Portfolio and Security Analysis Commons^™

The Additional Burden Of The Bank Security Act On Community Banks In States With Casinos, Danielle Lewis

Southern University College of Business E-Journal

Deeply embedded compliance costs are difficult to account. We modeled non-interest expenses using all U.S. community banks and found the 2001 USA Patriot Act increased the compliance burdens, but particularly for banks with casinos in their state. Changes in policy pertaining to the Bank Secrecy Act include Congress modernizing the BSA provisions because the rules leave excessive room for interpretation and subjectivity across examiners and courts. Additionally, a publication showing the effectiveness of BSA reporting could benefit bankers and help make compliance more cost efficient.

Active Learning With Cybersecurity, Carole Shook

Publications and Presentations

A global campus grant was obtained in Spring 2020 to develop modules for Cybersecurity. This presentation encompasses the use of Cyberciege and case studies that require active learning of students.

Risk-Return Dynamics Using Leveraged Etf Options, Eliza Wampler

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study uses barbell strategies on the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ 100 to explore if funds invested primarily in fixed income assets with a portion of the investment placed in in-the-money call options can participate in upside potential, while also reducing risk. This study examines call options on the underlying indexes as well as their leveraged, 2x and 3x, counterparts. The barbell strategy studied, 88% in fixed income bonds and 12% in call options, does not have a higher return than the underlying index, and adds additional risk. However, a weighted portfolio with combinations of a risk-free asset ...

Can Shorts Predict Returns? A Global Perspective, Ekkehart Boehmer, Zsuzsa R. Huszar, Yanchu Wang, Xiaoyan Zhang, Xinran Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using multiple short-sale measures, we examine the predictive power of short sales for future stock returns in 38 countries from July 2006 to December 2014. We find that the days-to-cover ratio and the utilization ratio measures have the most robust predictive power for future stock returns in the global capital market. Our results display significant cross-country and cross-firm differences in the predictive power of alternative short-sale measures. The predictive power of shorts is stronger in countries with nonprohibitive short sale regulations and for stocks with relatively low liquidity, high shorting fees, and low price efficiency.

Responsible Hedge Funds, Hao Liang, Lin Sun, Song Wee Melvyn Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Hedge funds that endorse the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) underperform other hedge funds after adjusting for risk but attract greater investor flows, accumulate more assets, and harvest greater fee revenues. Consistent with an agency explanation, the underperformance is driven by PRI signatories with low environmental, social, and governance (ESG) exposures and is greater for hedge funds with poor incentive alignment. To address endogeneity, we exploit regulatory reforms that enhance stewardship and show that the ESG exposure and relative performance of signatory funds improve post reforms. Our findings suggest that some hedge funds endorse responsible investment to pander ...

Short Sellers And Insider Trading Profitability: A Natural Experiment, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng, Ting Luo, Heng Yue

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the impact of short sellers on insider trading profitability using a natural experiment of a pilot program which relaxed short-selling constraints for randomly selected pilot stocks. We find that pilot firms experienced a significant decrease in insider trading profitability during the pilot program. The results are more pronounced for the pilot firms with poor information quality, and for the pilot firms without corporate restrictions on insider trading. Our evidence suggests that short sellers serve an important market disciplinary role by reducing insider trading profitability.

Investor Sentiment And Paradigm Shifts In Equity Premium Forecasting, Liya Chu, Kai Li, Tony Xue-Zhong He, Jun Tu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study investigates the impact of investor sentiment on excess equity return forecasting. A high (low) investor sentiment may weaken the connection between fundamental economic (behavioral-based non-fundamental) predictors and market returns. We find that although fundamental variables can be strong predictors when sentiment is low, they tend to lose their predictive power when investor sentiment is high. Non-fundamental predictors perform well during high-sentiment periods while their predictive ability deteriorates when investor sentiment is low. These paradigm shifts in equity return forecasting provide a key to understanding and resolving the lack of predictive power for both fundamental and non-fundamental variables debated ...

