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Full-Text Articles in Business

Sensation Seeking And Hedge Funds, Stephen Brown, Yan Lu, Sugata Ray, Song Wee Melvyn Teo Dec 2018

Sensation Seeking And Hedge Funds, Stephen Brown, Yan Lu, Sugata Ray, Song Wee Melvyn Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We show that motivated by sensation seeking, hedge fund managers who own powerful sports cars take on more investment risk but do not deliver higher returns, resulting in lower Sharpe ratios, information ratios, and alphas. Moreover, sensation-seeking managers trade more frequently, actively, and unconventionally, and prefer lottery-like stocks. We show further that some investors are themselves susceptible to sensation seeking and that sensation-seeking investors fuel the demand for sensation-seeking managers. While investors perceive sensation seekers to be less competent, they do not fully appreciate the superior investment skills of sensation-avoiding fund managers.


Robo-Advisors And Wealth Management, Kok Fai Phoon, Cher Chiew Francis Koh Dec 2018

Robo-Advisors And Wealth Management, Kok Fai Phoon, Cher Chiew Francis Koh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The recent rise of robo-advisors (RAs) has threatened the traditional fund and wealth management industry. RAs' assets under management (AUM) have risen manyfold through competitiveness on pricing, transparency and services and better expected returns linked to the use of quantitative finance and technology with less subjective human intervention. This article examines the postulation that RAs have an edge over traditional wealth managers. RAs can combine the judgement and computing resources of both human and machine, or bionic power, to provide alternative wealth management services to meet the diverse needs of private wealth clients. However, the authors expect traditional wealth managers …


Commodity Return Predictability: Evidence From Implied Variance, Skewness And Their Risk Premia, Marinela Adriana Finta, Jose Renato Haas Ornelas Dec 2018

Commodity Return Predictability: Evidence From Implied Variance, Skewness And Their Risk Premia, Marinela Adriana Finta, Jose Renato Haas Ornelas

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper investigates the role of realized and implied and their risk premia (variance and skewness) for commodities’ future returns. We estimate these moments from high frequency and commodity futures option data that results in forward-looking measures. Risk premia are computed as the difference between implied and realized moments. We highlight, from a cross-sectional and time series perspective, the strong positive relation between commodity returns and implied skewness. Moreover, we emphasize the high performance of skewness risk premium. Additionally, we show that their portfolios exhibit the best risk-return tradeoff. Most of our results are robust to other factors such as …


Assessing The Effects Of Post-Crisis Regulatory Reforms On Liquidity In The Singapore Government Securities And Mas Bills Market, John M. Sequeira Nov 2018

Assessing The Effects Of Post-Crisis Regulatory Reforms On Liquidity In The Singapore Government Securities And Mas Bills Market, John M. Sequeira

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The FSB initiated in 2017 an evaluation of the effects of post-crisis regulatory reforms, by developing a framework to assess whether the reforms are achieving their intended outcomes and identify any material unintended consequences. In tandem, MAS established an evaluation framework, which covers four broad impact areas, comprising FIs, financial markets, financial end-users and the broader financial landscape. Internationally, there have been particular concerns over whether post-crisis reforms may have impaired liquidity conditions in specific financial markets. We provide an assessment of the effects of the reforms on liquidity in a key market in Singapore, the SGS and MAS bills …


Identifying Ineffective Monitors From Securities Class Action Lawsuits, Chi Shen Wei, Lei Zhang Oct 2018

Identifying Ineffective Monitors From Securities Class Action Lawsuits, Chi Shen Wei, Lei Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We identify “ineffective” institutional monitors based on the prevalence of occurrences of securities class-action lawsuits in their overall portfolio. We find that firms with a higher representation of such institutional investors among the firms’ large shareholders have a greater likelihood of future litigation and experience more negative market reactions upon such litigation filings. These firms exhibit other unfavorable governance outcomes including poorer acquisitions and lower CEO turnover-performance sensitivity. We find suggestive evidence that ineffective monitoring may be a result of higher operational risk.


Monitoring From Afar: Do Foreign Institutional Investors Deter Insider Trading?, Claire Yurong Hong, Frank Weikai Li, Qifei Zhu Sep 2018

Monitoring From Afar: Do Foreign Institutional Investors Deter Insider Trading?, Claire Yurong Hong, Frank Weikai Li, Qifei Zhu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines the disciplinary effect of foreign institutional investors on opportunistic insider trading. Using a novel global insider trading data set containing 35,557 firms from 26 countries over the period 2000-2015, we find that greater foreign institutional ownership significantly reduces the profitability of insider trading, above and beyond the effect of domestic institutional ownership. Using the exogenous variation in foreign institutional ownership induced by MSCI index inclusion, we show that the effect is causal. The impact of foreign investors is stronger in countries with weak insider trading regulations and poor institutional environments, and operates mainly through the monitoring channel, …


