Showing papers on "Stock (geology) published in 2014"

Expectations of Returns and Expected Returns

Abstract: We analyze time-series of investor expectations of future stock market returns from six data sources between 1963 and 2011. The six measures of expectations are highly positively correlated with each other, as well as with past stock returns and with the level of the stock market. However, investor expectations are strongly negatively correlated with model-based expected returns. We reconcile the evidence by calibrating a simple behavioral model, in which fundamental traders require a premium to accommodate expectations shocks from extrapolative traders, but markets are not efficient.

Stock Price Prediction Using the ARIMA Model

Abstract: Stock price prediction is an important topic in finance and economics which has spurred the interest of researchers over the years to develop better predictive models. The autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models have been explored in literature for time series prediction. This paper presents extensive process of building stock price predictive model using the ARIMA model. Published stock data obtained from New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nigeria Stock Exchange (NSE) are used with stock price predictive model developed. Results obtained revealed that the ARIMA model has a strong potential for short-term prediction and can compete favourably with existing techniques for stock price prediction.

Corporate Investment and Stock Market Listing: A Puzzle?

Abstract: We investigate whether short-termism distorts the investment decisions of stock market listed firms. To do so, we compare the investment behavior of observably similar public and private firms using a new data source on private U.S. firms, assuming for identification that closely held private firms are subject to fewer short-termist pressures. Our results show that compared to private firms, public firms invest substantially less and are less responsive to changes in investment opportunities, especially in industries in which stock prices are most sensitive to earnings news. These findings are consistent with the notion that short-termist pressures distort their investment decisions.

The VIX, the variance premium and stock market volatility

Abstract: We decompose the squared VIX index, derived from US SP options prices, into the conditional variance of stock returns and the equity variance premium We evaluate a plethora of state-of-the-art volatility forecasting models to produce an accurate measure of the conditional variance We then examine the predictive power of the VIX and its two components for stock market returns, economic activity and financial instability The variance premium predicts stock returns while the conditional stock market variance predicts economic activity and has a relatively higher predictive power for financial instability than does the variance premium JEL Classification: C22, C52, G12, E32

Attracting investor attention through advertising

Abstract: This paper provides empirical evidence that managers adjust rm advertising expenditures to inuence investor behavior and short-term stock prices. First, this paper shows that increased

Profits without prosperity.

Abstract: Though corporate profits are high, and the stock market is booming, most Americans are not sharing in the economic recovery. While the top 0.1% of income recipients reap almost all the income gains, good jobs keep disappearing, and new ones tend to be insecure and underpaid. One of the major causes: Instead of investing their profits in growth opportunities, corporations are using them for stock repurchases. Take the 449 firms in the S&P 500 that were publicly listed from 2003 through 2012. During that period, they used 54% of their earnings--a total of $2.4 trillion--to buy back their own stock. Dividends absorbed an extra 37% of their earnings. That left little to fund productive capabilities or better incomes for workers. Why are such massive resources dedicated to stock buybacks? Because stock-based instruments make up the majority of executives� pay, and buybacks drive up short-term stock prices. Buybacks contribute to runaway executive compensation and economic inequality in a major way. Because they extract value rather than create it, their overuse undermines the economy�s health. To restore true prosperity to the country, government and business leaders must take steps to rein them in. INSET: Idea in Brief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Media and the Diffusion of Information in Financial Markets: Evidence from Newspaper Strikes

Abstract: The media are increasingly recognized as key players in financial markets. I investigate their causal impact on trading and price formation by examining national newspaper strikes in several countries. Trading volume falls 12% on strike days. The dispersion of stock returns and their intraday volatility are reduced by 7%, while aggregate returns are unaffected. Moreover, analysis of return predictability indicates that newspapers propagate news from the previous day. These findings demonstrate that the media contribute to the efficiency of the stock market by improving the dissemination of information among investors and its incorporation into stock prices.

Who Writes the News? Corporate Press Releases during Merger Negotiations

Abstract: Firms have an incentive to manage media coverage to influence their stock prices during important corporate events. Using comprehensive data on media coverage and merger negotiations, we find that bidders in stock mergers originate substantially more news stories after the start of merger negotiations, but before the public announcement. This strategy generates a short-lived run-up in bidders' stock prices during the period when the stock exchange ratio is determined, which substantially impacts the takeover price. Our results demonstrate that the timing and content of financial media coverage may be biased by firms seeking to manipulate their stock price.

Time-Varying Fund Manager Skill

Abstract: We propose a new definition of skill as general cognitive ability to pick stocks or time the market. We find evidence for stock picking in booms and market timing in recessions. Moreover, the same fund managers that pick stocks well in expansions also time the market well in recessions. These fund managers significantly outperform other funds and passive benchmarks. Our results suggest a new measure of managerial ability that weighs a fund's market timing more in recessions and stock picking more in booms. The measure displays more persistence than either market timing or stock picking alone and predicts fund performance.

Using Structured Events to Predict Stock Price Movement: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract: It has been shown that news events influence the trends of stock price movements. However, previous work on news-driven stock market prediction rely on shallow features (such as bags-of-words, named entities and noun phrases), which do not capture structured entity-relation information, and hence cannot represent complete and exact events. Recent advances in Open Information Extraction (Open IE) techniques enable the extraction of structured events from web-scale data. We propose to adapt Open IE technology for event-based stock price movement prediction, extracting structured events from large-scale public news without manual efforts. Both linear and nonlinear models are employed to empirically investigate the hidden and complex relationships between events and the stock market. Largescale experiments show that the accuracy of S&P 500 index prediction is 60%, and that of individual stock prediction can be over 70%. Our event-based system outperforms bags-of-words-based baselines, and previously reported systems trained on S&P 500 stock historical data.

