Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

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 and …

Intraday Algorithmic Trading Using Momentum And Long Short-Term Memory Network Strategies, Andrew R. Whitinger Ii

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Intraday stock trading is an infamously difficult and risky strategy. Momentum and reversal strategies and long short-term memory (LSTM) neural networks have been shown to be effective for selecting stocks to buy and sell over time periods of multiple days. To explore whether these strategies can be effective for intraday trading, their implementations were simulated using intraday price data for stocks in the S&P 500 index, collected at 1-second intervals between February 11, 2021 and March 9, 2021 inclusive. The study tested 160 variations of momentum and reversal strategies for profitability in long, short, and market-neutral portfolios, totaling 480 portfolios. …

The Relationship Between Twitter Mentions & Stock Volatility During Trading Hours, Connor Day

Undergraduate Honors Theses

A new paradigm in investing has been created where people have easier access than ever to invest in the stock market from the convenience of their phones. Through zero-commission trading apps, like Robinhood, less starting capital is required. This research is used to investigate the relationship between the frequency of social media mentions on Twitter and a particular stock’s volatility. This will be done using the qualitative data analyzing tool AtlasTi to calculate the frequency in which a particular stock ticker is mentioned on Twitter during trading hours. The volatility of the stock will be calculated using data from Yahoo! …

Risk-Based Deposit Insurance, Deposit Rates And Bank Failures: Evidence From Russia, Lucy Chernykh, Vladimir Kotomin

Faculty Publications – Finance, Insurance, and Law

Using the Russian banking system as a laboratory, we study the effect of a switch from fixed-rate deposit insurance to a risk-based system with premia tied to insured deposit rates offered by a bank. After the switch, increases in bank risk lead to reduced reliance on insured deposits, private banks without excessive capital stop raising insured deposit rates to fund loan growth, and the cost of insured deposits becomes a predictor of bank failures (beyond the CAMEL variables). Offering insured deposit rates notably above the market becomes a last resort to banks. The results suggest that risk-based deposit insurance schemes …

Related Party Transactions And Corporate Environmental Responsibility, Wonseok Choi, Chune Young Chung, Monika K. Rabarison, Kainan Wang

Finance Faculty Publications

We examine the effect of related party transactions on corporate environmental responsibility and find that firms with more related party transactions tend to have more controversial environmental reports, less emissions reduction, and less environmental expenditures. This relationship is more significant for firms with a high investment-cash flow sensitivity and those with a low ESG score. Overall, the results corroborate the hypothesis that the marginal costs of corporate environmental responsibility outweigh the benefits for financially constrained firms, thus deterring these firms from engaging in corporate environmental responsibility activities.

Economic Opportunity And Community Development Financial Institutions In Clark County, Ar And Beyond: An Analysis, Magdalena Hopkins

Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses

Arkansas is home to one of the greatest projects in the world of Community Development Financial Institutions: Southern Bancorp. Founded with the help and support of Bill Clinton, it pre-dates The Riegle Community Development and Regulatory Improvement Act of 1994, which is now used to fund similar Community Development Financial Institutions. According to the Opportunity Finance Network (2022), there are more than 1,200 Community Development Financial Institutions in the United States. These institutions span the country and operate in unique communities. The CDFI Coalition (2017) cites Arkansas as having 19 Community Development Financial Institutions in the state. It is important …

Planning For Debt: An Analysis Of Drivers Of Financial Knowledge On Individual Debt Strategy, Nicholas A. Hughes

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

This study aims to provide insight into the relationships between proven significant drivers of financial knowledge (numeracy, cognitive ability, mathematics anxiety, and financial literacy) and an individual's premeditated strategy to tackle their student loans. From a sample of 160 undergraduate students, we find few significant results that affirm the hypotheses of the study. However, we also determine that several descriptive factors (i.e., general mathematical skill, anticipated level of debt and interest to be repaid, etc.) vary by an extremely wide margin, suggesting that students lack the very skills necessary to calculate and deal with their own loans. Additionally, we find …