The Economic Value Of Blockchain Applications: Early Evidence From Asset-Backed Securities, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng, Ting Luo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In this paper, we evaluate the economic value of a blockchain application. In the context of asset-backed securities (ABS) issuance in China, where some ABS are issued with blockchain technology and others are not, we find that the use of blockchain significantly reduces the coupon yield at issuance. Compared with other ABS, those issued using blockchain technology experience a decrease of 31.4 basis points in the yield spread, which corresponds to a relative decrease of 13%. We further document that the effect of blockchain is more pronounced for ABS deals rated by less reputable credit rating agencies and agencies ...

Non-Gaap Earnings And Stock Price Crash Risk, Charles Hsu, Rencheng Wang, Benjamin C. Whipple

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We investigate whether non-GAAP earnings disclosures increase stock price crash risk. Consistent with non-GAAP disclosures allowing managers to inflate investors' perceptions about firm performance, our results indicate that income increasing non-GAAP reporting increases crash risk. We also find that managers can use non-GAAP reporting as a substitute for earnings management to withhold bad news from investors (the traditional explanation for crashes). Finally, we find a positive association between non-GAAP reporting and the likelihood of subsequent events that can trigger a crash. Overall, our evidence is consistent with some non-GAAP disclosures exposing investors to risks of large and sudden price declines ...

Expected Return, Volume, And Mispricing, Yufeng Han, Dashan Huang, Dayong Huang, Guofu Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We find that expected return is related to trading volume positively among underpriced stocks but negatively among overpriced stocks. As such, trading volume amplifies mispricing. Our results are robust to alternative mispricing and trading volume measures, alternative portfolio formation methods, and controlling for variables that are known to have amplification effects on mispricing. By attributing trading volume to investor disagreement, we show that our results are consistent with the recent theoretical model of Atmaz and Basak (2018) in that investor disagreement predicts stock returns conditional on expectation bias.

High Sex Ratios And Household Portfolio Choice In China, Wenchao Li, Changcheng Song, Shu Xu, Junjian Yi

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper studies how high sex ratios (more men than women) affect household portfolio choice. Using data from a nationally representative Chinese household finance survey, we find that a 1 standard deviation increase in the sex ratio would raise the stock market participation rate by 2.9 percentage points or 52.2 percent for families with a son relative to families with a daughter. Our estimates imply that rising sex ratios explain around 10 percent of the significant growth in China’s stock market size in recent decades.

Race And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We find that minority operated funds deliver higher alphas, Sharpe ratios, and information ratios than do non-minority operated funds. Moreover, minority fund managers attended more selective schools, worked at higher status investment banks, and are more likely to hold post-graduate degrees. Yet, minority managers raise less start-up capital and attract lower investor flows. Racial homophily fuels investors' appetite for non-minority funds. To address endogeneity, we leverage on an event study of minority manager fund transitions and an instrumental variable analysis that exploits racial imprinting during childhood. The results suggest that minorities face significant barriers to entry in the hedge fund ...

The Cryptic Nature Of Crypto Digital Assets Regulations: The Ripple Lawsuit And Why The Industry Needs Regulatory Clarity, Jacqueline Hennelly

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

The tension and associated time lag between technology and regulation has been well documented. Paradigmatic of this phenomenon is the global evolution of blockchain technology and digital assets. Digital assets in the blockchain allow users to transact directly without financial intermediaries. However, the regulatory guidelines for the assets, their issuance, and the subsequent transactions are unclear. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed an action to apply its existing regulations and the judicial interpretations to Ripple’s issuance of XRP, its token, and Ripple’s control over subsequent user transactions of XRP. This Note uses SEC v. Ripple as ...

Goodbye Buybacks? Why Recent Stock Buyback Reform Proposals Go Beyond What Is Necessary, Joshua Zelen

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

This note provides an overview of the intensifying debate around the impact that stock buybacks have on economic inequality and the proposals designed to reform the practice. With the advent of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) 1982 promulgation of Rule 10b-18, corporations began allocating vast portions of their profits to stock buybacks. In recent years, this practice has become increasingly more common and has surpassed previous historical benchmarks.

