Cheng-Few Lee

DYNAMIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STOCK PRICES AND EXCHANGE RATES FOR G-7 COUNTRIES

Abstract There are two major findings from our time-series estimations. First, we find that there is no long-run significant relationship between stock prices and exchange rates in the G-7 countries. This result interfaces with Bahmani-Oskooee and Sohrabian’s (1992) finding, but contrasts with the studies that suggest there be a significant relationship between these two financial variables. Our second finding is that the short-run significant relationship has only been found for one day in certain G-7 countries. For instance, currency depreciation often drags down stock returns in the German financial market, but it stimulates the Canadian and UK markets on the following day. However, an increase in stock price often causes currency depreciation the next day in Italy and Japan. In addition, we also find that the record of stock price and the value of the dollar cannot be depended on when predicting the future in the US, either in the short-run or long-run.

Market Timing, Selectivity, and Mutual Fund Performance: An Empirical Investigation

This article empirically examines market timing and selectivity performance of a sample of mutual funds. It uses a very simple regression technique to separate stock selection ability from timing ability. This technique, first suggested by Treynor and Mazuy and later refined by Bhattacharya and Pfleiderer, uses a modified security-market line approach to produce individual measures of timing and stock selection ability. The inputs to the model are only the returns earned on the fund and those earned on the market portfolio. The empirical results indicate that at the individual fund level there is some evidence of superior micro- and macroforecasting ability on the part of the fund manager. Copyright 1990 by the University of Chicago.

Futures Hedge Ratios: A Review

Abstract This paper presents a review of different theoretical approaches to the optimal futures hedge ratios. These approaches are based on minimum variance, mean-variance, expected utility, mean extended-Gini coefficient, as well as semivariance. Various ways of estimating these hedge ratios are also discussed, ranging from simple ordinary least squares to complicated heteroscedastic cointegration methods. Under martingale and joint-normality conditions, different hedge ratios are the same as the minimum variance hedge ratio. Otherwise, the optimal hedge ratios based on the different approaches are different and there is no single optimal hedge ratio that is distinctly superior to the remaining ones.

Corporate Governance and Equity Liquidity: analysis of S&P transparency and disclosure rankings

This paper sets out to investigate the effects of disclosure, and other corporate governance mechanisms, on equity liquidity, arguing that those companies adopting poor information transparency and disclosure practices will experience serious information asymmetry. Since poor corporate governance leads to greater information asymmetry, liquidity providers will incur relatively higher adverse information risks and will therefore offer higher information asymmetry components in their effective bid-ask spreads. The Transparency and Disclosure (T&D) rankings of the individual stocks on the S&P 500 index are employed to examine whether firms with greater T&D rankings have lower information asymmetry components and lower stock spreads. Our results reveal that the economic costs of equity liquidity, i.e. the effective spread and the quoted half-spread, are greater for those companies with poor information transparency and disclosure practices.

How Does Strategic Competition Affect Firm Values? A Study of New Product Announcements

We examine the role of strategic interaction in explaining the valuation effect of new product announcements and employ Sundaram, John, and Johns (1996) competitive strategy measure to operationalize the nature of a firms competitive interaction. Using a sample of new product introductions between 1991 and 1995, we find that the market values introductions announced by firms in strategic substitutes competition more favorably than those announced by firms in strategic complements competition. These results hold after we control for other variables that could explain the announcement effect. We also find that industry rivals of those announcing firms that compete in strategic substitutes and experience a positive announcement effect generally suffer a small, but significant wealth loss. The evidence supports the notion that the nature of competitive interaction in an industry is important in assessing the effect of corporate product strategies on shareholder value.

Investment opportunities, free cash flow and market reaction to international joint ventures

Abstract This paper examines the role of investment opportunities and free cash flow in explaining the source of the wealth effect of international joint ventures. We document that firms with promising investment opportunities have significantly positive response to announcements of international joint venture investments, whereas firms with poor investment opportunities have unfavorable response to such announcements. In contrast, we find that free cash flow does not explain the cross-sectional differences in abnormal returns associated with the announcements of international joint ventures. Thus, our results show support for the investment opportunities hypothesis but no support for the free cash flow hypothesis. These findings hold even after controlling for other potential explanatory variables.

Intraday Return Volatility Process: Evidence from NASDAQ Stocks

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the distributional and time-series properties of intraday returns. The purpose is to determine whether a GARCH model that allows for time varying variance in a process can adequately represent intraday return volatility. Our primary data set consists of 5-minute returns, trading volumes, and bid-ask spreads during the period January 1, 1999 through March 31, 1999, for a subset of thirty stocks from the NASDAQ 100 Index. Our results indicate that the GARCH(1,1) model best describes the volatility of intraday returns. Current volatility can be explained by past volatility that tends to persist over time. These results are consistent with those of Akgiray (1989) who estimates volatility using the various ARCH and GARCH specifications and finds the GARCH(1,1) model performs the best. We add volume as an additional explanatory variable in the GARCH model to examine if volume can capture the GARCH effects. Consistent with results of Najand and Yung (1991) and Foster (1995) and contrary to those of Lamoureux and Lastrapes (1990), our results show that the persistence in volatility remains in intraday return series even after volume is included in the model as an explanatory variable. We then substitute bid-ask spread for volume in the conditional volatility equation to examine if the latter can capture the GARCH effects. The results show that the GARCH effects remain strongly significant for many of the securities after the introduction of bid-ask spread. Consistent with results of Antoniou, Homes and Priestley (1998), intraday returns also exhibit significant asymmetric responses of volatility to flow of information into the market.

Wealth Effects of Private Equity Placements: Evidence from Singapore

We examine institutional characteristics and the wealth effects of private equity placements in Singapore. Our findings show that private placements in Singapore generally result in a negative wealth effect and a reduction in ownership concentration. We find that at high levels of ownership concentration, the relation between abnormal returns and changes in ownership concentration is significantly negative. We also show that the market reacts less favorably to placements in which management ownership falls below 50%, but more favorably to issues to single investors. We do not find evidence suggesting that our results are due to an information effect.

Advances in Quantitative Analysis of Finance and Accounting

Advances in Quantitative Analysis of Finance and Accounting is an annual publication designed to disseminate developments in the quantitative analysis of finance and accounting. The publication is a forum for statistical and quantitative analyses of issues in finance and accounting, as well as applications of quantitative methods to problems in financial management, financial accounting, and business management. The objective is to promote interaction between academic research in finance and accounting and applied research in the financial community and accounting profession. The chapters in this volume cover a wide range of important topics, including corporate finance and debt management, earnings management, options and futures, equity market, and portfolio diversification. These topics are very useful for both academicians and practitioners in the area of finance.

A note on stock market seasonality: The impact of stock price volatility on the application of dummy variable regression model

Abstract This article provides both statistical analysis and empirical evidence that the dummy variable regression models extensively employed in the market seasonality literature may wind-up misleading results. We show that the estimates of the said model tend to reject the null hypothesis incorrectly once the stock returns exhibit higher volatility for the specified period under examination. Our empirical results suggest that the so-called “January effect” could be attributed to the application of inappropriate statistical method.