Reshoring The Semiconductor Industry Supply Chain: Analysis Of Risks And Capabilities, Makayla Ann Masse

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The importance of supply chain resilience and semiconductor manufacturing has been discussed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and its later disruptions to multiple industries (The White House, 2021). This paper uses frameworks developed by Pettit, Fiksel, and Croxton (2010), Ponomarov and Holcomb (2009), and Rao and Goldsby (2009) to identify the semiconductor industry’s risks, capabilities, and interdependencies through an analysis of 45 prominent semiconductor companies. The analysis was done on multiple levels. On the industry level, risks, and capabilities as well as their co-occurrences were analyzed. On the supply chain level, relationships were mapped using Boston Consulting Group …

The Importance Of Process Documentation In The Workplace, Alisha Chatlani

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper focuses on the benefits of process documentation in the workplace and how individuals can go about creating documentation that best suits their business needs. The author of this paper explains how they went about researching, developing, and creating process documentation for a team at J.B. Hunt Transport Services and the methodology behind the entire process through an internship.

An Evaluation Of Esg Funds And Their Performance, Mason Hook

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

Over the past decade, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) oriented funds have seen a dramatic increase in inflows and many investors have chosen to replace traditional holdings with sustainable ones. Within 5 years, it is projected that ESG exchange traded funds and mutual funds will exceed $53 trillion. Many fund managers claim that ESG funds will outperform traditional funds in the long run. If this claim is accurate, many asset managers would have a fiduciary duty to invest in ESG products. While there is often a non-financial benefit to investing in ESG funds, this paper challenges the claim that they …

Exploring The Impact Of Stock Market Performance On The Real Estate Market, Jake Taylor

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper goes on to analyze the impact of stock market performance on the real estate market. This is done through the analysis of the recent performance of the stock market, real estate market, and key indicators of both markets. The goal of this paper is to inform the reader of potential trends in the real estate market based on key indicators that play a large role in the stock market’s performance in order to make more knowledgeable investments.

Portfolio Optimization Using The Business Cycle Approach, Maxwell Kane

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of the study is to investigate whether a portfolio manager could enhance his/her portfolio optimization strategy by periodically adjusting the equity sector weights to a diversified stock portfolio. The business cycle approach focuses on providing a framework for adjusting sector weightings to take advantage of recurring trends in economic growth that signal a phase transition soon. Once a shift in stages is detected, investors are advised to adjust their portfolio to overweight a specific sector that is projected to outperform in the next phase of the cycle and to offset exposure in sectors that tend to underperform during …

Altering Overdraft Fee Policies To Promote Consumer Financial Health, Nadia Barbarawi

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

The objective of this study is to describe the traditional overdraft practices, explain the reaction of the banking industry from the pressure coming from consumers, regulators, and innovative companies to reduce or eliminate overdraft fees to promote consumer financial health.

How Corporate America Has Been Impacted By Remote Work, Jack Berg

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis evaluates how the new era of remote work has affected organizations and their employers. Specifically, it focuses on the effect remote work has had on productivity and revenue within companies, as well as the mental health and work-life balance implications it has had on employees. Furthermore, this analysis focuses on the history of remote work, how companies have had to adapt in recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic and how remote work will look in post-COVID-19 times. In addition, all possibilities will be assessed to examine how efficient remote work is in the workplace.

Multiple resources were …

Insomnovation – Natural Sleep Solutions Business Plan, Nikolas Limperis

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

Currently, 70 million Americans suffer from some sort of sleep issues from trouble falling asleep, trouble staying asleep, and daytime drowsiness. However, the sleep solutions on the market today are either highly artificial or only address the symptoms of sleep issues rather than the underlying cause. This is what Insomnovation seeks to address. By providing supplementation to seven key vitamins and minerals, Insomnovation hopes to bring a natural solution to put the issue of sleep disorders to rest.