Critics of stock buybacks primarily view the practice as a misuse of excess corporate funds that could instead be allocated to improve employee working conditions, benefits, and future outcomes. Opponent ...

Misvaluing Effective Investors In Intangible Capital, Dustin Lind

CMC Senior Theses

Cohen et al. (2013) measure a firm’s ability at investing in knowledge capital, a type of intangible capital, through a model that captures how well a firm translates R&D intensity into future sales growth. Using this model, they show that an investment portfolio comprised of firms that have high R&D spending ability and high R&D intensity earn significant positive abnormal returns. I modify their model to capture a broader investment in intangible capital by replacing R&D intensity with SG&A intensity and substituting sales growth with gross profit growth. My measure of ability at investing ...

Modeling The Impact Of Adding Cryptocurrency In A Portfolio, Ashley Pineault

Honors Theses and Capstones

This study examines the backgrounds of Bitcoin and Ethereum. How they came about, where they differ from one another in functions, and what investors believe will be a better cryptocurrency stock as an investment to include in an optimized portfolio. It will also study the impact of adding two leading cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum, into a hypothetical, optimal investment portfolio. Data collection includes the adjusted closing price of 30 diversified stocks from 2016 to 2021. Those adjusted closing prices are the beginning of determining the optimal portfolio for three separate portfolios. One has the Ethereum cryptocurrencies, the other has Bitcoin ...

A Model For Public Market Impact Investing: Measuring Corporate Esg Intentionality, Zachary M. Vlessing

Wharton Research Scholars

The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) lists intentionality as one of its four core characteristics of impact investing. It defines intentionality as an impact investor “intentional desire to contribute to measurable social or environmental benefit”.[1] Most importantly, it uses this core attribute of intentionality to differentiate true impact investing from ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) investing strategies which it says only incorporates “impact considerations”.

This research paper rebuts the assertion that impact intentionality and ESG are mutually exclusive and proposes a solution for impact investing using ESG data. By surfacing companies who have shown dramatic improvement in their cumulative ESG ...

Conditional Relationship Between Distress Risk And Stock Returns, Su Hee Yun, Jung Min Kim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Purpose: Previous research on the relationship between a firm’s distress risk and future stock returns produces inconsistent results. This study attempts to explain the conflicting results of earlier studies by showing that systematic distress risk leads to positive rewards, while unsystematic distress risk leads to low stock returns. In addition, this study intends to elucidate the factors of systematic distress risk and unsystematic distress risk, respectively. In this way, this study informs the rational investor what kind of distress risk they should take. Design/methodology/approach: This study considers two distress-predictor sets to show a possibility between distress risk ...

Gold Vs. Psx Sectors During Political Uncertainties: An Event Study Analysis, Hafsa Rasheed, Habib Ahmad, Attiya Yasmin Javid

Business Review

Amplified uncertainties in economic, financial, and political environments across nations have created a dire need to search for safe investment options that could mitigate the losses faced by investors due to such uncertainties. So researchers and investment managers have started investigating alternative investment options like real assets, to cope with such risks. Pakistani investors require such investigations more critically because Pakistan is among one of the most politically unstable economies. Previous researches have widely reported gold to be a hedge and safe haven during various economic downturns, therefore, the current study investigates whether gold could also diversify the risk of ...

Do Managers Learn From Analyst Participation In Conference Calls?, Amanda Aw Zhi Xin Yong, Young Jun Cho, Holly I. Yang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

While research finds that conference calls are informative to the market and analysts, they can also be informative to managers as analysts’ questions can provide a feedback effect. Using a sample of conference call transcripts from 2002 to 2018, we find that greater analyst participation, as measured by the number of words spoken by analysts relative to the number of words spoken by managers during conference calls, is associated with higher accuracy in managers’ subsequent earnings forecasts. Cross-sectional tests show that this positive association is more pronounced when managers use more uncertain words in conference calls, when analysts use a ...