Medium-term and Long-term Momentum and Contrarian Effects on China during 1994-2004

We examine momentum and contrarian effects in China＇s stock market during 1994-2004 and find that no medium momentum effects exist. Meanwhile, contrarian strategy works effectively over the horizon of 18-36 months. 1-month gap for avoiding bid-ask bounce and lead-lag effect make no considerable change to our empirical results. Transaction costs seem to have no significant impact on contrarian strategies＇ profit.     

Investor efficiency in the face of takings

Governmental entities at all levels are empowered to acquire private property for the public's benefit, provided that just compensation is paid. The level of compensation typically viewed by courts as just is market value, but questions arise as to whether market value compensation motivates the private owner of land, potentially subject to a taking, to improve the property to a degree that is socially efficient. Earlier works have found market value to be a compensation level too high to promote efficiency. The present paper offers an analysis, based on a simple model of investor profit maximization, that provides a unified view of models presented in some important earlier works. In a special application of the general case, it is shown that market value can be too low a level of compensation to promote efficient behavior by the land owner.     

Momentum in the Chinese Stock Market: Evidence from Stochastic Oscillator Indicators

ABSTRACT

We explore whether investors earn profits through the use of stochastic oscillator indicators (SOI) for trading stocks. The results reveal that investors might use momentum strategies when trading constituent stocks of SSE 50 as the overbought trading signals emitted by SOI. We infer that the results might be caused by herding behaviors of Chinese investors since overoptimistic moods are likely to exist as evidenced by the 80 percent trading volume traded by individual investors in the Chinese stock market.     

How about selling commodity futures losers?

This paper explores the benefits of extending the investment universe to commodity futures, from the perspective of momentum traders. We find that the growth-optimal portfolio includes negative (positive) weights on commodity futures losers (stock winners). Motivated by this finding, we construct a joint momentum strategy, buying stock winners and selling commodity futures losers, and show that it generates an average monthly return of up to 1.91% and provides much lower skewness (0.04) and kurtosis (1.27) than a traditional stock momentum strategy. It also greatly improves profitability, especially in unfavorable market states, and thus effectively manages tail risk.     

Employee well-being attribution and job change intentions: The moderating effect of task idiosyncratic deals

We developed and tested a research model in which employee well-being human resource (HR) attribution differentially influences the intention to change jobs across organizations (i.e., external job change intention) versus that within the same organization (i.e., internal job change intention). Furthermore, we posited that task idiosyncratic deals (I-deals) moderated the relationships between employee well-being HR attribution and external and internal job change intentions. Results indicated that employee well-being HR attribution was negatively related to external job change intention, but positively related to internal job change intention. Further, task I-deals significantly moderated the relationships between employee well-being HR attribution and external and internal job change intention. Specifically, employee well-being HR attribution played a less important role in reducing external job change intention when task I-deals were high rather than low. On the other hand, high task I-deals significantly strengthened the positive relationship between employee well-being HR attribution and internal job change intention. Our study extends the careers literature by differentiating the impact of employee well-being HR attribution on job change intentions within an organization compared with that across organizations and the important role of supervisors in enhancing or mitigating these effects.     

Corporate Stock and Bond Return Correlations and Dynamic Adjustments of Capital Structure

This paper analyses the effects of dynamic correlations between stock and bond returns issued by the same firm on the speed of adjustment towards target leverage. The results show that the estimated correlations are time varying, show persistence and differ among firms. Analysis of the potential explanatory variables reveals that the correlations decrease with negative expectations about future aggregate risks, but only for firms with a low default probability. In contrast, correlations are positively associated with specific risk measures, especially idiosyncratic stock risk and financial leverage. The positive relationship between the correlations and the leverage ratio suggests that target leverage can be achieved faster when the stock–bond correlation is high. Our results show that this is the case.     

An N-dimensional generalization of the Amiti–Weinstein estimator

Amiti and Weinstein proposed an estimation framework to disentangle credit demand and supply shocks using matched bank-firm loan data. Here, we show that their estimator can be generalized to capture shocks arising in an arbitrary number of dimensions. Our algorithm permits empirical researchers to analyse multi-dimensional data sets using the Amiti–Weinstein framework. This may be beneficial both for studies on micro-level outcomes as well as for the literature on assessing the macroeconomic impact of idiosyncratic shocks. In an empirical application to a firm-product-country export data set, we highlight the usefulness of the generalized Amiti–Weinstein estimator, and we demonstrate the importance of considering additional dimensions when gauging the effect of granular shocks on aggregate fluctuations.     

The untold story of commodity futures in China

We investigate the behavior of commodity futures risk premia in China. In the presence of retail-dominance and barriers-to-entry, the term structure and momentum premia remain persistent, whereas hedging pressure, skewness, volatility, and liquidity premia are distorted by time-varying margins and strict position limits. Furthermore, open interest, currency, and inflation premia are sensitive to institutional settings. The observed premia cannot be attributed to common risks, sentiment, transactions costs, or data-snooping, but are related to liquidity, anchoring, and regulation-induced limits-to-arbitrage. We highlight the distinctive features of Chinese futures markets and assess the challenges posed to theories of commodity risk premia.     

Selective disclosure and the role of Form 8-K in the post-Reg FD era

We investigate the impact of Form 8-K filings on cross-firm differences in analysts’ private or idiosyncratic information in the post-Reg FD era. Using firms’ connections to the investment community to identify the likelihood of selective disclosure, we document differences in analysts’ idiosyncratic information arising from selective disclosure before 8-K filings. While filings of 8-Ks pursuant to Reg FD attenuate the link between connections and analysts’ idiosyncratic information, they do so only after selective disclosures have already resulted in some analysts having better private information. In addition, the connections continue to facilitate private information search after the filings of non-Reg FD-specific 8-Ks.     

A neoclassical interpretation of momentum

The neoclassical theory of investment implies that expected stock returns are tied with the expected marginal benefit of investment divided by the marginal cost of investment. Winners have higher expected growth and expected marginal productivity (two major components of the marginal benefit of investment), and earn higher expected stock returns than losers. The investment model succeeds in capturing average momentum profits, reversal of momentum in long horizons, long-run risks in momentum, and the interaction of momentum with several firm characteristics. However, the model fails to reproduce the procyclicality of momentum as well as its negative interaction with book-to-market equity.