Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

On The Effects Of Information Asymmetry In Digital Currency Trading, Kwansoo Kim, Robert John Kauffman

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We report on two studies that examine how social sentiment influences information asymmetry in digital currency markets. We also assess whether cryptocurrency can be an investment vehicle, as opposed to only an instrument for asset speculation. Using a dataset on transactions from an exchange in South Korea and sentiment from Korean social media in 2018, we conducted a study of different trading behavior under two cryptocurrency trading market microstructures: a bid-ask spread dealer's market and a continuous trading buy-sell, immediate trade execution market. Our results highlight the impacts of positive and negative trader social sentiment valences on the effects of …

Who Profits From Trading Options?, Jianfeng Hu, Antonia Kirilova, Gilbert Seongkyu Park, Doojin. Ryu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We use account-level transaction data to examine trading styles and profitability in a leading derivatives market. Approximately 66% of active retail investors predominantly hold simple, one-sided positions in only one class of options, whereas institutional investors are more likely to use complex strategies. Hypothesizing that the complexity of trading styles reflects investors' skills, we examine the effect of options trading styles on investment performance. We find that retail investors using simple strategies lose to the rest of the market. For both retail and institutional investors, selling volatility is the most successful strategy. We conclude that these style effects are persistent …

Mortgage Broker Strategies To Overcome The Volatility Of Inconsistent Sales, Marissa Blackwell

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Many mortgage brokers leave the mortgage industry because of unforeseen changes andvolatility. Mortgage brokers are concerned with adequate strategies to mitigate industry volatility and inconsistent sales, which is important to successful sustainability during challenging times. Grounded in relationship marketing theory, the purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore the strategies seven mortgage brokers from a single organization used to sustain sales during volatile times. Data were collected using semistructured interviews by telecommunication, a reflective journal, LinkedIn, Facebook, and broker websites. Through thematic analysis, three themes emerged: maintaining a presence with new and existing clients, understanding client needs, …

Mortgage Broker Strategies To Overcome The Volatility Of Inconsistent Sales, Marissa Blackwell

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Many mortgage brokers leave the mortgage industry because of unforeseen changes andvolatility. Mortgage brokers are concerned with adequate strategies to mitigate industry volatility and inconsistent sales, which is important to successful sustainability during challenging times. Grounded in relationship marketing theory, the purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore the strategies seven mortgage brokers from a single organization used to sustain sales during volatile times. Data were collected using semistructured interviews by telecommunication, a reflective journal, LinkedIn, Facebook, and broker websites. Through thematic analysis, three themes emerged: maintaining a presence with new and existing clients, understanding client needs, …

The Relationship Between Twitter Mentions & Stock Volatility During Trading Hours, Connor Day

Undergraduate Honors Theses

A new paradigm in investing has been created where people have easier access than ever to invest in the stock market from the convenience of their phones. Through zero-commission trading apps, like Robinhood, less starting capital is required. This research is used to investigate the relationship between the frequency of social media mentions on Twitter and a particular stock’s volatility. This will be done using the qualitative data analyzing tool AtlasTi to calculate the frequency in which a particular stock ticker is mentioned on Twitter during trading hours. The volatility of the stock will be calculated using data from Yahoo! …

Decentralizing Money: Bitcoin Prices And Blockchain Security, Emiliano Sebastian Pagnotta

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We address the determination of bitcoin prices and decentralized security. Users forecast the transactional and resale values of holdings, pricing the risk of systemic attacks. Miners contribute resources to protect against attackers and compete for block rewards. Bitcoin's design leads to multiple equilibria: the same blockchain technology is consistent with sharply different price and security levels. Bitcoin's monetary policy can lead to welfare losses and deviations from quantity theory. Price-security feedback amplifies fundamental shocks' volatility impact and leads to boom and busts unconnected to fundamentals. We characterize how viability versus fiat currency depends on bitcoin's relative acceptability and inflation protection.

