Business Commons^™

The Interaction Between Spending Policies And Asset Allocation For College And University Endowment, Ryan Erickson

Honors Projects in Finance

The analysis revealed better combinations of asset allocation and spending policy for college and university endowments that efficiently balance the desirable outcomes of stable spending in real terms against maintaining the purchasing power of the endowment over time (intergenerational equity). Using the variability and correlation of historical asset class returns, we created a forward-looking, projection-based, multivariate Monte Carlo simulation of individual asset class returns. The simulation incorporates the relationships between inflation and asset class returns, and the relationships among asset class returns. The projected time series of asset class returns produced a time series of endowment portfolio returns given an …

Special Needs Financial Planning Case Studies: Evaluation Of Three Financial Services Business Models' Approaches To Client Needs, Thomas Williams

Honors Projects in Finance

Special needs financial planning is the process and organization of a financial plan for a family with a child or children with a disability. A key aspect of special needs financial planning is planning for the life of a child with a disability after the death of their parents. Failing to conduct financial planning for such a family could leave the child with a disability relying on state-provided services with a poor quality of life. The following research outlines how four business models will approach a family with a special needs dependent. The four business models are a Registered Investment …

A Review Of The Effect Of Esg On "Sin" Firms, William Stearns

Honors Projects in Finance

In this study, we examine the impact of ESG on stock returns and portfolio returns for sin stocks. The relationship between ESG and stock prices has been a topic of interest for research in recent years with the increasing emphasis on ESG in society. The present study analyzes the ESG scores for nine specific sin stock industries: tobacco, gambling, alcohol, adult entertainment, firearm, military, nuclear power, bioengineering, and oil and gas. This study is conducted through the use of statistical analysis with data collected from COMPUSTAT, CRSP, and MSCI. Our results reveal that ESG is negatively correlated with sin firm …

The Impact Of Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion In The Fashion Industry, Hannah Dreska

Honors Projects in Finance

This research study is an examination of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the marketing and infrastructure of companies within the commercial fashion industry. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, this paper examines the purchasing preferences and behaviors of young adults and whether their opinions on diversity and inclusivity impact it. Second, this paper examines the financial impact of companies that adopted an inclusive and diverse approach to their marketing strategies and company infrastructure. I hypothesize that inclusivity and diversity are qualities highly valued by consumers and would thus have a positive financial impact on companies that focus on …

Effectively Influencing Personal Financial Management And Financial Preparedness Among Athletes, Darnel Shillingford

Honors Projects in Finance

Professional athletes live the dream of millions of people when they sign their first contract to be paid to play sports. For many athletes, they are coming into money that many have never seen before. Handling this money can prove difficult for athletes from a personal finance standpoint, and it is imperative for them to utilize the support systems around them. However, the support systems need to be readily available to the athlete for there to be a significant impact on the budgeting and investing practices of the athlete. Empowering an athlete to take full advantage of their time in …

Young Adults And Money: The Covid-19 Pandemic, Michael Mariano

Honors Projects in Finance

This study looks to explore the relationship between the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy and young investors. More specifically, this research looks to answer the question: how have young adults, ages 18-25, responded to the economic distress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic with their investing decisions? Through analyzing a sample of young adults, ages 18-25, this study will develop a deeper and broader perspective on the unique impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the investing decisions of young adults. Using a mix of literary studies on similar historical events and a sample study of young …

Environmental, Social, And Governance Factors Within Investing: Impact On The Financial Performance Of The Energy Sector, Ryan Donahue

Honors Projects in Finance

An emerging social pressure of being environmentally and socially responsible has been an increasingly popular concept through the past decades. Socially responsible investing (SRI), or environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing is an investment strategy which aims to flood publicly trading companies with capital who operate according to specific morals and standards. Studies has proven investors who factor ESG into their portfolio strategies often see greater return, as firms are able to create more long-term value. The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of ESG activity and ratings on the financial performance of firms in the energy …

Rise Of Passive Investing: Impacts On Equity Market Functionality, Ryan Donovan

Honors Projects in Finance

Most investments into equity markets can be categorized into two general strategies: active investments and passive investments. These strategies impact equity markets in different ways. Over the past few decades, market participants have witnessed a radical shift from active management to passive management. This paper reviews how this shift impacts market dynamics generally, and liquidity and comovement effects, in particular. Robust statistical analysis of total passive domestic equity assets under management (AUM), individual security, and market index data demonstrates that dramatic increases in passive investment flows correlates with decreased broad market liquidity and increased security-index comovement for securities in the …

