Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

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 …

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, …

Hong Kong Unrest And Implications For The Hang Seng Index, Lucia Morales, Bernadette Andreosso-O’Callaghan

Articles

With the September 2014 ‘Umbrella Revolution’ in Hong Kong, China faced one of the biggest political challenges since the Tiananmen Square events. Beijing’s proposed electoral reform was perceived as a direct attack to democracy, and the ensuing protest triggered concerns amid local and international investors; the financial sector took the hardest hit, with stocks of companies exposed to the Hong Kong market facing significant losses. Volatility continued to increase to a seven-month high over worries that the student blockade in Hong Kong’s streets could drag on for longer than expected. The econometric-based analysis in this paper looks at the implications …

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 …

Dividend Policy In A Frontier Market And Sector Equity Traded Funds In The United States, Abdulrahman Alharbi

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In chapter 1, we examine the nature and scale of the relationship between returns on sector Equity Traded Funds (ETFs) and their volatility. We discuss the source and direction of the effect between returns and risk and whether behavioral biases are prominent among sector ETFs. The study has implications for financial sector practitioners and investors, as it provides more information about the risk in sector ETF and whether that risk differs from that of other investment instruments. To this end, we test three hypotheses based on the relevant literature on volatility and returns: the leverage effect hypothesis, feedback hypothesis, and …

Is Google Search Behavior Related To Volatility? Incorporating Google Trends Data Into A Garch Model For Equity Volatility, Timothy De Silva

Undergraduate Economic Review

Intuitively, one would expect that internet search volume would contain valuable information about investor sentiment for a company. With the development of new data sources, such as Google Trends, this relationship can be more easily and objectively examined. This paper seeks to examine the relationship between a company’s stock price volatility and its Google search volume. A small cross-section of twenty companies is considered, and the goal of this paper is to demonstrate the power of Google Trends data in hope of initiating further research. Using a conventional GARCH framework for financial market volatility, an economically and statistically significant contemporaneous …

The Importance Of Profitability In Determining Volatility Across Industries With Different Debt Levels, Timothy De Silva

Undergraduate Economic Review

This paper seeks to investigate the relationship between debt and volatility. No consensus currently exists on the effects of financial leverage on stock volatility. With the increased use of complex financial derivatives in recent decades, the importance of understanding the factors that influence volatility has become extremely important. By looking at a cross-section of industries, this paper demonstrates how the importance of profitability for explaining volatility changes depending on industry debt levels, which are endogenous and depend on industry characteristics.

Fear And The Housing Market, Sergiy Saydometov

Finance and Real Estate Dissertations - Archive

In this dissertation, I use Google search frequency to construct a new measure of housing market-level sentiment and analyze its relation with housing prices. I term this measure as the Home Price Fear Index, or Fear Index or Fear for short. The Fear Index is based on Google Search volume for certain real estate and economic terms, such as foreclosure, recession, and market value. In the first essay, I examine the relation between the Fear Index at the national level and the Case/Shiller National Home Price Index. I find this relation to be inverse, with an increase in Fear predicting …

High Frequency Trading: Perceptions Regarding Volatility And Regulation, Daniel A. Beck

Honors Theses

Although high frequency trading (HFT) makes up a large portion of day to day trading activity in US and global markets, Khashanah and colleagues (2014) found that nearly half of academic and business industry professionals feel that HFT provides an unfair advantage relative to other market participants, and that a majority of industry professionals share concerns that HFT increases volatility in markets. This creates an environment wherein there are increasing calls by various groups for increased regulation of HFT, and the same study by Khashanah et al (2014) finds that 59% of academics and 46% of industry professionals are of …

The Effect Of The Dodd-Frank Act On Risk In The Financial Sector, Beatrix S. Haddon

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, commonly known as the Dodd-Frank Act, was passed in 2010 in an attempt to increase transparency and accountability in the financial system. The purpose of this thesis is to discover what effect, if any, the Dodd-Frank Act had on both systematic risk and total volatility in the financial sector. My study shows that while the legislation significantly reduced systematic risk in only one out of the seven industries within the financial sector in the time period I analyzed, it successfully reduced total volatility in all seven industries.