Stock Identification Methods: An Overview

Abstract: Publisher Summary Stock identification is an interdisciplinary field that involves the recognition of self-sustaining components within natural populations and is a central theme in fisheries science and management. The obvious role of stock identification is as a prerequisite for the tasks of stock assessment and population dynamics, because most population models assume that the group of individuals has homogeneous vital rates (e.g., growth, maturity, and mortality) and a closed life cycle in which young fish in the group were produced by previous generations in the same group. Because stock structure and delineation are uncertain, the reliability of stock assessments, and therefore the effectiveness of fishery management, is severely limited for many fishery resources. There are also roles for stock identification in fishery science that may be equally important but less obvious. Whether the research concerns general life history, growth, physiology, or diet, the population of inference and its stock components should be identified. Therefore, stock identification can be viewed as a prerequisite for any fishery analysis

Weather-Induced Mood, Institutional Investors, and Stock Returns

Abstract: This study shows that weather-based indicators of mood impact perceptions of mispricing and trading decisions of institutional investors. Using survey and disaggregated trade data, we show that relatively cloudier days increase perceived overpricing in individual stocks and the Dow Jones Industrial Index, and increase selling propensities of institutions. We introduce stock-level measures of investor mood; investor pessimism negatively impacts stock returns, mostly amongst stocks with higher arbitrage costs, and stocks experiencing similar changes in weather-induced mood exhibit return comovement. These findings complement existing studies on how weather impacts stock index returns, and identify another channel through which it can manifest.

Analyst Recommendations, Mutual Fund Herding, and Overreaction in Stock Prices

Abstract: This paper documents that mutual funds “herd” trade together into stocks with consensus sell-side analyst upgrades, and herd out of stocks with consensus downgrades. This influence of analyst recommendation changes on fund herding is stronger for downgrades, and among managers with greater career concerns. These findings indicate that career-concerned managers are incentivized to follow analyst information, and that managers have a greater tendency to herd on negative stock information, given the greater reputational and litigation risk of holding losing stocks. Furthermore, starting in the mid-1990s when aggregate mutual fund equity ownership is significantly higher, stocks traded by career-concerned herds of fund managers in response to analyst recommendation changes experience a significant same-quarter price impact, followed by a sharp subsequent price reversal. Our evidence suggests that analyst recommendation revisions induce herding by career-concerned fund managers, and that this type of trading has become price destabilizing with the increasing level of mutual fund ownership of stocks. This paper was accepted by Wei Jiang, finance.

The Real Effects of Short-Selling Constraints

Abstract: We use a regulatory experiment (Regulation SHO) that relaxes short-selling constraints on a random sample of US stocks to test whether capital market frictions have an effect on stock prices and corporate decisions. We find that an increase in short-selling activity causes prices to fall, and that small firms react to these lower prices by reducing equity issues and investment. These results not only provide evidence that short-selling constraints affect asset prices, but also confirm that short-selling activity has a causal impact on financing and investment decisions.

Broad‐Based Employee Stock Ownership: Motives and Outcomes

Abstract: Firms initiating broad-based employee share ownership plans often claim employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) increase productivity by improving employee incentives. Do they? Small ESOPs comprising less than 5% of shares, granted by firms with moderate employee size, increase the economic pie, benefiting both employees and shareholders. The effects are weaker when there are too many employees to mitigate free-riding. Although some large ESOPs increase productivity and employee compensation, the average impacts are small because they are often implemented for nonincentive purposes such as conserving cash by substituting wages with employee shares or forming a worker-management alliance to thwart takeover bids.

Information Efficiency and Firm-Specific Return Variation

Abstract: Reasoning that private firm-specific information causes firm-specific return variation that drives down market-model R2s, [Morck et al., 2000, The Information Content of Stock Markets: Why do Emerging Markets have Synchronous Stock Price Movements? Journal of Financial Economics, 58, 215–260] begin a large body of research which interprets R2 as an inverse measure of price informativeness. Low-R2s or "synchronicity," as it is called in this literature, signal that prices more efficiently incorporate private firm-specific information, and high R2s indicate less. For this to be true, we would expect that low-R2 stocks have characteristics that facilitate private informed trade, i.e., lower information costs and fewer impediments to arbitrage. However, in this paper we document the opposite: Low-R2 stocks are small, young, and followed by few analysts, and have high bid-ask spreads, high price impact, greater short-sale constraints and are infrequently traded. In fact, microstructure measures suggest that private-information events are less likely for low-R2 stocks than high, and that differences in R2 are driven as much by firm-specific volatility on days without private news as by firm-specific volatility on days with private news. These results call into question prior research using R2 to measure the information content of stock prices.

Facebook's daily sentiment and international stock markets

Abstract: We examine the relation between daily sentiment and trading behavior within 20 international markets by exploiting Facebook's Gross National Happiness Index. We find that sentiment has a positive contemporaneous relation to stock returns. Moreover, sentiment on Sunday affects stock returns on Monday, suggesting causality from sentiment to stock markets. We observe that the relation between sentiment and returns reverses the following weeks. We further show that negative sentiments are related to increases in trading volume and return volatility. These results highlight the importance of behavioral factors in stock investing.