The Impact Of Female Leadership On Lgbtq-Supportive Policies, Samantha Bove

Honors Projects in Finance

In the past two decades, gender inequality in c-suites has received a large amount of attention. Thus, the number of women in top management roles has increased substantially. However, the corporate sector has also neglected other marginalized groups, specifically, members of the LGBTQ community. These individuals are important employees and previous literature has established the benefits, both financial and otherwise, that the presence of LGBTQ supportive policies have on American corporations. In this paper, I examine if the presence of women CEOs influences the LGBTQ policies that are implemented in that firm. This will be analyzed using an OLS regression …

Anatomy Of The Short Squeeze: Using Technical And Statistical Analysis To Forecast Price Volatility, Gianni Demerski

Honors Projects in Finance

A short squeeze is a phenomenon in the stock market that occurs when the price of a security surges drastically higher over a short period of time. The main known cause of a short squeeze is due to short sellers aggressively covering their positions creating a short-term artificial increase in the demand for a given stock. The purpose of the present study is to determine whether the stock return volatility of a short squeeze can be forecasted using variables such as trade volume, price patterns, short interest, market capitalization, and a stock’s outstanding shares. The study attempts to determine which …

Understanding Real Estate Market Dynamics: The Covid-19 Effect, Faith Winslow

Honors Projects in Finance

The covid-19 pandemic has led to significant shifts in consumer trends, including in the real estate market. Through multivariable regression, this study investigates how covid-19 has impacted the demand as well as pricing for houses in the United States. The findings contribute to the literature in a few major ways. First, they provide a current look at the impact of covid-19 on the housing market by analyzing monthly, state-level data from before and during the pandemic. Secondly, they provide clarity and supplement journals and research currently in the works. This is the first national study that looks at the effect …

Inditex's Esg Performance In A Global Financial Market, Sara Habig

Honors Projects in Finance

Zara has become extremely popular as a global fashion enterprise and remains significantly profitable in the fashion industry. With a leading supply chain operation strategy, they have been a leading retailer for many decades. This empirical research study involves research and assessment of Inditex's ESG performance and evaluations based on ASSET4 data source's evaluations, using the Stata software. Results show that Inditex remains a strong competitor in the fast fashion industry when compared to its rivals within 4 different categorical markets: all sample firms in Spain, all global retailers, and all sample firms separated by continent. Inditex consistently outperformed their …

Student Loans And Their Effects On Postgraduate Life, Joseph Bartucca

Honors Projects in Finance

College tuition has been steadily increasing in America throughout the past two decades as demand for a higher education has continued to rise. A college education is invaluable and is inevitably essential in obtaining a successful career. As a result, more and more students have been depending on student loans to finance their way through college. The average college student loan debt has reached about $30,000 per student upon graduation nowadays. Because of these skyrocketing debt amounts, several life goals and aspirations have been impacted, including future employment, further enrollment, family formation, homeownership, and net worth. The objective of this …

Non-Traditional Alternative Investments, Michael Alfieri

Honors Projects in Finance

This paper investigates the feasibility of non-traditional alternative investments in portfolios. Non-traditional alternative investments are defined by this paper as collectibles, such as classic cars, art, and wine. Some of these assets have been around for decades and are increasingly becoming more available to investors. This asset class is grouped with assets that are not easily tradable like traditional equities and bonds and do not generate cash flows. This makes valuing the intrinsic value of collectibles difficult. However, academic research has shown that non-traditional alternative investments do have a track record worth investing in. Parts of the market are becoming …

The True Cost Of College: The Impact Of Student Loan Debt On Academic Performance, Marykate Marshall

Honors Projects in Finance

The cost of college has increased disproportionately compared to wages over the last several decades and as a result, student debt has become more prominent. This study aims to identify and examine the relationship between student loan debt and academic performance. Using an online survey, Bryant Alumni and current juniors and seniors were asked questions pertaining to cumulative GPA at graduation, their financial stress level, demographics, student information, personal finances (including family background), and further education. GPA serves as the dependent variable and factors such as gender, race/ethnicity, the amount of debt, and siblings served as independent variables. The results …

Millennials' Retirement Struggle: The Interaction Between Student Loans, Financial Decisions, And Financial Literacy., Rebecca Michaud