Financial Planning Through A Pandemic: A Northwestern Mutual – Fayetteville Internship Experience, Grant Hoeldtke

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

For my internship, I worked as a College Financial Representative. As a College Financial Representative, I essentially worked as a full-time financial representative, but without some of the certifications required to offer the full line of products offered by Northwestern Mutual. Throughout the internship, I went through the process of kickstarting my financial advising practice and growing my connections around the Northwest Arkansas and Tulsa areas. I gained experience setting and hosting meetings with potential clients, then creating personalized and customizable financial plans based on the information I received during the client's meeting. Every single meeting and financial plan were …

Theranos: Case Study And Examination Of The Fraud Triangle, Abbey Jennings

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

Fraud is a serious issue which carries significant implications. Fraud committed by top level managers is particularly grievous, as it ripples through a firm, harming the company’s shareholders, employees, and credibility, while posing a threat to individuals and society (Zahra, et al.). A common framework in auditing, the fraud triangle, outlines three factors that if present, increase the risk or enable fraud to occur. The three factors are incentive, opportunity, and rationalization to commit fraud (Barlow).

In 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of a supposedly groundbreaking health tech company, Theranos, with what …

Project Foresight Annual Report, 2020-2021, Paul J. Speaker

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Project FORESIGHT is a business-guided self-evaluation of forensic science laboratories across the globe. The participating laboratories represent local, regional, state, and national agencies. Economics, accounting, finance, and forensic faculty provide assistance, guidance, and analysis. Laboratories participating in Project FORESIGHT have developed standardized definitions for metrics to evaluate work processes, linking financial information to work tasks, and functions. Laboratory managers can then assess resource allocations, efficiencies, and value of services—the mission of Project FORESIGHT is to measure, preserve what works, and change what does not.

The benchmark data for the 2020-2021 performance period includes laboratory submissions for a variety of fiscal …

Finance And Accounting Dual-Degree Proposal, Meghan Finley

Senior Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

Performance Analysis Of The “Back-Door” Approach To The Public Market, Britney Ramprasad

Financial Analyst

Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) mergers have significantly better market-adjusted 1-month returns than traditional Initial Public Offerings (IPOs), with no significant differences in the 3-month, 6-month, 12-month horizons after controlling for the size and profitability of the firm. This paper examines the performance of SPAC mergers and traditional IPOs. Stock (common share) returns, and accounting measures are the variables used to categorize the performance of SPAC mergers and traditional IPOs. These variables are examined throughout the data sample from January 2013 to September 2020, with a focus on the 1-month, 3-month, 6- month, and 12-month market-adjusted returns and the gross …

Analysis Of The Technology Hardware, Storage & Peripherals Industry, Siddhant Ramesh

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Technology Hardware, Storage & Peripherals industry is stimulated by strong trends across numerous end-markets and categories of products. Advancements in 5G, demand for health-conscious wearable devices, and emerging services for next-generation devices are major prospects for the broader hardware industry through 2022. However, Headwinds such as trade wars, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the recession looming, could alter the healthy trends that are noticed. Enterprise spending is seen to keep improving, but consumer spending is encouraged to take a breather in 2022. As such, the outlook for the Technology Hardware, Storage & Peripherals industry for the next 12 months is …

Colgate-Palmolive Customer Development Finance Internship: A Collection Of Journals Entries & Testimonials Of Professional Development, Braden Byrum

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

This is a collection of journal entries and testimonials to professional development that I received from my internship with Colgate-Palmolive on the Walmart team. Over the span of three months it serves as a reflection on my purpose and inflictions throughout my day to day during my internship. The skills developed during this experience are monumental in professional development but also expand into my personal life. These themes are relevant to the life ahead of me and this collection will serve as an endorsement to that.

