Xuemin Sterling Yan

Price Momentum and Idiosyncratic Volatility

We find that returns to momentum investing are higher among high idiosyncratic volatility (IVol) stocks, especially high IVol losers. Higher IVol stocks also experience quicker and larger reversals. The findings are consistent with momentum profits being attributable to underreaction to firm-specific information and with IVol limiting arbitrage of the momentum effect. We also find a positive time-series relation between momentum returns and aggregate IVol. Given the long-term rise in IVol, this result helps explain the persistence of momentum profits since Jegadeesh and Titmans (1993) study.

Security Concentration and Active Fund Management: Do Focused Funds Offer Superior Performance?

We examine gross fund returns based on the number of securities held and find no evidence that focused funds outperform diversified funds. After deducting expenses, focused funds significantly underperform. Controlling for various fund characteristics, fund performance is positively related to the fund’s number of holdings both before and after expenses. We find evidence linking focused fund underperformance to agency and liquidity problems. Finally, the attrition rate of focused funds is higher than that of diversified funds. These results do not support the view that managers holding focused portfolios have superior stock-picking skills or that focused funds provide value to investors.

The Performance of Investment Bank-Affiliated Mutual Funds: Conflicts of Interest or Informational Advantage?

Using a comprehensive sample of U.S. mutual funds from 1992 to 2004, we find strong evidence that investment bank-affiliated funds underperform unaffiliated funds. Consistent with the conflict of interest hypothesis, we find that affiliated funds hold disproportionately large amounts of stocks of their initial public offering and seasoned equity offering clients. Moreover, worse-performing clients are more likely to be held by affiliated funds. Our results are robust to alternative risk adjustments, portfolio weighting schemes, and regression methodologies. Overall, our findings are consistent with the idea that investment banks use affiliated funds to support underwriting business at the expense of fund shareholders.

Are Short Sellers Informed? Evidence from REITs

This paper uses intraday short sale data to examine whether short sellers of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are informed. We find strong evidence that short selling predicts future returns of REITs. Heavily shorted REITs significantly underperform lightly shorted REITs by approximately 1% over the following 20 trading days. This predictive relation holds for both small and large trades, but is stronger for large short trades. We also document a positive relation between shorting activity and volatility. Our results are consistent with the view that short sellers of REITs are informed and contribute to market efficiency by impounding information into prices.

The Time-Series Behavior and Pricing of Idiosyncratic Volatility: Evidence from 1926 to 1962

Recent research on idiosyncratic volatility has documented three main empirical findings. First, Campbell, Lettau, Malkiel, and Xu (2001) show that idiosyncratic volatility exhibits an upward trend between 1962 and 1997. Second, Goyal and Santa-Clara (2003) find that aggregate measures of idiosyncratic volatility predict one-month-ahead excess market returns from 1962 to 1999. Third, Ang, Hodrick, Xing, and Zhang (2006) report a negative and significant relation between idiosyncratic volatility and cross-sectional stock returns from 1963 to 2000. We re-examine these three findings using a 37-year holdout sample of daily returns from 1926 to 1962. We find robust empirical evidence of (1) a statistically significant downward trend in idiosyncratic volatility, (2) an insignificant relation between average idiosyncratic volatility and one-month-ahead excess market returns, and (3) a highly significant inverse relation between idiosyncratic volatility and cross-sectional stock returns. These results shed new light on the time-series behavior and pricing of idiosyncratic volatility.

The Nasdaq-Amex Merger, Nasdaq Reforms, and the Liquidity of Small Firms

After the Nasdaq and American Stock Exchange (AMEX) merged in 1998, officials of the new entity argued that some “smaller, harder to trade” companies on Nasdaq should switch to AMEX to improve liquidity. This recommendation is based on the traditional view among academics and practitioners alike that a substantial trading cost reduction should be realized when a company switches from the multidealer Nasdaq system to the AMEX specialist system. However, in light of the 1997 Nasdaq reforms, we reexamine the validity of these arguments using data from 1996–98 on firms that switch from the Nasdaq to the AMEX or the New York Stock Exchange. Evidence from transaction costs, volatility, and stock returns shows declining benefits to switching during the sample period. Our findings indicate that the liquidity improvement from exchange listing is limited in the wake of the Nasdaq reforms of 1997.