A Closer Look At The Impact Of Quantitative Easing On The Capital Markets: Garch Analysis Of The Exchange Traded Funds Market, Nicholas R. Duafala

Undergraduate Economic Review

This paper analyzes the effects of quantitative easing (QE) on the capital markets by modeling exchange traded funds (ETFs) returns using a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) methodology. The results show that the 10-Year Treasury yields are significant in the returns of some sectors of the economy more so than others, and the Federal Funds Futures trading volume is significant in all ETFs return volatility. The implications of these results not only provide information about the reaction of the ETF market and QE, but also provide insight for developing investment strategies.

Studies In Volatility, Nazli Sila Alan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of five chapters that focus on the price discovery role of equity markets and examine the evolution of intraday stock price volatility as a key measure of market quality. Using six differentiated measures of intraday volatility (that mostly focus on the opening half-hour of trading), all common stocks listed at three stock exchanges with varying levels of fragmentation are analyzed: NYSE and NASDAQ stocks over the period 1993-2012, and Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) stocks over the period 2000-2011.

The results on the evolution of intraday volatility presented in Chapters 2 and 3 indicate the following: In 1993, …

Modeling Stock Return Volatility In Mongolian Stock Market, Munkhtsog Altankhuu

Theses

This paper is one of the first research works to examine the stock index volatility in the Mongolian Stock Exchange. The study utilizes the Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (GAR CH) models to estimate volatility of stock market return of the Mongolian Stock Exchange. A number of prior research work demonstrated that ARCH and GARCH models are fruitful models for modeling volatility of time series data. However, they recommend using different versions of GARCH-type models for different distributions (Normal, Student's t, Skewed Student's t and Generalized Error Distribution) for emerging markets or developing markets. This paper compares the GARCH(l, 1) model …

Two Essays On The Low Volatility Anomaly, Timothy B. Riley

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

I find the low volatility anomaly is present in all but the smallest of stocks. Portfolios can be formed on either total or idiosyncratic volatility to take advantage of this anomaly, but I show measures of idiosyncratic volatility are key. Standard risk-adjusted returns suggest that there is no low volatility anomaly from 1996 through 2011, but I find this result arises from model misspecification. Caution must be taken when analyzing high volatility stocks because their returns have a nonlinear relationship with momentum during market bubbles.

I then find that mutual funds with low return volatility in the prior year outperform …

Volatility Of The Utilities Industry: Its Causal Relationship To Other Nine Industries, Kuo-Hao Lee, Ahmed Y. Elkassabgi, Wei-Jen Hseih

Faculty Publications - The LeMoyne Smith School of Business

The goal of this study is to investigate the causality relationship between the Utilities industry and the nine other industries. Previous literatures show that volatility of stock prices is informative; Granger causality is applied in this research by using of a leveraged bootstrap test developed by Hacker and Hatemi-J (2006) to examine the behavior of the volatility. The results indicate that causality of the volatility of the Utilities industry on the volatility of seven other industries, except the Information Technology and Telecommunication Services industries. The data also suggest that Financials industry has impact on the Utilities industry.

An Investigation Into The Volatility And Cointegration Of Emerging European Stock Markets, Anna Golab

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This dissertation examines the interaction between European Emerging markets including cointegration, volatility, correlation and spillover effects. This study is also concerned with the process of the enlargement of the European Union and how this affects the emerging markets of newcomers. The twelve emerging markets studied are Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungry, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, which are all progressing very rapidly in their reforms and domestic economic stability.