Monitoring From Afar: Do Foreign Institutional Investors Deter Insider Trading?, Claire Yurong Hong, Frank Weikai Li, Qifei Zhu Sep 2018

Monitoring From Afar: Do Foreign Institutional Investors Deter Insider Trading?, Claire Yurong Hong, Frank Weikai Li, Qifei Zhu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines the disciplinary effect of foreign institutional investors on opportunistic insider trading. Using a novel global insider trading data set containing 35,557 firms from 26 countries over the period 2000-2015, we find that greater foreign institutional ownership significantly reduces the profitability of insider trading, above and beyond the effect of domestic institutional ownership. Using the exogenous variation in foreign institutional ownership induced by MSCI index inclusion, we show that the effect is causal. The impact of foreign investors is stronger in countries with weak insider trading regulations and poor institutional environments, and operates mainly through the monitoring channel, …


Is Sell-Side Research More Valuable In Bad Times?, Roger Loh, René M. Stulz Jun 2018

Is Sell-Side Research More Valuable In Bad Times?, Roger Loh, René M. Stulz

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Because uncertainty is high in bad times, investors find it harder to assess firm prospects and, hence, should value analyst output more. However, higher uncertainty makes analysts’ tasks harder so it is unclear if analyst output is more valuable in bad times. We find that, in bad times, analyst revisions have a larger stock-price impact, earnings forecast errors per unit of uncertainty fall, reports are more frequent and longer, and the impact of analyst output increases more for harder-to-value firms. These results are consistent with analysts working harder and investors relying more on analysts in bad times.


The Competitive Landscape Of High-Frequency Trading Firms, Ekkehart Boehmer, Dan Li, Gideon Saar Jun 2018

The Competitive Landscape Of High-Frequency Trading Firms, Ekkehart Boehmer, Dan Li, Gideon Saar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine product differentiation in the high-frequency trading (HFT) industry, where the “products” are secretive proprietary trading strategies. We demonstrate how principal component analysis can be used to detect underlying strategies that are common to multiple HFT firms, and show that there are three product categories with distinct attributes. We study how HFT competition in each product category impacts the market environment, presenting evidence that indicates how it influences the short-horizon volatility of stocks as well as the viability of trading venues.


Are Bond Ratings Informative? Evidence From Regulatory Regime Changes, Louis H. Ederington, Jeremy Goh, Yen Teik Lee, Lisa Yang May 2018

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

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The recent Dodd-Frank Act (Section 939B) enacted in 2010 repeals credit rating agencies’ (CRAs) exemption from Regulation Fair Disclosure. We test whether CRAs continue to provide new information to the market after the repeal. We find that the significant pre-repeal 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. Our evidence suggests that CRAs serve as a conduit for transmitting private information before the repeal. It also shows that regulatory constraint is a channel by which credit ratings affect cost of financing.


Competing On Speed, Emiliano Sebastian Pagnotta, Thomas Philippon May 2018

Competing On Speed, Emiliano Sebastian Pagnotta, Thomas Philippon

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We analyze trading speed and fragmentation in asset markets. In our model, trading venues make technological investments and compete for investors who choose where and how much to trade. Faster venues charge higher fees and attract speed-sensitive investors. Competition among venues increases investor participation, trading volume, and allocative efficiency, but entry and fragmentation can be excessive, and speeds are generically inefficient. Regulations that protect transaction prices (e.g., Securities and Exchange Commission trade-through rule) lead to greater fragmentation. Our model sheds light on the experience of European and U.S. markets since the implementation of Markets in Financial Instruments Directive and Regulation …


Short Covering Trades, Ekkehart Boehmer, Truong X. Duong, Zsuzsa R. Huszar Apr 2018

Short Covering Trades, Ekkehart Boehmer, Truong X. Duong, Zsuzsa R. Huszar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Short sellers are known to have private information about security prices. Empirical evidence of short selling, however, is based on only half of short sellers’ trading activity; specifically, the opening of the position. Using disclosed large short position data from the Japanese stock market, we provide the first detailed evidence of covering trades and find a positive reaction to short covering that only partially reverses. While these results are consistent with substantial transaction costs for closing large short positions, they also reveal that some short sellers are privately informed about positive future events and have timing ability in covering positions.


Do Alpha Males Deliver Alpha? Facial Structure And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Melvyn Teo Feb 2018

Do Alpha Males Deliver Alpha? Facial Structure And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Facial structure as encapsulated by facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) maps onto masculine behaviors in males and may positively relate to testosterone. We find that high-fWHR hedge fund managers underperform low-fWHR hedge fund managers by 5.83% per year after adjusting for risk. Moreover, funds operated by high-fWHR managers exhibit higher operational risk, suffer from a greater asset-liability mismatch, and are more likely to fail. We trace the underperformance to high-fWHR managers’ preference for lottery-like stocks and reluctance to sell loser stocks. The results are robust to adjustments for sample selection, marital status, sensation seeking, and manager race, and suggest that investors …