Relationship Between Risk Exposure, Volatility Forecasting, And Financial Performance Of Hedge Funds, Thandi Lasana

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Poor hedge fund performance can impede the financial performance of a business organization. Despite the success of hedge funds, they incurred a loss of 33% during the global economic recession of 2007-2009. Understanding volatility and risk exposures are vital for investors and managers to increase hedge fund returns in various market conditions. Grounded in Markowitz’s modern portfolio theory, the purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to examine the relationship between hedge fund risk exposure, volatility forecasting, and financial performance. Data were collected from archival data from the HedgeNews Africa database and financial databases in South Africa between 2007 and …

Bubbles Through The Years: An Examination Of Unique And Analogous Characteristics Among Financial Manias From The South Sea Bubble To The Great Financial Crisis, Matthew Hines

CMC Senior Theses

Throughout history, financial bubbles have been shrouded in fear and misunderstanding, with hope, greed, and hearsay fueling inane degrees of risk-taking amongst financial powerhouses and the common retail investor alike. While many studies have been conducted to delve into the unique attributes, causes, effects, and consequences of almost every crisis since adequate data could be recorded and preserved, it is not common for the varying types of crises to be directly compared in their core attributes and price movements. This paper conducts such an examination, with a look into ten different crises across the equity, real estate, and oil markets …

The Volatility Implications Of The Chinese Cryptocurrency Ban, Keaton Manwaring

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In this paper, I examine the effect of the May 18^th, 2021 Chinese ban of cryptocurrency transactions on the overall volatility of the cryptocurrency market. To do this, I analyze, in both univariate and multivariate settings, range-based volatility in various event windows surrounding the event. I find clear economic and statistical change in volatility in the five days after the ban. In the ten-day period after the ban, there is a moderate economic change in volatility. In the forty-day period after the ban, there is little economic change in volatility. I conclude that the Chinese ban had a …

Is It Risky To Make The World A Better Place: A Study On The Association Between Environmental, Social, And Governance (Esg) Operational Risk Management And Market Derived Volatilities, Kelly L. Johnson

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Investors and firms are increasingly concerned with their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) risk exposures. Awareness of firms’ ESG policies by investors has grown substantially over the past five years. This growth led to the creation of company ratings for ESG operational risk exposure from third parties. We will analyze six years of ESG rankings, accounting and return data for S&P 500 firms and test whether ESG risk management ratings are associated with market derived measures of risk.

Retail Trading And Stock Volatility: The Case Of Robinhood, Cooper Jones

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

We examine the relation between Robinhood usership and stock market volatility. We show that daily fluctuations in Robinhood usership, which is used to proxy retail trading, significantly influence various measures of volatility. These results might suggest that Robinhood users contribute to noise trading as they are generally individuals trading on name recognition, media coverage, popularity, and familiarity of products, rather than on fundamental values. In our empirical approach, we find that the percentage increase in Robinhood usership Granger causes increases in daily stock volatility.

The Effects Of Conventional And Unconventional Monetary Policy On Exchange Rate Volatility, Wan Wei, Susan Pozo

Faculty Publications -School of Business

This paper examines the impacts of U.S. conventional and unconventional monetary policy announcements on the volatility of six exchange rates, namely Australian dollar, British pound, Canadian dollar, Euro, Japanese yen, and Swiss franc against the U.S. dollar. Narrow windows around policy announcements and high frequency second-by-second intraday data are used in the analysis. Results show that the exchange rate volatility increases significantly in the narrow window before and after the announcements under conventional monetary policy regime. The increase in the volatility is even greater during the contemporaneous period under the unconventional regime. Dividing monetary policy announcements into expansionary and non-expansionary …

Rise Of The Machines? Intraday High-Frequency Trading Patterns Of Cryptocurrencies, Alla A Petukhina, Raphael C. G. Reule, Wolfgang Karl Hardle

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

This research analyses high-frequency data of the cryptocurrency market in regards to intraday trading patterns related to algorithmic trading and its impact on the European cryptocurrency market. We study trading quantitatives such as returns, traded volumes, volatility periodicity, and provide summary statistics of return correlations to CRIX (CRyptocurrency IndeX), as well as respective overall high-frequency based market statistics with respect to temporal aspects. Our results provide mandatory insight into a market, where the grand scale employment of automated trading algorithms and the extremely rapid execution of trades might seem to be a standard based on media reports. Our findings on …

Noise Traders, Fintech, And Equity Market Volatility, William T. Collins

Honors College Theses

The literature provides ample evidence that the last decades have seen an increase in noise trader activities, in part driven by the development of fintech. This paper strives to educate readers on the term noise traders as well as fintech. Moreover, it argues that the evolvement of noise trader activities accompanied with fintech has increased equity market volatility over time. The study finds that equity market volatility has indeed increased over time and is not driven by periods of crisis. Furthermore, this increase in volatility is more severe for small stocks versus large stocks, which is in line with the …

The Relative Industry Specific Effects Of Covid-19 On Market Volatility And Liquidity, Callin Christensen

