structure is imposed, no factors carry significant prices of risk. These findings suggest that assumptions about factor structure matter in empirically testing the APT.     

Government Bond Returns,Measurement of Interest Rate Risk,and the Arbitrage Pricing Theory

Empirical tests are reported for Ross' arbitrage pricing theory using monthly data for U.S. Treasury securities during the 1960–1979 period. We find that mean returns on bond portfolios are linearly related to at least two factor loadings. Multivariate test results, however, are not consistent with the APT. Our sample data in the U.S. Treasury securities market are also not consistent with either version of the CAPM. One-month-ahead forecasts of excess returns using factor-generating models are compared with corresponding naive predictions or predictions using the “market model” with various market portfolios.     

The Pricing of Interest-Rate Risk: Evidence from the Stock Market

This paper addresses the issue of whether firms are required to pay an ex ante premium to investors for bearing the risk of interest-rate changes. A two-factor APT model with the market and changes in the yield on long-term government bonds as factors is employed. The paper shows that, empirically, most of the interest-sensitive stocks are in the utility industries, and that there is reasonable evidence that the interest factor is priced in the sense of the APT. Several sources for the interest sensitivity are considered, and regulatory lags are focused on as a likely candidate.     

An Asset-Pricing Theory Unifying the CAPM and APT

This study shows that the competitive-equilibrium version of the APT may be extended to develop an exact model if idiosyncratic risks obey the Ross separating distribution. The results indicate that one only need add the market portfolio as an extra factor to the factor model in order to obtain an exact asset-pricing relation. Thus, this study presents an extension and integration of the CAPM and APT. The “empirical” APT is also generalized to allow for some factors to be omitted from the econometric model employed to test the theory. The developed model is extremely robust and may be reduced to the CAPM or expanded to approximate Ross's APT depending upon the number of omitted factors. Further, the importance of the market portfolio is shown to be a monotonic increasing function of the number of omitted factors. Finally, the study demonstrates that, in a finite economy, the pricing-error bound of the Ross APT in a correlated-residuals factor structure is an increasing function of the absolute value of market-residual beta, rather than the weight of the asset in the market portfolio as is the case of uncorrelated factor residuals. However, under the normality assumption, the pricing error becomes an extra component related to the market-portfolio factor, and the exact asset-pricing relation is once again obtained.     

Limits of Arbitrage: Theory and Evidence from the Mortgage-Backed Securities Market

“Limits of Arbitrage” theories hypothesize that the marginal investor in a particular asset market is a specialized arbitrageur rather than a diversified representative investor. We examine the mortgage‐backed securities (MBS) market in this light. We show that the risk of homeowner prepayment, which is a wash in the aggregate, is priced in the MBS market. The covariance of prepayment risk with aggregate wealth implies the wrong sign to match the observed prices of prepayment risk. The price of risk is better explained by a kernel based on MBS market‐wide specific risk, consistent with the specialized arbitrageur hypothesis.     

The Current State of the Arbitrage Pricing Theory

This paper provides a simple proof of a recent theorem presented by Reisman (1992) , concerning the use of proxies for the factors in the return-generating process of the arbitrage pricing theory (APT). In the single-factor case, the theorem asserts that any variable correlated with the factor can serve as the benchmark in an approximate APT expected return relation. The significance of this result is considered and a new direction for empirical work on “arbitrage pricing” is outlined.     

An Empirical Test of the Arbitrage Pricing Theory on Australian Stock Returns 1974-85

This paper examines empirically, issues concerning the Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT). Firstly, in the spirit of Chamberlain and Rothschild [1983], the existence of an approximate factor structure is explored. Secondly, following Beggs [1986] and employing a principal components approach, a test of arbitrage pricing and the importance of the error of approximation, is conducted. Finally, using a non nested framework, the APT and CAPM are tested against each other. The results show mixed support for the APT having up to 3 priced factors.     

Economic forces and seasonality in secirity returns

This article finds strong seasonal behavior in the innovations for three Canadian macroeconomic variables (industrial production, unexpected inflation and GDP). An APT model is estimated as a restricted nonlinear multivariate regression system using seven macroeconomic variables, various residual market factor (RMF) proxies, and the returns on fifty size related portfolios of equities that traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE). As in Chen, Roll and Ross (1986), five macrofactors (lagged industrial production, lagged GDP, term structure, unexpected inflation, and risk premium) have significantly priced risk premia. The risk premia are insignificant for RMF based on two value weighted indices, and marginally significant (0.10 level) for the RMF based on an equally weighted index, which is somewhat consistent with McElroy and Burmeister (1988) and Brown and Otsuki (1989). The significance of the RMF risk premium appears not to be robust to whether portfolios or individual securities are used in the estimations. The significance of the estimated risk premia for the macrofactors also appear not to be robust to the number of portfolios (equations) used in the estimations. Unlike the risk premia estimates for the RMF, those for the other macrofactors are generally unaffected by the inclusion of a January dummy. This implies that the January seasonal remains a market phenomenon that requires further study.     