Honors Projects in Finance

As millennials grow older and begin their careers in the workforce, saving for retirement begins to become an important part of spending. This paper analyzes a variety of factors and challenges that impact an individual’s retirement savings. This thesis ultimately looks to determine whether the driving force for the general inadequacy of retirement savings is student loan debt, financial decision making, or both. Through both research and survey responses, this thesis will also look at whether a public policy that removes a certain percentage of student loan repayment obligations will have any impact on the amount that young workers are …

Using Macroeconomic Variables To Preserve The Predictive Power Of Bankruptcy Prediction Models Across Time, Edward Golas

Honors Projects in Finance

At its core, bankruptcy prediction is a binary classification problem where a researcher attempts to model a company’s financial status, defined as either bankrupt or non-bankrupt, based upon a slew of financial ratios, market indicators and even macroeconomic variables. Several studies (Altman and McGrough, 1974; Moyer, 1977 and Mensah, 1984) have noted that such models tend to suffer reduced accuracy when predicting bankruptcy for time periods other than the one in which they were trained. A possible solution to this problem is to include macroeconomic variables in the model, since such variables fluctuate over time and are suspected of impacting …

How Does The Capability Of Top Management Influence Financial Reporting Fraud?, Michael Wojcikiewicz

Honors Projects in Finance

This study examines the attributes which capture the capability of a perpetrator to engage in financial reporting fraud. Fraudulent financial reporting can be devastating for a company and its employees. Capability includes such measures as the person’s position and the function in which they work. The study reveals how capability influences the occurrence of fraud, the amount of the fraud, and whether capability interacts with concealing the fraud from an audit. The results of the thesis should assist fraud professionals, investors, and regulators as well as stakeholders of corporations by examining publicly available data and highlighting characteristics that can contribute …

A Stochastic Approach To Portfolio Optimization Using Competing Risk Metrics, Juan Gonzalez

Honors Projects in Finance

This thesis presentation presents a stochastic approach to portfolio construction using various risk metrics as underlying models for portfolio optimization. The risk models utilized in this thesis include Mean-Variance, Minimum-Variance, Value-at-Risk (VaR), Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR). To evaluate the efficiency and overall performance of these models, historical data for 30 specific stocks was selected. The stock selection process focused on the selecting stocks that are highly volatile and correlated with one another. Empirical results reveal that portfolio optimization strategies outperform the benchmark. Additionally, results showed that the Minimum-Variance model constructed the best portfolio for the predetermined backtesting time period.

The Influence Of News Sentiment On Common Asset Pricing Models, Liam Mahler

Honors Projects in Finance

This paper aims to explore the influence of daily news article sentiment as a predictor of the returns on an investment. A daily sentiment score is developed and it is used to augment five commonly researched models, CAPM, Fama & French Three Factor, Carhart Four Factor, Fama & French Five Factor, and Fama & French Five Factor with Momentum. This study looks at six different securities over a five-year period. Along with this, two different variations of the factor are looked at, one of which is a simple factor that scores days without an article as zero and another that …

Education Pays Off For Nfl Retirees: A Study Of The Impact That An Nfl Retiree’S Educational Background Has On Their Post-Retirement Financial Success, Andrew Gibbs

Honors Projects in Finance

With a large frequency of professional sports retirees going broke, this study aims to uncover potential causes which may increase the risk of bankruptcy in retirees. Previous studies in the field have analyzed demographic, background, and playing career characteristics that may lead to a higher risk of bankruptcy among retirees in various professional sports leagues. This study analyzes factors pertaining to a player’s educational/collegiate background to determine whether these factors may lead to an increased risk of bankruptcy among NFL retirees. Data was collected on a sample of 80 NFL retirees, who retired between the years of 1971 and 2015. …

Can Students Studying Abroad Use Forward Exchange Rates As A Tool For Better Budgeting Their Semesters?, Emalee Dunbar

Honors Projects in Finance

Traveling abroad requires an immense amount of planning and attention to detail. Budgeting is a difficult task in one’s own country, but when planning across borders, that task becomes even greater. Differences in exchange rates and buying power have the potential to adversely affect the budget set ahead of time, placing more stress on the traveler. Financial tools available in the foreign exchange market, if used strategically, may provide a reliable method to budgeting travel abroad as accurately as possible. There are many individuals, students especially, that plan on traveling or studying abroad yet are on tight budgets. Having a …

Can Tweets Predict Intraday Stock Price Movements?, Diwas Puri

Honors Projects in Finance

Twitter is a microblogging platform where over 320 million people post about things that matter to them in less than 140 characters. People post about their happiness, sadness, pride, disappointments, love, hate, expectations and other feelings. Nowadays, a popular trend has come up in which data from Twitter, can be gathered and analyzed in real time to see how people react to a particular situation including changes in stock markets. This research focuses on looking into the relationship, if any, between public mood from Twitter and the stock market returns by analyzing the Tweets about four major companies in consumer …