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Understanding how historical events affect market volatility and liquidity can provide crucial information to financial analysts, investment professionals, and managers in the event that similar circumstances resurface. In this study, I look at how a global pandemic (COVID-19) can introduce frictions into the market and cause disrupt the generation or flow of available information, this could cause prices to deviate significantly from their equilibrium values. I also hypothesize that these inefficiencies may have a greater effect on some industries than others. My analysis seems to confirm this hypothesis. I observe that the global COVID-19 pandemic leads to statistically significant increases …

Risk Premium Spillovers Among Stock Markets: Evidence From Higher-Order Moments, Marinela Adriana Finta, Sofiane Aboura

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the volatility and skewness risk premium spillovers among the U.S., U.K., German, and Japanese stock markets. We define risk premia as the difference between risk-neutral and realized moments. Our findings highlight that during periods of stress, cross-market and cross-moment spillovers increase and that these increases are mirrored by a decrease in within-market effects. We document strong bidirectional spillovers between volatility and skewness risk premia and emphasize the prominent role played by the volatility risk premium. Finally, we show that several announcements drive the time-varying risk premium spillovers.

Understanding Cryptocurrencies, Wolfgang Karl Hardle, Campbell R. Harvey, Raphael C. G. Ruele

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

Cryptocurrency refers to a type of digital asset that uses distributed ledger, or blockchain, technology to enable a secure transaction. Although the technology is widely misunderstood, many central banks are considering launching their own national cryptocurrency. In contrast to most data in financial economics, detailed data on the history of every transaction in the cryptocurrency complex are freely available. Furthermore, empirically oriented research is only now beginning, presenting an extraordinary research opportunity for academia. We provide some insights into the mechanics of cryptocurrencies, describing summary statistics and focusing on potential future research avenues in financial economics.

The Effects Of Inter-Industry Mergers And Acquisitions On The Long-Term Volatility Of Equity Returns, Collin Myers

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The objective of this research was to discover whether a significant relationship exists between the theoretically diversifying effects of inter-industry mergers and acquisitions (“M&A”) and changes in the volatilities of acquisitive firms’ publicly-traded equity security returns (measured as the standard deviation of percentage changes in price) from pre-transaction announcement to post-transaction completion. My hypothesis is that a negative relationship should exist between changes in a firm’s equity return volatility over time and whether the firm completes a diversifying acquisition, which I define as one in which the target firm primarily operates in a different industry than the acquirer. 980 diversifying …

The Impact Of The Introduction Of Fx Futures On The Volatility Of The Underlying Asian Emerging Market Currencies, Teresa Starzecki

Doctoral Dissertations (DBA)

This paper examines the impact of the introduction of currency futures on the volatility of four Asian emerging market currencies: Chinese yuan, Indian rupee, South Korean won, and Thai baht. A GARCH(1,1) model is implemented to measure volatility in pre- and post- futures introduction periods along with an MCMC procedure to estimate the model and test the significance in changes in volatility between the periods. We find that for three of the four currencies, the persistence and long-run mean of volatility significantly decrease after futures were introduced, while the variance of variance decreases for all four currencies. The results suggest …

Chasing Private Information, Marcin Kacperczyk, Emiliano Sebastian Pagnotta

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using over 5,000 trades unequivocally based on nonpublic information about firm fundamentals, we find that asymmetric information proxies display abnormal values on days with informed trading. Volatility and volume are abnormally high, whereas illiquidity is low, in equity and option markets. Daily returns reflect the sign of private signals, but bid-ask spreads are lower when informed investors trade. Market makers' learning under event uncertainty and limit orders help explain these findings. The cross-section of information duration indicates that traders select days with high uninformed volume. Evidence from the U.S. SEC Whistleblower Reward Program and the FINRA involvement addresses selection concerns.

New Factor Structure Models And Idiosyncratic Volatility, Ossama Elhadary

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I propose new factor structures that are based on the Fama-French style factors but include additional locations like the industry groups and the exchanges where the stocks are traded. I show that the stock returns are clustered around the industry groups and the exchanges. Idiosyncratic volatility calculated using the new factor structure models tend to be smaller than those calculated using the traditional Fama-French model. By sorting portfolios using the idiosyncratic volatility computed using the new factor models, a trader can gain larger profits compared to sorting the portfolio using the traditionally calculated idiosyncratic volatility.

The Introduction Of Bitcoin Futures: An Examination Of Volatility And Potential Spillover Effects, Benjamin M. Blau, Ryan J. Whitby

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

Theory in Stein (1987) suggests that introducing derivative contracts, such as futures, can destabilize underlying asset prices if the contracts attract enough speculative traders. This paper examines how the introduction of Bitcoin futures influences the underlying Bitcoin market. Consistent with Stein (1987), we find that that Bitcoin's volatility increases significantly during the post-introduction period. Perhaps more importantly, however, we observe significant spillover effects into related markets. For instance, in other cryptocurrencies, the increase in volatility in these markets is greater than the post-introduction increase in Bitcoin.

