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The Cross-Section of Volatility and Expected Returns
TL;DR: This paper examined the pricing of aggregate volatility risk in the cross-section of stock returns and found that stocks with high sensitivities to innovations in aggregate volatility have low average returns, and that stock with high idiosyncratic volatility relative to the Fama and French (1993) model have abysmally low return.
Abstract: We examine the pricing of aggregate volatility risk in the cross-section of stock returns Consistent with theory, we find that stocks with high sensitivities to innovations in aggregate volatility have low average returns In addition, we find that stocks with high idiosyncratic volatility relative to the Fama and French (1993) model have abysmally low average returns This phenomenon cannot be explained by exposure to aggregate volatility risk Size, book-to-market, momentum, and liquidity effects cannot account for either the low average returns earned by stocks with high exposure to systematic volatility risk or for the low average returns of stocks with high idiosyncratic volatility
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the effect of the exposure to aggregate volatility risk on stock returns in both high-sentiment and lowsentiment regimes, finding that exposure to aggregation volatility risk is negatively related to returns when sentiment is low.
Abstract: This paper aims at providing new insights on the pricing of aggregate volatility risk by incorporating investor sentiment in the relation between sensitivity to innovations in implied market volatility and expected stock returns. Using both cross-sectional and time series analysis, we investigate the effect of the exposure to aggregate volatility risk on stock returns in both high-sentiment and low-sentiment regimes. We find that exposure to aggregate volatility risk is negatively related to returns when sentiment is low. However, this relation loses its significance when sentiment is high. The documented negative relation is robust to controls for other variables and to the use of various sentiment proxies, suggesting that aggregate volatility risk is an independent risk factor only during low sentiment periods.
16 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate the link between a firm's customer-base concentration and its stock return volatility and find that firms with relatively more concentrated customer bases have higher idiosyncratic volatility.
Abstract: This paper investigates the link between a firm's customer-base concentration and its stock return volatility. We find that firms with relatively more concentrated customer bases have higher idiosyncratic volatility. These results are economically significant, with an 11-15% increase in idiosyncratic volatility for concentrated versus diversified customer-base firms. In addition, we document significant temporal and cross-sectional variation in customer-base concentration effects across customer and supplier firm dimensions, including customer type (corporate versus government), customer default probability, extended trade credit to customers, and industry product market competition. Our results are robust to potential endogeneity concerns, different estimation methodologies and volatility measures, among numerous other robustness checks. Overall, our results contribute to the understanding of idiosyncratic volatility sources in a firm's stock returns and provide new evidence on the transmission of firm-specific shocks in a supply-chain network environment.
15 citations
TL;DR: The authors study the moral hazard problem that arises from risk-averse managers having a substantial personal investment in their companies and strong risk-substitution incentives; that is, they pass up innovative projects with high idiosyncratic (firm-specific) risk in favor of standard projects that have greater aggregate (systematic) risk.
Abstract: We study the moral hazard problem that arises from risk-averse managers having a substantial personal investment in their companies (i.e. large equity holdings) and strong risk-substitution incentives; that is, they pass up innovative projects with high idiosyncratic (firm-specific) risk in favor of standard projects that have greater aggregate (systematic) risk. Risk-substitution incentives originate from the fact that, from a manager’s point of view, idiosyncratic risk is typically more difficult to hedge than aggregate risk. We hypothesize that while risk-substitution may help managers to diversify away their (excessive) risk exposure to their own firm, it may lead to suboptimal investment policies at a company level, offsetting the well-documented alignment effect of managerial ownership. This results into to a weak (or non-existent) association between managerial ownership and performance for firms that are exposed to severe risk-substitution problems. We test this hypothesis using parametric and semi-parametric estimation methods and report supporting evidence for it. Our results suggest that managerial ownership affects firm value in a strong positive way only for low idiosyncratic risk companies, whose managers are less likely to engage in risk-substitution. For high idiosyncratic risk companies no such link exists. Our results also reveal that the risk-substitution problem is (at least) partially mitigated by the inclusion of stock options in managerial compensation packages.
15 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors estimate expected idiosyncratic skewness due to growth options reflecting investors' expectation about the firm's mix of growth options versus assets-in-place, and find that investors require a positive premium to hold stocks of inflexible firms with low growth options.
Abstract: Growth options increase idiosyncratic skewness and reduce risk exposure, and thereby create the appearance of profitability, distress, lotteryness, and volatility anomalies, influencing their returns via the channel of idiosyncratic skewness. To capture these effects, we estimate expected idiosyncratic skewness due to growth options reflecting investors’ expectation about the firm’s mix of growth options versus assets-in-place. We find that investors require a positive premium to hold stocks of inflexible firms with low growth options and hence negative expected idiosyncratic skewness, and that a newly proposed skewness factor based on growth options or firm inflexibility explains the aforementioned anomalies.
15 citations
TL;DR: The well-documented under performance of lottery stocks masks a within-month cyclical pattern. as mentioned in this paper showed that demand for lottery stocks increases at the turn of the month especially in areas whose demographic profile resembles that of the typical lottery-ticket buyers (i.e., gamblers) driving their prices higher at turn of month.
Abstract: The well-documented under performance of lottery stocks masks a within-month cyclical pattern. Demand for lottery stocks increases at the turn of the month especially in areas whose demographic profile resembles that of the typical lottery-ticket buyers (i.e., gamblers) driving their prices higher at the turn of the month. This effect is particularly pronounced among firms located in areas whose demographic profile resembles that of the typical lottery-ticket buyer and propelled by the within-month cyclicality of local investors’ personal liquidity positions. A long-short investment strategy based on this cyclical pattern of lottery stocks performance yields gross abnormal returns of about 15% per year.
