Macroeconomic announcements, price discovery, and order flow efects in the stock market: evidence from incomplete data and multiple financial markets

This paper investigates heterogeneity in the market assessment of public macro- economic announcements by exploring (jointly) two main mechanisms through which macroeconomic news might enter stock prices: instantaneous fundamental news im- pacts consistent with the asset pricing view of symmetric information, and permanent order ow e¤ects consistent with a microstructure view of asymmetric information related to heterogeneous interpretation of public news. Theoretical motivation and empirical evidence for the operation of both mechanisms are presented. Signi cant in- stantaneous news impacts are detected for news related to real activity (including em- ployment), investment, in ation, and monetary policy; however, signi cant order ow e¤ects are also observed on employment announcement days. A multi-market analysis suggests that these asymmetric information e¤ects come from uncertainty about long term interest rates due to heterogeneous assessments of future Fed responses to em- ployment shocks.

Toward convergence? The brazilian stock market concentration and the role of private equity in its diversification

Using quantitative data obtained from public available database, this paper discusses the difference between of the Brazilian GDP and the Brazilian Stock Exchange industry breakdown. I examined if, and to what extent, the industry breakdowns are similar. First, I found out that the Stock Exchange industry breakdown is overwhelming different from the GDP, which may present a potential problem to asset allocation and portfolio diversification in Brazil. Second, I identified an important evidence of a convergence between the GDP and the Stock Exchange in the last 9 years. Third, it became clear that the Privatizations in the late 90’s and IPO market from 2004 to 2008 change the dynamics of the Brazilian Stock Exchange. And fourth, I identified that Private Equity and Venture Capital industry may play an important role on the portfolio diversification in Brazil.

Elections and stock market volatility: evidence in OECD countries and developing countries

Este trabalho estuda se existe impacto na volatilidade dos mercados de ações em torno das eleições nacionais nos países da OCDE e nos países em Desenvolvimento. Ao mesmo tempo, pretende, através de variáveis explicativas, descobrir os fatores responsáveis por esse impacto. Foi descoberta evidência que o impacto das eleições na volatilidade dos mercados de ações é maior nos países em Desenvolvimento. Enquanto as eleições antecipadas, a mudança na orientação política e o tamanho da população foram os factores que explicaram o aumento da volatilidade nos países da OCDE, o nível democrático, número de partidos da coligação governamental e a idade dos mercados foram os factores explicativos para os países em Desenvolvimento.

Brazil’s 2014 presidential elections: the interconnection between election news and stock market behavior

This study researches whether there has been abnormal stock market behaviour in Brazil as a consequence of election news (observed via opinion polls), regarding the last Brazilian presidential election, held in October 2014. Via applying event study methodology, the research on the Ibovespa and Petrobras suggests that events in which Rousseff was gaining in share have been subject to negative abnormal returns, and events where Rousseff was loosing in share have led to positive abnormal returns. Moreover, volatility has been significantly elevated during the election period and volume has been found to have slightly increased.

Determinants of ownership concentration in the Chilean stock market

Includes bibliography.

Confidence and the Stock Market: An Agent-Based Approach

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Information Search Behavior: Proposal of Study with Investors in the Stock Market

With the aim of analyzing the information search behavior of investors working in the stock market, this research sought to raise the aspects related to this behavior with focus on the cognitive and causal aspects which pervade the need for information of these investors. For that, the general pattern of informational behavior proposed by Wilson [10], and also the analysis of a report from an investor of the stock market area were used as basis for the analysis and reflection. The report of only one investor was used as basis for investigation, turning it impossible to extrapolate such result to a greater universe. The objective of this research was to investigate the need for information, the context and the intervenient variables which might interfere or not in the information search behavior of investors, in an attempt to get a deeper comprehension about the subject, as well as to propose the continuity of studies with basis on this study proposal.

Gold and the Stock Market: 3 Essays on Gold Investments

This thesis gives an overview of the history of gold per se, of gold as an investment good and offers some institutional details about gold and other precious metal markets. The goal of this study is to investigate the role of gold as a store of value and hedge against negative market movements in turbulent times. I investigate gold’s ability to act as a safe haven during periods of financial stress by employing instrumental variable techniques that allow for time varying conditional covariance. I find broad evidence supporting the view that gold acts as an anchor of stability during market downturns. During periods of high uncertainty and low stock market returns, gold tends to have higher than average excess returns. The effectiveness of gold as a safe haven is enhanced during periods of extreme crises: the largest peaks are observed during the global financial crises of 2007-2009 and, in particular, during the Lehman default (October 2008). A further goal of this thesis is to investigate whether gold provides protection from tail risk. I address the issue of asymmetric precious metal behavior conditioned to stock market performance and provide empirical evidence about the contribution of gold to a portfolio’s systematic skewness and kurtosis. I find that gold has positive coskewness with the market portfolio when the market is skewed to the left. Moreover, gold shows low cokurtosis with the market returns during volatile periods. I therefore show that gold is a desirable investment good to risk averse investors, since it tends to decrease the probability of experiencing extreme bad outcomes, and the magnitude of losses in case such events occur. Gold thus bears very important and under-researched characteristics as an asset class per se, which this thesis contributed to address and unveil.