Understanding Volatility: An Analysis Of The Stock Market Return-Variance Correlation, Richard Traub

Honors Scholar Theses

This paper attempts to explain the negative correlation between stock market returns in the United States (measured by the risk premium of the S&P 500 Index) and the respective volatility of these returns. The academic research regarding two primary schools of thought on this issue, the volatility feedback effect and the leverage effect, is furthered as potential explanations for this phenomenon. A tertiary explanation relating to investor behavior is also explored as a viable cause. In order to empirically study this relationship, I examine the risk premium quintiles and the corresponding CBOE Volatility Index levels for the time-series dating from …

Otc Quote Size.Kemerey.Thesis.Pdf, Kemerey Thompson

Kemerey Thompson

Are Cds Auctions The Tail Wagging The Dog? An Empirical Study Of Corporate Bond Return Volatility At The Time Of Default, Jennifer Mace

CMC Senior Theses

Over the past decade, numerous engineered credit events and cases of market participants manipulating bond prices to influence Credit Default Swap (CDS) auction payouts have occurred. These cases have become increasingly common, and the CFTC has stated they may constitute market manipulation and undermine not only the CDS market but also the credit derivative and default markets. Although there is a plethora of news and media coverage on publicized cases, there is no previous empirical research on evidence of these practices. This paper is motivated by the desire to determine if there is indirect evidence of bond price manipulation around …

Quantifying The Announcement Effects In The U.S. Lumber Market, Zarina Mamadalievna Ismailova

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The impact of public reports on price fluctuations has been widely investigated in many commodity markets, but little attention has been paid to the lumber market. In this thesis, we examine the impact of two housing market reports, namely the New Residential Construction (Housing Starts) and the New Residential Sales reports, on the U.S. lumber futures market. Our results suggest that the housing starts report does indeed affect lumber market volatility, while the New Residential sales report exerts a minor impact on lumber price volatility. Price volatility is measured by changes future contract prices for lumber. We further find that …

Essays On The Term Structure Of Volatility And Option Returns, Vincent Campasano

Doctoral Dissertations

The first essay studies the dynamics of equity option implied volatility and shows that they depend both upon the option’s time to maturity (horizon) and slope of the implied volatility term structure for the underlying asset (term struc ture). We propose a simple, illustrative framework which intuitively captures these dynamics. Guided by our framework, we examine a number of volatility trading strategies across horizon, and the extent to which profitability of trading strategies is due to an interaction between term structure and realized volatility. While profitable trading strategies based upon term structure exist for both long and short horizon options, …

Pricing Asian Options: Volatility Forecasting As A Source Of Downside Risk, Adam T. Diehl

Undergraduate Economic Review

Asian options are a class of derivative securities whose payoffs average movements in the underlying asset as a means of hedging exposure to unexpected market behavior. We find that despite their volatility smoothing properties, the price of an Asian option is sensitive to the choice of volatility model employed to price them from market data. We estimate the errors induced by two common schemes of forecasting volatility and their potential impact upon trading.

Australian Dollar Price Shocks And The Australian Stock Market, Ramzi E.N Tarazi

Theses

This thesis presents three studies on the Australian dollar price shocks and the Australian stock market. In this thesis, we study the volatility of the major currencies, identify the effect of the Australian dollar return and volatility on six sectors of the Australian stock market, evaluate volatility from the Australian dollar to the big four banks’ shares volatility in Australia, and finally identify the risk factors for the real estate market in Australia at the fundamental factors and macroeconomies level.

In chapter two, we investigate the influence of volatility of the foreign exchange rate of the US, the UK, Euro-zone, …

Rmb Exchange Rates And Volatility Spillover Across Financial Markets In China And Japan, Fengming Qin, Junru Zhang, Zhaoyong Zhang

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This study examines empirically the volatility spillover effects between the RMB foreign exchange markets and the stock markets by employing daily returns of the Chinese RMB exchange rates and the stock markets in China and Japan during the period in 1998–2018. We find evidence that there exist co-volatility effects among the financial markets in China and Japan, and the volatility of RMB exchange rates contribute to the co-volatility spillovers across the financial markets. Reversely, the return shock from the stock markets can also generate co-volatility spillover to the foreign exchange markets. The bidirectional relationship reveals that both the fundamental hypothesis …