Value relevance of financial assets

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Finance from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

This study’s proposal is to examine for the Portuguese market, the value relevance of unrealized fair value gains and losses of financial assets, namely for financial instruments at fair value through profit and loss (which includes held-for-trading securities) and for available-for-sale financial assets. The objective is to obtain a perception of how well stock prices and returns reflect the fair value changes of these two financial assets. For a sample of Portuguese listed companies in a 2005-2007 period, no significant evidence is found regarding the value relevance of both cumulative and incremental unrealized fair value gains and losses associated to the two analyzed financial instruments. Several underlying factors for these results are presented, based on prior research.