Portfolio and Security Analysis Commons^™

The Flash Crash: A Cautionary Tale About Highly Fragmented Markets, Albert J. Menkveld, Bart Zhou Yueshen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

A breakdown of cross-market arbitrage activity could make markets more fragile and result in price crashes. We provide suggestive evidence for this novel channel based on a high-frequency analysis of the most salient crash in recent history: The Flash Crash. We further show that such an event can be extremely costly for a large seller trading in a particular venue as the seller effectively relies on local liquidity supply only. These findings highlight the vulnerability of today's highly fragmented markets.

How Do Interest Rates Affect Market Capitalization Growth Rates In The Us?, Philip Carolin

Undergraduate Economic Review

This paper investigates how interest rates affect the market capitalization growth rate of individual companies in the US. The research will distinguish itself from previous literature as it analyzes company and macroeconomic data after the 2008 recession. This is particularly interesting as interest rates have been historically low in this time period. Previous research suggests that since the Great Recession the effects of interest rate changes have decreased. On the contrary I will argue that the effects of interest rates still appear to be significant and substantial when explaining the market capitalization growth rate.

Fixed Income Fund Report, September 2019, Bryant University, Archway Investment Fund

Archway Investment Fund

No abstract provided.

Text Sophistication And Sophisticated Investors, Juha Joenvaara, Jari Karppinen, Song Wee Melvyn Teo, Cristian Ioan Tiu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We show that two novel measures of text sophistication, applied to hedge fund strategy descriptions, encapsulate incremental information about funds. Consistent with the linguistics literature, hedge funds with lexically diverse strategy descriptions outperform, eschew tail risk, and encounter fewer regulatory problems. In line with the literature, hedge funds with syntactically complex strategy descriptions report more regulatory violations and trigger more severe infractions. Fund investors recognize the dichotomy and direct flows accordingly, but not enough to erode away the alphas of lexically diverse funds. Our findings suggest that text sophistication measures provide texture on the cognitive ability and trustworthiness of sophisticated …

The Information Content Of Sudden Insider Silence, Claire Yurong Hong, Frank Weikai Li

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We present evidence of investors underreacting to the absence of events in financialmarkets. Routine-based insiders strategically choose to be silent when they possessprivate information not yet reflected in stock prices. Consistent with our hypothesis,insider silence following routine sell (buy) predict positive (negative) future return aswell as fundamentals. The return predictability of insider silence is stronger amongfirms with poor information environment and facing higher arbitrage costs, and alarge fraction of abnormal returns concentrates on future earnings announcements. Along-short strategy that exploits insiders’ strategic silence behavior generates abnormalreturns of 6% to 10% annually

Swaption Portfolio Risk Management: Optimal Model Selection In Different Interest Rate Regimes, Poh Ling Neo, Chyng Wen Tee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We formulate a risk-based swaption portfolio management framework for profit-and-loss (P&L) explanation. We analyze the implication of using the right volatility backbone in the pricing model from a hedging perspective, and demonstrate the importance of incorporating stability and robustness measure as part of the calibration process for optimal model selection. We also derive a displaced-diffusion stochastic volatility (DDSV) model with a closed-form analytical expression to handle negative interest rates. Finally, we show that our framework is able to identify the optimal pricing model, which leads to superior P&L explanation and hedging performance.

Lifeguard: "Providing Safety In An Unsafe World", Lincoln Bent, Morgan Gafford, Will Ransdell

Governor's Scholars Program Poster Presentations

A poster presented by Lincoln Bent, Morgan Gafford and Will Ransdell for the class Business, Accounting and Entrepreneurship: Proposed Business Plans.

International Welfare Spillovers Of National Pension Schemes, James Staveley-O'Carroll, Olena Staveley-O'Carroll

Economics Department Working Papers

We employ a two-country overlapping-generations model to explore the international dimension of household portfolio choices induced by the asymmetric provision of government-run pensions. We study the resulting patterns of risk-sharing and the corresponding welfare effects on both home and foreign agents. Introducing the defined benefits pay-as-you-go system at home increases the welfare of all other agents at the expense of the home workers and improves the degree of intergenerational risk sharing abroad. Conversely, a defined contributions system leads to welfare losses of both home cohorts accompanied by gains abroad, but does increase the extent of intergenerational risk sharing at home.

Momentum And Reversal: The Role Of Short Selling, Zhaobo Zhu, Xinrui Duan, Licheng Sun, Jun Tu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper investigates the relation between short selling and momentum. We document that a consistent momentum strategy that buys lightly shorted winners and sells heavily shorted losers exhibits strong short-term momentum and no long-term reversal. In contrast, an inconsistent momentum strategy that buys heavily shorted winners and sells lightly shorted losers experiences weak short-term momentum and persistent long-term reversal. Our results are robust after controlling for firm characteristics, proxy for short-sale constraints, and investor sentiment, as well as an exogenous shock (the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997). These findings present a new challenge to existing theories of momentum that rely …

Equity Fund Monthly Report, June 2019, Bryant University, Archway Investment Fund

Archway Investment Fund

No abstract provided.

