Danny Yeung

Fundamental Indexation: An Australian Investigation:

Capitalisation-weighted indexes provide the basis for passive investment strategies designed to capture market performance. However, these cap-weighted indexes are claimed to be sub-optimal because of their tendency to overweight overvalued shares and underweight undervalued shares. U.S. evidence suggests that fundamental indexes, which select, rank and weight stocks according to fundamental measures of size such as book value and revenue, outperform cap-weighted indexes. This study examines fundamental indexation in an Australian context over the period 1995 to 2006 and finds support for the U.S. results. However, we also find that the superiority of fundamental indexation is largely explained by its inherent bias towards value stocks, which raises the question as to whether a more overt value tilt may not provide a superior means for exploiting mispricings in markets.

The market response to exploration, resource and reserve announcements by mining companies: Australian data

This is the first paper to study the market response to “Joint Ore Reserve Committee” –compliant announcements made by Australian mining firms. Results from an event study based on matched firms suggest that these announcements are highly value relevant, with the market reacting in a significantly positive way to both exploration and resource announcements. Larger abnormal returns are found to accrue to smaller firms, to firms that use positive adjectives in their announcement headlines and to firms whose announcements imply larger percentage increases in resource levels. We also find evidence of markets anticipating both exploration and resource announcements a few days before they are released, which may be suggestive of some insider trading.

Time-series and cross-sectional momentum strategies under alternative implementation strategies

The study compares the performance of alternative implementations of both time-series and cross-sectional momentum strategies across 24 markets. We find that over our sample period, both types of momentum strategies generate positive returns under the majority of implementations evaluated but that time-series momentum is clearly superior. An important difference between the two momentum strategies is that with time-series momentum, the number of stocks included in the winner and loser portfolios vary with the state of the market. As a consequence, cross-sectional momentum digs deeper to select winning stocks when markets are weak and deeper to select losing stocks when markets are strong. As the information in the momentum signals is concentrated in the tails of the return distribution, it is not that surprising that momentum is best implemented using time-series momentum.

Determinants of the crude oil futures curve: Inventory, consumption and volatility

Since 2008, the WTI oil futures curve has been positively sloped for extended periods. We test whether changes in inventory alone can explain this atypically long contango. To do this, we estimate monthly VARs of the CME WTI oil futures spread and OECD and U.S. inventory in line with standard theory, and add petroleum consumption and implied volatility to the vector of endogenous variables. When we model the futures spread as one continuous series, results confirm two-way causation between inventory and the futures curve, as predicted by the theory of storage. However when we separate negative and positive futures spreads we find that: two-way causation between the futures spread and U.S. inventory breaks down; shocks to OECD petroleum consumption cause more negative spreads and shocks to U.S. consumption cause more positive spreads in addition to inventory-driven changes; and increases in volatility directly raise positive spreads. These new causal channels have become significant since 2008 and can be related to higher inventory, inelastic supply of oil and uncertainty about global economic conditions.

Who starts a self-managed superannuation fund and why?:

Self-managed superannuation funds (SMSFs) – small retirement savings funds with four or fewer members – now manage almost one-third of retirement savings in Australia, and serve over 1 million members. The number of SMSFs has increased to more than half a million in two decades, yet little is known about the reasons people start the funds and how they operate. We use a survey of more than 500 SMSF members and 500 large superannuation fund members to analyse why SMSF members commence and manage their own fund, compared to similar people who stay with a large fund. We find that control over investments and tax minimisation are the most common reasons for starting a SMSF, while satisfaction with large funds and unwillingness to take on the administrative burden of self-management are the most common reasons for not doing so. SMSF members do not show any greater financial skills than non-members, but they do display overconfidence, a higher risk tolerance and a more trusting attitude to financial professionals. Model results show that the majority of SMSF members start their funds at the suggestion of financial professionals. We also show that those who say they are thinking about starting a SMSF are different in significant ways from the eventual SMSF members, further evidence of the influence of the advice industry.