Stock market cycles, financial liberalization and volatility

In this paper we analyze the cycles of the stock markets in four Latin American and two Asian countries, and we compare their characteristics. We divide our sample in two subperiods in order to account for differences induced by the financial liberalization processes of the early 1990s. We find that cycles in emerging countries tend to have shorter duration and larger amplitude and volatility than in developed countries. However, after financial liberalization Latin American stock markets have behaved more similarly to stock markets in developed countries whereas Asian countries have become more dissimilar. Concordance of cycles across markets has increased significantly over time, especially for Latin American countries after liberalization.     

Intraday Stock Market Behavior After Shocks: The Importance of Bull and Bear Markets in Spain

The stock market behavior after different shocks has been analyzed from different points of view, but none has considered, as in this work, the possibility of combining different procedures, intraday returns over six days, and different phases of the markets in the Spanish stock market. The inconclusive results that we find following the previous empirical methodologies make way to interesting results when bull and bear markets are considered. We find that positive shocks are much more important than negative shocks, especially in downward trends where we find a significant overreaction effect that can be associated with the pessimism prevailing in a bear market after the “dead cat bounce” which represents those positive shocks.     

Earnings growth and the bull market of the 1990s: Is there a case for rational exuberance?

This paper examines whether permanent earnings growth, crucial to stock valuation, increased during the 1990s, as suggested by proponents of the new economy. Using S&P 500 earnings for the period of 1951–2000, we do not find strong evidence of either a one-time structural break or gradual change. However, the confidence interval on permanent earnings growth is wide enough to include an increase that is roughly consistent with the bull market of the late 1990s. Thus, we cannot reject a rational basis for that exuberance.     

On the persistence and volatility in European,American and Asian stocks bull and bear markets

In this paper we examine the statistical properties of several stock market indices in Europe, the US and Asia by means of determining the degree of dependence in both the level and the volatility of the processes. In the latter case, we use the squared returns as a proxy for the volatility. We also investigate the cyclical pattern observed in the data and in particular, if the degree of dependence changes depending on whether there is a bull or a bear period. We use fractional integration and GARCH specifications. The results indicate that the indices are all nonstationary I(1) processes with the squared returns displaying a degree of long memory behaviour. With respect to the bull and bear periods, we do not observe a systematic pattern in terms of the degree of persistence though for some of the indices (FTSE, Dax, Hang Seng and STI) there is a higher degree of dependence in both the level and the volatility during the bull periods.