Fixed Income Fund Report, June 2019, Bryant University, Archway Investment Fund

Archway Investment Fund

No abstract provided.

Are Bond Ratings Informative? Evidence From Regulatory Regime Changes, Louis H. Ederington, Jeremy C. Goh, Yen Teik Lee, Lisa Zongfei Yang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The Dodd–Frank Act (Section 939B) enacted in 2010 repealed the exemption of credit rating agencies (CRAs) from Regulation Fair Disclosure. Testing whether CRAs continue to provide new information to the market after the repeal, the authors find that the significant prerepeal stock price responses to rating changes disappear after the regime change. Bond price reactions, however, remain significant. These results are even more significant at the investment–speculative boundary. Evidence suggests that CRAs served as a conduit for transmitting private information before the repeal and that the continued bond price reactions are likely due to regulations favoring higher-rated bonds.

Volatility Interruptions, Idiosyncratic Risk, And Stock Return, Saad A. Alsunbul

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this paper is to examine the impact of implementing the static and dynamic volatility interruption rule on idiosyncratic volatility and stock returns in Nasdaq Stockholm. Using EGARCH and GARCH models to estimate the conditional idiosyncratic volatility, we find that the conditional idiosyncratic volatility and stock returns increase as stock prices hit the upper static or dynamic volatility interruption limits. Conversely, we find that the conditional idiosyncratic volatility and stock returns decrease as stock prices hit the lower static or dynamic volatility interruption limit. We also find that the conditional idiosyncratic volatility is higher when stock prices reach …

Predictive Distributions Via Filtered Historical Simulation For Financial Risk Management, Tyson Clark

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

Filtered historical simulation with an underlying GARCH process can be used as a valuable tool in VaR analysis, as it derives risk estimates that are sensitive to the distributional properties of the historical data of the produced predictive density. I examine the applications to risk analysis that filtered historical simulation can provide, as well as an interpretation of the predictive density as a poor man’s Bayesian posterior distribution. The predictive density allows us to make associated probabilistic statements regarding the results for VaR analysis, giving greater measurement of risk and the ability to maintain the optimal level of risk per …

Leverage Adjustment And Credit Risk, Wei He

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three coherent chapters that discuss the capital structure target, speed of adjustment and effect of speed of adjustment on credit risk.

Ⅰ: We standardize leverage ratio by underlying business risk. The methodology of standardization follows the assumption that asset value follows a geometric Brownian motion. We find that by standardizing book leverage ratio, standardized leverage ratio can be explained by firm characteristics with a much larger coefficient of determination compared with book leverage ratio. The coefficient of determination difference of regression with standardized leverage ratio and book leverage ratio becomes even larger if we exclude zero …

Analysis Of S&P 500 Sector Etfs, John Haire

Honors Theses

Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are a diversified pool of assets that trade on an exchange and track an index. Tracking error is the difference between a portfolio's returns and the benchmark or index it was meant to mimic. Investors want the Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) to track the benchmark very closely or have the tracking error as low as possible. This paper looks at the tracking errors of different S&P sector ETFs by using the average absolute differences in monthly returns between the ETF and its benchmark index. The results indicate that the Technology and Real Estate sectors have the …

The Impact Of Immigration On Financial Markets, Jesse Baker

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

This paper studies the impact of immigration policy on financial markets. I estimate the cumulative abnormal returns surrounding two events the effective start date of the Immigration Act of 1990 and the implementation of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of Nicaragua and Honduras in 1999. Focusing on agriculture, construction, and manufacturing firms, I find that the CARs surrounding the events are indeed positive and significant, suggesting that the market anticipated growth among industries that are likely to hire Central American immigrants.

The Cross Section Of Expected Returns: Evidence From Implied Beliefs Of Active Mutual Funds Managers, Jorge Sabat

Doctor of Business Administration Dissertations

I develop a new test to compare the performance of asset pricing models. Using the industry allocations of active US mutual funds, I employ a structural model to estimate the implied expected returns on industry portfolios. For each asset pricing model, I use the factor loadings and the implied expected returns to calculate the implied expected factor risk premium. I compare the models based on the implied Sharpe ratio of the market portfolio. My methodology identifies the asset pricing model that not only generates the highest Sharpe ratio for the market but also best tracks the ex-ante Sharpe ratio. I …

The Ursinus College Investment Management Company Newsletter, Spring 2019, Scott Deacle, Isaac Abrams, Paul Cottam, Elvi Sopiqoti, Wilbert Diaz, Johnny Myers

Investment Management Company Newsletter

Inside this Issue:

What's New?

Brief History of Ursinus

What Our Newest Students are Saying

What are "They" Saying?

Vanguard Field Trip

2019 Fund Performance

Looking Forward

Fundraising & Gallery

Equity Fund Monthly Report, April 2019, Bryant University, Archway Investment Fund

Archway Investment Fund

No abstract provided.