The majority of prior studies on stock market comovements and integration have concentrated on mature developed markets or the advanced emerging markets of the Czech Republic, …

The Effectiveness Of Trading Halts And Investor Trading Performance, Nareerat Taechapiroontong, Charlie Charoenwong, Chiyachantana N. Chiraphol, Radchda Lurang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines the effectiveness of trading halts and the trading performance of different types of investors or traders during halts in an Asian emerging equity market. We use trade-by-trade data flagged by types of traders between January 1999 and December 2007. The results suggest that trading halts improve the efficiency of the market by reducing the information asymmetry and stabilizing the market. Trading halts serve as devices to facilitate a price discovery process by giving investors opportunity to adjust their trading interests and reaction to the material information. Our findings show that return and volatility tend to revert to …

Does The Reit Tale Wag The Dog? The Relationship Between Tenant Ownership And The Volatility Of Retail Reit Stock Returns, Dana G. Staley

CMC Senior Theses

This paper will assess the relationship between tenant characteristics and public REIT volatility. Specifically, we focus on the retail REIT subset of the industry. Given that retail REITs are one the most transparent asset classes, they provide an interesting landscape for evaluating the relationship between the firm and the customers, or in this case, the tenants. Specifically, we assess how major tenant ownership, public or private equity owned, impacts the volatility of the REIT’s stock price using 2010 data on 30 retail REITs. Controlling for tenant credit quality, leverage, ROE, book-to-market, size, age, region and property focus, we find that …

Essays On The Dynamics Of Stock Returns In Emerging Markets: Roles Of Volatility And Sentiment In Turkey, Sidika Gülfem Bayram

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Emerging stock markets play an important role in portfolio diversification. Accurate depiction of their status is essential for potential investment assessment. This dissertation focuses on two important aspects of emerging markets using Istanbul Stock Exchange (“ISE”) as an example: modeling stock return volatility as a measure of risk and exploring potential interaction between stock returns and consumer/business sentiments. ISE is selected as it has no entry restrictions and offers great investment potential with 65% foreign participation.

The first essay focuses on stock return volatility. Potential asymmetric behavior is investigated by looking into how the ISE National-100 Index prices evolve over …

Monthly Seasonality In Emerging Market: Evidence From Bangladesh, Lutfur Rahman, Abu S. Amin

WCBT Faculty Publications

The presence of the seasonal anomaly in stock returns has been reported extensively in finance literature. This paper examines the presence of monthly anomaly in Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), the premier stock exchange of Bangladesh. Data used in the study include daily closing prices of DSE indices such as DSE all share prices index (DSI), DSE general index (DGEN) and DSE 20 index for a period of 01.01.2001-30.06.2010. Several hypotheses have been formulated; those hypotheses have been tested and dummy variable regression was used in the study. The result indicates that May and June returns are positive and statistically significant. …

Application Of The Fractional Diffusion Equation For Predicting Market Behaviour, Jonathan Blackledge

Articles

Most Financial modelling system rely on an underlying hypothesis known as the Eficient Market Hypothesi (EMH) including the famous BlackScholes formula for placing an option. However, the EMH has a fundamental flaw: it is based on the assumption that economic processes are normally distributed and it has long been known that this is not the case. This fundamental assumption leads to a number of shortcomings associated with using the EMH to analyse financial data which includes failure to predict the future volatility of a market share value. This paper introduces a new financial risk assessment model based on Levy statistics …

Two Essays On The Impact Of Rational And Irrational Investor Sentiments On Equity Market Return And Volatility: Evidence From The U.S. And Brazil, Pablo Javier Calafiore

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This dissertation consists of two essays on how investor sentiments affect the returns and volatility of the Brazilian stock market. Both essays share a similar methodological approach. The first one analyzes the effect of investor sentiments on the returns and volatility of the Brazilian stock market using a model that accounts for fundamentals (rational) and noise components (irrational) of investor sentiments on the Sao Paulo leading index Bovespa. This research finds a statistically significant positive (negative) impact of rational (irrational) sentiments on market returns. Moreover, there are statistically significant impacts of irrational components of the sentiment indexes on Bovespa volatility …

Proliferation Of Tail Risks And Policy Responses In The Eu Financial Markets, Lucjan Orlowski

WCBT Faculty Publications

This study draws attention to the proliferation of tail risks in financial markets prior to and during the course of the recent global financial crisis. It examines the level of tail risks in selected equity, interbank lending and foreign exchange markets in selected EU Member States in relation to the United States. The extent of tail risks is assessed by applying general error distribution (GED) parameterization in GARCH volatility tests of the examined variables. The empirical tests prove that tail risks were pronounced across all of the examined European financial markets throughout the crisis. They were also significant prior to …