Intermarket efficiency: An application of interbattery APT to mortgage-backed securities

Increasing popularity of investments in mortgage-backed securities has led to closer integration of the mortgage market into traditional capital markets. Using monthly returns during 1982–1988 for common stocks, Treasury bonds and GNMA and FHLMC mortgage-backed securities, the interbattery factor analytic Arbitrage Pricing Theory of (Cho, 1984) is used to test five hypotheses for intramarket and intermarket integration. Results indicate that three to five common factors are found within the same security market, while only one to three factors are found common between different markets.The APT could not be rejected within the same security market, but was rejected in most intermarket comparisons. While risk-free rates are found to differ between markets, the risk premium tests are conclusive indicators of integration. Our results support claims that the stock, bond, and the mortgage-backed securities markets are integrated.     

Implications of Keeping‐Up‐with‐the‐Joneses Behavior for the Equilibrium Cross Section of Stock Returns: International Evidence

This paper tests the cross‐sectional implications of “keeping‐up‐with‐the‐Joneses” (KUJ) preferences in an international setting. When agents have KUJ preferences, in the presence of undiversifiable nonfinancial wealth, both world and domestic risk (the idiosyncratic component of domestic wealth) are priced, and the equilibrium price of risk of the domestic factor is negative. We use labor income as a proxy for domestic wealth and find empirical support for these predictions. In terms of explaining the cross‐section of stock returns and the size of the pricing errors, the model performs better than alternative international asset pricing models.     

THE MAGNITUDE OF PRICING ERRORS IN THE ARBITRAGE PRICING THEORY

In this paper the arbitrage pricing theory (APT) pricing errors for individual securities are estimated employing maximum likelihood factor analysis and Fama-MacBeth style aggregation. Results show that the pricing errors are large and statistically significant and that there is a high degree of variability in pricing errors across securities. This evidence contradicts the prevailing APT intuition that the pricing errors can be ignored as negligible. Pricing errors are also found to be related to residual variance and firm size.     

Is information risk priced for NASDAQ-listed stocks?

Easley et al. (J Finance 57:2185–2221, 2002), building upon the asset pricing model of Fama and French (J Finance 47:427–465, 1992), show that the probability of informed trading (PIN) is a determinant of asset returns for NYSE-listed securities. We extend this work by examining whether the PIN is a predictive factor for NASDAQ stocks, as many studies document significant differences between NYSE and NASDAQ listed securities. In the process we examine whether the use of PIN is appropriate for NASDAQ-listed securities. We find that PIN and certain stock characteristics correlate differently for our sample of NASDAQ stocks than that of Easley et al. sample of NYSE stocks. We also determine that the risk of informed trading is only weakly priced for NASDAQ stocks. Contrary to Easley et al. we do not find evidence that excess returns increases as PIN increases.     

Empirical Evidence of the Existence of Investable Premiums in Emerging Market Investable Stocks

This paper shows that portfolios of more investable securities bear a premium when compared to portfolios of less investable stocks, reflecting compensation for local risk factors. The investable premium is overwhelmingly priced across 3,782 companies traded in 29 emerging markets from 1988 to 2006. The investable premium impacts stock returns at least as much as other fundamental premiums such as size, value, momentum, and loads on political, economic, and financial risk factors. The impact of the investable premium on emerging stocks returns has increased in strength, implying that foreign ownership has greater influence on local markets in recent years.     

Calendar effects and the pricing of risk: the UK evidence

For some time there has been a puzzle surrounding the seasonal behaviour of stock returns. This paper demonstrates that there is an asymmetric relationship between risk and return across the different months of the year. The paper finds that systematic risk is only priced during the months of January, April and July. Variance risk and firm size are priced during several months of the year including January. An analysis of the relative behaviour of size based securities reveals that firm capitalization makes a valuable contribution to the magnitude of risk premiums.     

Piecing together the extent of retail fractional trading

We examine the introduction of fractional trading and its impact on retail security ownership. Fractional trading aims to increase investor access to securities with high prices. Over the initial months of Robinhood’s fractional trading program, the number of unique owners increases approximately 53 percentage points more for stocks priced above $100 versus those priced below $50. Intraday, high-price stocks exhibit incremental ownership growth specifically during periods when fractional trading is permitted. Our results show that Robinhood investors make ample use of fractional trading to acquire previously inaccessible securities, indicating a substantial reduction in price-based investing frictions and carrying implications for retail portfolio management. In addition, we show that potential market impacts of fractional trading appear negligible based on share volume data from multiple brokers with fractional trading programs.     

债券市场改革与投资者风险意识研究——来自公司债券发行定价的证据

2015年1月出台的《公司债券发行与交易管理办法》建立了公司债券市场发行“注册制”的雏形。本文研究发现,该办法出台后,投资者风险意识显著提升,风险识别能力显著增强。我国债券市场实施“注册制”后,对证券监管部门、市场投资者等参与主体的权责进行重新定义和划分,参与各方各尽其责,投资者的专业能力和风险意识显著提升,债券市场健康有序发展。在债券违约常态化趋势下,为保证债券市场健康有序发展,监管部门一方面要强化市场约束机制,更加注重投资者教育,打破投资者的刚兑信仰;另一方面要强化投资者保护,健全违约善后机制。     

The Number of Factors in Security Returns

Both factor analysis of security returns and the analysis of eigenvalues seem to indicate that a market factor explains the major part of security returns. We find that such evidence is consistent with an economy where there are in fact k “equally important” priced factors; eigenvalue analysis in the context of such an economy will lead an investigator to the false inference that the one important “factor” is the return on an equally weighted market index.