Do Board Diversity And Gender Quotas Affect Firm Value? Evidence From California Assembly Bill No. 979, Emily Kelleen Blake, Sepideh Raei, Katarzyna A. Bilicka, Todd Griffith

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

We analyze the stock market reaction and returns for California-headquartered companies following the announcement of AB 979 (California Assembly Bill 979) that was signed into effect on September 30th, 2020. AB 979 requires public firms headquartered in California to meet board gender and diversity quotas by December 31st, 2021. Cumulative abnormal returns in a [-1, +1] event window average a 0.98% abnormal return as benchmarked against all publicly traded firms and a 1.29% abnormal return when benchmarked against our control group (of firms headquartered outside of California). California headquartered firms with exclusively male boards had a larger cumulative abnormal return …

Comparing Actively Managed Mutual Fund Categories To Index Funds Using Linear Regression Forecasting And Portfolio Optimization, Luke Weiner

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The global investment industry offers a wide variety of investment products especially for individual investors. One such product, index funds, which are younger than actively managed mutual funds, have typically outperformed managed funds. Despite this phenomenon, investors have displayed a tendency to continue investing in actively managed funds. Although only a small percentage of actively managed funds outperform index funds, the costs of actively managed funds are significantly higher. Also, managed fund performances are most often determined by their fund category such as growth or real estate. I wanted to answer the following question for individual investors: can we …

Esg Activities, Political Contributions, And Firm Performance, Ahmed W. Alam

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is comprised of two distinct empirical papers which I document in two separate chapters. In the first chapter, I empirically examine the impact of banks’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices on banking efficiency. Using a sample of 578 international banks over the years 2011-2019, I employ a data envelopment analysis (DEA) method to estimate banks’ technical efficiency scores. My baseline Tobit regressions reveal that high ESG performance significantly reduces banks’ efficiency. Further, I find that this relationship is non-linear at very high levels of ESG scores. These findings are consistent across the social (S) and governance (G) …

The Effect Of Conditional Volatility, Skewness, And Excess Kurtosis On Interest Rates, Sarah H. Al Talafha

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the lognormality assumption of per capita, real consumption growth, which is a common assumption in asset pricing models. We found that shocks to household consumption growth are persistent, negatively skewed, and have excess kurtosis. Therefore, we revisited the fundamental relation between expected growth and the real risk-free rate, assuming a non-Gaussian distribution of consumption growth, and found a robust positive association between real consumption growth and real risk-free interest rate, and a negative relationship between macroeconomic uncertainty and real rates, although less in magnitude, which is consistent with both intertemporal smoothing and precautionary savings. This paper offers …

The Relationship Between Political Contributions And Federal Earmarks And The Impact Of State-Owned Enterprises On U.S. Competition, Tahsin I. Huq

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

With the reintroduction of hard earmarks in the U.S., it is essential to understand the factors that drive earmark receipt. Legislative earmarks have historically represented a significant source of revenue for several firms. We examine the relationship between political expenditure, federal earmarks, and subsequent firm performance. Using a sample of earmarks from 2008-2010 Appropriations bills, we demonstrate that Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions by firms to Senators and Representatives strongly predict both the size and number of earmarks directed to these companies. We also show that PAC contributions to a member of Congress increase the probability that a politician writes …

How Student Athletes Can Profit From Their Name, Image, And Likeness Rights, Ryan Bartholow

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

A new mixture of state laws and NCAA rules have provided athletes with varying degrees of new protections and opportunities to make money by selling their NIL rights (Murphy, 2021). However, these new NIL rights do not come with any sort of guide on how to begin making a profit. According to Christovich (2021), wealthy D-I schools have spent the past year building their NIL programs and hiring consultants to educate their athletes on the new NIL rules. There are many D-II and D-III schools that may not have the finances available to educate their athletes on how to return …

Pivoting To Robo-Advisor Services In Wealth Management, Guan Liu Lee

Asian Management Insights

A white space for digital banks.

External Asset Managers In Singapore, T. Mandy Tham, Esther Kong, Juliana Koh

Asian Management Insights

Opportunities and challenges for the sector.