Shareholder protection and stock market development

The dissertation contains five parts: An introduction, three major chapters, and a short conclusion. The First Chapter starts from a survey and discussion of the studies on corporate law and financial development literature. The commonly used methods in these cross-sectional analyses are biased as legal origins are no longer valid instruments. Hence, the model uncertainty becomes a salient problem. The Bayesian Model Averaging algorithm is applied to test the robustness of empirical results in Djankov et al. (2008). The analysis finds that their constructed legal index is not robustly correlated with most of the various stock market outcome variables. The second Chapter looks into the effects of minority shareholders protection in corporate governance regime on entrepreneurs' ex ante incentives to undertake IPO. Most of the current literature focuses on the beneficial part of minority shareholder protection on valuation, while overlooks its private costs on entrepreneur's control. As a result, the entrepreneur trade-offs the costs of monitoring with the benefits of cheap sources of finance when minority shareholder protection improves. The theoretical predictions are empirically tested using panel data and GMM-sys estimator. The third Chapter investigates the corporate law and corporate governance reform in China. The corporate law in China regards shareholder control as the means to the ends of pursuing the interests of stakeholders, which is inefficient. The Chapter combines the recent development of theories of the firm, i.e., the team production theory and the property rights theory, to solve such problem. The enlightened shareholder value, which emphasizes on the long term valuation of the firm, should be adopted as objectives of listed firms. In addition, a move from the mandatory division of power between shareholder meeting and board meeting to the default regime, is proposed.

Consumption asymmetry and the stock market: New evidence through a threshold adjustment model

This paper investigates whether stock market wealth affects real consumption asymmetrically through a threshold adjustment model. The empirical findings for the US show that wealth produces an asymmetric effect on real consumption, with negative 'news' affecting consumption less than positive 'news.' Thus, policy makers may want to focus more attention on preventing asset 'bubbles' than on responding to negative asset shocks.

Technical Efficiency and Stock Market Reaction to Horizontal Mergers

This study examines the relationship between stock market reaction to horizontal merger announcements and technical efficiency levels of the participating firms. The analysis is based on data pertaining to eighty mergers between firms in the U.S. manufacturing industry during the 1990s. We employ Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to measure technical efficiency, which capture the firms. competence to produce the maximum output given certain productive resources. Abnormal returns related to the merger announcements provide the investor.s re-evaluation on the future performance of the participating firms. In order to avoid the problem of nonnormality, heteroskedasticity in the regression analysis, bootstrap method is employed for estimations and inferences. We found that there is a significant relationship between technical efficiency and market response. The market apparently welcomes the merger as an arrangement to improve resource utilizations.

Consumption Asymmetry and the Stock Market: Empirical Evidence

This paper examines whether U.S. stock-market wealth asymmetrically affects consumption. After identifying asymmetric behavior for consumption and stock market wealth, the results confirm that stock-market wealth asymmetrically affects real per capita consumption. Negative 'news' affects consumption more than positive 'news'.

Dynamic Effects of Currency Depreciation on Stock Market Returns during the Asian Financial Crisis

The current international integration of financial markets provides a channel for currency depreciation to affect stock prices. Moreover, the recent financial crisis in Asia with its accompanying exchange rate volatility affords a case study to examine that channel. This paper applies a bivariate GARCH-M model of the reduced form of stock market returns to investigate empirically the effects of daily currency depreciation on stock market returns for five newly emerging East Asian stock markets during the Asian financial crisis. The evidence shows that the conditional variances of stock market returns and depreciation rates exhibit time-varying characteristics for all countries. Domestic currency depreciation and its uncertainty adversely affects stock market returns across countries. The significant effects of foreign exchange market events on stock market returns suggest that international fund managers who invest in the newly emerging East Asian stock markets must evaluate the value and stability of the domestic currency as a part of their stock market investment decisions.

Dynamic Stock Market Interactions between the Canadian, Mexican, and the United States Markets: The NAFTA Experience

This paper explores the dynamic linkages that portray different facets of the joint probability distribution of stock market returns in NAFTA (i.e., Canada, Mexico, and the US). Our examination of interactions of the NAFTA stock markets considers three issues. First, we examine the long-run relationship between the three markets, using cointegration techniques. Second, we evaluate the dynamic relationships between the three markets, using impulse-response analysis. Finally, we explore the volatility transmission process between the three markets, using a variety of multivariate GARCH models. Our results also exhibit significant volatility transmission between the second moments of the NAFTA stock markets, albeit not homogenous. The magnitude and trend of the conditional correlations indicate that in the last few years, the Mexican stock market exhibited a tendency toward increased integration with the US market. Finally, we do note that evidence exists that the Peso and Asian financial crises as well as the stock-market crash in the US affect the return and volatility time-series relationships.

Consumption Asymmetry and the Stock Market: Further Evidence

This paper investigates the presence of asymmetric effects of stock returns on real consumption in the US. After identifying the asymmetric behavior for consumption as well as the wealth effect, the results confirm that stock returns have an asymmetric effect on real consumption, with negative 'news' affecting consumption more than positive 'news'.