15 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present some additional tests of the mean-variance formulation of the asset pricing model, which avoid some of the problems of earlier studies and provide additional insights into the nature of the structure of security returns.
Abstract: Considerable attention has recently been given to general equilibrium models of the pricing of capital assets Of these, perhaps the best known is the mean-variance formulation originally developed by Sharpe (1964) and Treynor (1961), and extended and clarified by Lintner (1965a; 1965b), Mossin (1966), Fama (1968a; 1968b), and Long (1972) In addition Treynor (1965), Sharpe (1966), and Jensen (1968; 1969) have developed portfolio evaluation models which are either based on this asset pricing model or bear a close relation to it In the development of the asset pricing model it is assumed that (1) all investors are single period risk-averse utility of terminal wealth maximizers and can choose among portfolios solely on the basis of mean and variance, (2) there are no taxes or transactions costs, (3) all investors have homogeneous views regarding the parameters of the joint probability distribution of all security returns, and (4) all investors can borrow and lend at a given riskless rate of interest The main result of the model is a statement of the relation between the expected risk premiums on individual assets and their "systematic risk" Our main purpose is to present some additional tests of this asset pricing model which avoid some of the problems of earlier studies and which, we believe, provide additional insights into the nature of the structure of security returns The evidence presented in Section II indicates the expected excess return on an asset is not strictly proportional to its B, and we believe that this evidence, coupled with that given in Section IV, is sufficiently strong to warrant rejection of the traditional form of the model given by (1) We then show in Section III how the cross-sectional tests are subject to measurement error bias, provide a solution to this problem through grouping procedures, and show how cross-sectional methods are relevant to testing the expanded two-factor form of the model We show in Section IV that the mean of the beta factor has had a positive trend over the period 1931-65 and was on the order of 10 to 13% per month in the two sample intervals we examined in the period 1948-65 This seems to have been significantly different from the average risk-free rate and indeed is roughly the same size as the average market return of 13 and 12% per month over the two sample intervals in this period This evidence seems to be sufficiently strong enough to warrant rejection of the traditional form of the model given by (1) In addition, the standard deviation of the beta factor over these two sample intervals was 20 and 22% per month, as compared with the standard deviation of the market factor of 36 and 38% per month Thus the beta factor seems to be an important determinant of security returns
2,899 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, the generalized autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic (GARCH) model of returns is modified to allow for volatility feedback effect, which amplifies large negative stock returns and dampens large positive returns, making stock returns negatively skewed and increasing the potential for large crashes.
Abstract: It is sometimes argued that an increase in stock market volatility raises required stock returns, and thus lowers stock prices. This paper modifies the generalized autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic (GARCH) model of returns to allow for this volatility feedback effect. The resulting model is asymmetric, because volatility feedback amplifies large negative stock returns and dampens large positive returns, making stock returns negatively skewed and increasing the potential for large crashes. The model also implies that volatility feedback is more important when volatility is high. In U.S. monthly and daily data in the period 1926-88, the asymmetric model fits the data better than the standard GARCH model, accounting for almost half the skewness and excess kurtosis of standard monthly GARCH residuals. Estimated volatility discounts on the stock market range from 1% in normal times to 13% after the stock market crash of October 1987 and 25% in the early 1930's. However volatility feedback has little effect on the unconditional variance of stock returns.
1,793 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined a class of continuous-time models that incorporate jumps in returns and volatility, in addition to diffusive stochastic volatility, and developed a likelihood-based estimation strategy and provided estimates of model parameters, spot volatility, jump times and jump sizes using both S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 index returns.
Abstract: This paper examines a class of continuous-time models that incorporate jumps in returns and volatility, in addition to diffusive stochastic volatility. We develop a likelihood-based estimation strategy and provide estimates of model parameters, spot volatility, jump times and jump sizes using both S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 index returns. Estimates of jumps times, jump sizes and volatility are particularly useful for disentangling the dynamic effects of these factors during periods of market stress, such as those in 1987, 1997 and 1998. Using both formal and informal diagnostics, we find strong evidence for jumps in volatility, even after accounting for jumps in returns. We use implied volatility curves computed from option prices to judge the economic differences between the models. Finally, we evaluate the impact of estimation risk on option prices and find that the uncertainty in estimating the parameters and the spot volatility has important, though very different, effects on option prices.
1,040 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, a new way to generalize the insights of static asset pricing theory to a multi-period setting is proposed, which uses a loglinear approximation to the budget constraint to substitute out consumption from a standard intertemporal asset pricing model.
Abstract: This paper proposes a new way to generalize the insights of static asset pricing theory to a multi-period setting. The paper uses a loglinear approximation to the budget constraint to substitute out consumption from a standard intertemporal asset pricing model. In a homoskedastic lognormal selling, the consumption-wealth ratio is shown to depend on the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption, while asset risk premia are determined by the coefficient of relative risk aversion. Risk premia are related to the covariances of asset returns with the market return and with news about the discounted value of all future market returns.
805 citations
TL;DR: This article investigated whether market-wide liquidity is a state variable important for asset pricing and found that expected stock returns are related cross-sectionally to the sensitivities of returns to fluctuations in aggregate liquidity.
Abstract: This study investigates whether market-wide liquidity is a state variable important for asset pricing. We find that expected stock returns are related cross-sectionally to the sensitivities of returns to fluctuations in aggregate liquidity. Our monthly liquidity measure, an average of individual-stock measures estimated with daily data, relies on the principle that order flow induces greater return reversals when liquidity is lower. Over a 34-year period, the average return on stocks with high sensitivities to liquidity exceeds that for stocks with low sensitivities by 7.5% annually, adjusted for exposures to the market return as well as size, value, and momentum factors.
789 citations