Ex-Dividend Price Behavior In Spanish Speaking Markets: Do Stocks Behave Differently In Spain, Mexico, And Chile?, Kayla E. Nikosey

Honors Projects in Finance

The main focus of this thesis is to analyze the behavior of stock price on ex-dividend day of ADRs in Spain, Mexico, and Chile. Announcement date, and ex-dividend date for each ADR is collected to be analyzed against the other ADRs. One would expect different behaviors in the different markets because of different tax treatments in Chile, Mexico, and Spain. Traditional event testing is being used to analyze the stock price behavior on and around ex-dividend days. The event test measures the impact of regulatory events and allows for abnormal changes in stock prices that occur in conjunction with dividend …

International Currency Correlation, Thomas Griffin

Honors Projects in Finance

The purpose of this project is to examine the effects that one country’s currency can have on another countries currency. Currency is one of the key determinants of how a country’s economy is performing compared to the rest of the world. Some currencies have a negative or positive correlation with other currencies around the world. This data will help investors determine what they can expect to happen to a countries currency when there is a fluctuation in another currency. Certain industry practices where this information will be useful include the hedge fund industry and other global companies. This will be …

The Discreet Trader, Seth Wing

Honors Projects in Finance

This paper examines insider trading, specifically trades by corporate insiders around quarterly earnings announcements. Announcements were broken up into three categories: earnings above analyst expectations, earnings below expectations, and earnings in line with expectations. Trade data was collected from the thirty companies of the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 2012-’13. The trades were sorted by purchases and sales by date and analyzed with the earnings report of which the trades were made. Only trades in the interval from twenty days before the announcement date to twenty days after the announcement date were considered. The prediction was that corporate insiders would …

Valuing “Green” How “Going Green” Affects A Company’S Stock Price, Alexia Bayer

Honors Projects in Finance

Environmentally conscious decision making has become a prominent topic in business that has the potential to affect the public opinion and performance of companies. This project seeks to identify whether or not positive changes in excess return might offer an incentive for companies to adopt green initiatives. It examines the ways in which companies’ green initiatives, as measured by their annual Carbon Disclosure Project S&P 500 Climate Change Report score, impact their stock price. In other words, is there value in “going green”? It is hypothesized that companies exhibiting greater variance in their environmental initiatives from one year to the …

The Impact Of European Elections On Their Stock Markets, Andrew Lafortune

Honors Projects in Finance

This paper seeks to provide insight on changes in the European political landscape and how these changes may affect the financial markets in Europe. By analyzing market trends in eight different European countries—Belgium, Austria, France, Germany, Netherlands, Great Britain, Switzerland and Greece—since 1990, this paper attempts to identify any significant relationships between the results of an election and the performances of the major stock indices of these countries. By comparing country index returns starting one hundred days before and ending one hundred days after each election date to a global index, this paper explores the amount of risk in each …

The Impact Of New Product Announcements On Quick Service Restaurant Companies’ Stock Returns, Tim Drechsler-Martell

Honors Projects in Finance

This study seeks to answer two main questions: 1) Do product announcements impact quick service restaurant stock returns? 2) Do economic conditions impact the degree which product announcements impact quick service restaurant stock returns? 159 total product announcements were collected for 6 quick service companies: McDonald’s Corp., YUM! Brands Inc., The Wendy’s Co., AFC Enterprises Inc., Jack in the Box Inc., and Sonic Corp. 84 of these announcements were from 2005-2007 (Labeled “Pre-Recession”), and 75 were from 2009-2011 (Labeled “Post-Recession”). Using historical stock price data, an analysis of the overall trends of the mean-adjusted excess returns was conducted to determine …

Relationship Between Interest Rate And Bank Common Stock Return: Evidence From The Top 10 United States Banks And Financial Sector Index, Hieu Trung Tran

Honors Projects in Finance

This research paper investigates the effect of changes in long-term interest rates on the returns of the top 10 US banks included in the Financial Sector Index. There are three main parts of this paper.

The first part uses the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test to test the “Random Walk” of banks’ common stock returns. Based on the test’s results, returns of banks’ common stock do not solely follow the “Random Walk”.

In the second part, the Two-Factor Arbitrage Pricing Theory is employed to test the effect of changes in long-term interest rate on the return of banks’ common stocks. The …