Syed Mujahid Hussain

Intraday Seasonalities and Macroeconomic News Announcements

Using a data set consisting of three years of 5-minute intraday stock index returns for major European stock indices and U.S. macroeconomic surprises, the conditional mean and volatility behaviors in European market were investigated. The findings suggested that the opening of the U.S market significantly raised the level of volatility in Europe, and that all markets respond in an identical fashion. Furthermore, the U.S. macroeconomic surprises exerted an immediate and major impact on both European stock markets’ returns and volatilities. Thus, high frequency data appear to be critical for the identification of news that impacted the markets.

What drives stock market growth? A case of a volatile emerging economy

ABSTRACT We study the determinants of the explosive stock market growth and increased foreign portfolio investment in Pakistan. Our results indicate that in contrast to evidence from developed markets, the aggregate stock returns are not driven by macroeconomic fundamentals in Pakistan. Moreover, foreign portfolio investors do not tend to react to changes in economic variables in Pakistan. As fundamentals fail to affect stock returns in Pakistan, they may be based more on speculative motives. Our results suggest that in the absence of a strong institutional and regulatory framework, economic policies have only a limited effect on stabilizing an emerging market.

The Financial Cost of Rivalry: A Tale of Two South Asia Neighbors

We examine the effect of bilateral political and military news on the returns and volatility of the stock markets of India and Pakistan. Our results show that the volatility of both stock markets shows a significant reaction on the arrival of news related to military aggression in a reciprocal way. Moreover, while the volatility of Indias stock market seems to show a subdued response to bilateral political news, Pakistans stock market appears to be sensitive to both political and military news originating from either country. The relatively stronger effect of military events can be attributed to a higher financial cost of confrontation between the two countries.

Risk Committees and Implied Cost of Equity Capital

We investigate the association between the existence of risk committee and implied cost of equity capital in a unique institutional setting where the formation of the board risk committee as part of the risk governance mechanism is not mandatory in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) financial institutions. Using data from the six GCC countries, we find that implied cost of equity capital is negatively associated with the existence of board risk committee. These findings indicate that GCC financial firms with better risk governance practices at board level have lower implied cost of equity capital. We contribute to the extant literature on‐board risk governance in emerging market context.

Market risk disclosures, corporate governance structure and political connections: evidence from GCC firms

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the joint effect of political connections, in the form of the royal family member on board, and corporate governance on the market risk disclosures of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) financial firms from 2007 to 2011. Previous research suggest that politically connected firms reduce the level of transparency in the GCC. However, we find that better corporate governance improves transparency and can be used as an effective tool in curbing the potentially adverse impact of politically connected board members on firms’ transparency. Our results have important implications for policy makers and can be generalized to other emerging markets.