Hedge Funds In A Volatile Market, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre

We show that relative to the first half of 2007, the volatility of hedge fund returns has doubled during the September 2007 to April 2008 period. At the same time, aggregate hedge fund returns have declined while exit rates have tripled. Commodity, macro, and, to a lesser extent, arbitrage funds outperformed during this period, while bottom-up funds underperformed. In Asia, funds engaging in less traditional strategies like arbitrage, event driven, fixed income, and distressed debt have emerged relatively unscathed. Our results also suggest that around the world, funds with headquarters near their investment markets, fewer assets under management, and higher …

Costly Arbitrage And The Lead-Lag Structure Between Value And Glamour Stocks, Meng Li

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Motivated by the findings of Lo and Mackinlay (1990) that size premium can be partially attributed to the lead-lag relation between the returns of large stocks and those of small stocks, in this thesis we hypothesize that a possible lead-lag structure between value and glamour returns can partially explain the value premium anomaly.

The thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter I documents a pronounced lead-lag structure between value and glamour stocks: the glamour stocks lead value stocks in terms of both mean returns and residual volatilities, suggesting that value stocks delay in price adjustment to new information. To further explore …

The Effect Of Survey-Based Sentiment Measures On The Predictability And Volatility Of Stock Returns Conditioned On The Payout Yield And Issue Yield, Darryl Philip Samsell

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Survey-based sentiment indexes from the American Association of Individual Investors, Investors' Intelligence, and the Yale University International Center for Finance show strong in-sample monthly return predictability and are strong factors in explaining the cross-sectional variation in monthly returns and in explaining the excess volatility in returns beyond that explained by cash flow fundamentals proxied by the payout yield and the issue yield from Boudoukh, et al. (2007). These finding are robust to the use of numerous methods of sentiment variable computation. Sentiment is a more significant factor during the period from January 1997 to December 2005 when U.S. stock valuations …

Three Essays On International Transmission Mechanism, Volatility And Spillovers On American Depositary Receipt Returns, Priti Verma

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This dissertation is a collection of three inter-related essays that examine spillovers from interest rates, exchange rates, regional markets, and the U.S. market to the American Depositary Receipt (ADR) returns. The ADRs investigated in this study are from Brazil, Chile, Mexico (Latin America), U.K., Germany, France, Italy (Europe), and Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (Asia).

Essay 1 investigates the price and volatility spillovers as well as the asymmetric impact of positive and negative innovations from interest and exchange rates to ADR returns. Unlike previous studies which use bivariate statistics, the multivariate extension of Nelson's (1991) Exponential Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity …

The Impact Of Regulation Fair Disclosure On Information Asymmetry And Trading: An Intraday Analysis, Chiraphol N. Chiyachantana, Christine X. Jiang, Nareerat Taechapiroontong, Robert A. Wood

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines the impact of Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD) on liquidity, information asymmetry, and institutional and retail investors trading behavior. Our main findings suggest three conclusions. First, Regulation FD has been effective in improving liquidity and in decreasing the level of information asymmetry. Second, retail trading activity increases dramatically after earnings announcements but there is a significant decline in institutional trading surrounding earnings announcements, particularly in the pre‐announcement period. Last, the decline in information asymmetry around earnings announcements is closely associated with a lower participation rate in the pre‐announcement period and more active trading of retail investors after earnings …

The Contribution Of A Satellite Market To Price Discovery: Evidence From The Singapore Exchange, Vicentiu Covrig, David K. Ding, Buen Sin Low

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The Singapore Exchange (SGX), a small satellite market, successfully competes with a large home market, the Osaka Securities Exchange (OSE), in trading the Nikkei 225 futures index. In this paper, we investigate the contribution of the SGX to price discovery and shed light on the reasons for its continued success. Evidence is provided from information revelation and price discovery of three competing but informationally linked markets of the Nikkei 225 index - domestic spot (Tokyo Stock Exchange), domestic futures (OSE), and foreign futures (SGX), which represents the satellite market. Overall, the futures market contributes 77% to price discovery, with the …