Price signals
The High-Frequency Trading Arms Race: Frequent Batch Auctions as a Market Design Response
Eric Budish, Peter Cramton & John Shim
Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The high-frequency trading arms race is a symptom of flawed market design. Instead of the continuous limit order book market design that is currently predominant, we argue that financial exchanges should use frequent batch auctions: uniform price double auctions conducted, e.g., every tenth of a second. That is, time should be treated as discrete instead of continuous, and orders should be processed in a batch auction instead of serially. Our argument has three parts. First, we use millisecond-level direct-feed data from exchanges to document a series of stylized facts about how the continuous market works at high-frequency time horizons: (i) correlations completely break down; which (ii) leads to obvious mechanical arbitrage opportunities; and (iii) competition has not affected the size or frequency of the arbitrage opportunities, it has only raised the bar for how fast one has to be to capture them. Second, we introduce a simple theory model which is motivated by, and helps explain, the empirical facts. The key insight is that obvious mechanical arbitrage opportunities, like those observed in the data, are built into the market design – continuous-time serial-processing implies that even symmetrically observed public information creates arbitrage rents. These rents harm liquidity provision and induce a never-ending socially-wasteful arms race for speed. Last, we show that frequent batch auctions directly address the flaws of the continuous limit order book. Discrete time reduces the value of tiny speed advantages, and the auction transforms competition on speed into competition on price. Consequently, frequent batch auctions eliminate the mechanical arbitrage rents, enhance liquidity for investors, and stop the high-frequency trading arms race.
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Household Production and Asset Prices
Zhi Da, Wei Yang & Hayong Yun
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We empirically examine the asset pricing implications of the Beckerian framework of household production, where utility is derived from both market consumption and home produced goods. We propose residential electricity usage as a real-time proxy for the service flow from household capital, because electricity is used in most modern-day household production activities and it cannot be easily stored. Using U.S. residential electricity usage from 1955 to 2012, our model based on household production explains the equity premium and the cross section of expected stock returns (including those of industry portfolios) with an R2 of 71%.
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Are bad times good news for the Securities and Exchange Commission?
Tim Lohse & Christian Thomann
European Journal of Law and Economics, August 2015, Pages 33-47
Abstract:
There exists a considerable debate in the literature investigating how stock market upswings or downswings impact financial market regulation. The present paper contributes to this literature and investigates whether financial market regulation follows a regulative cycle: does regulation, and consequently investor protection, increase as a result of a stock market downturn [as argued by, e.g., Zingales (J Account Res 47(2): 391–425, 2009)] or — contrary to the regulative cycle hypothesis — as a result of an upswing [as claimed by Povel et al. (Rev Financ Stud 20(4): 1219–1254, 2007), or Hertzberg 2003] Following Jackson and Roe (J Financ Econ 93(2): 207–238, 2009), we use funding data on the world’s most important financial market regulator, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as a proxy for the politically desired degree of regulation. We apply time series analysis. Using more than 60 years of data, we show that the SEC’s funding follows a regulative cycle: A weak stock market results in increased resources for the SEC. A strong stock market results in reduced resources. Our findings underline the downside of regulation as the regulative cycle amplifies the technical procyclicality inherent in regulation.
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Why Market Returns Favor Democrats in the White House?
Michael Long
Rutgers University Working Paper, May 2015
Abstract:
This study attempts to explain why the equity market earns greater returns for bearing risk when a Democrat is President in the USA versus a Republican. We look at data from 1929 through 2012. The data show that the value weighted return minus the corresponding period’s risk free rate is 10.83% when a Democrat is President, versus a corresponding return of -1.20% under Republican Presidents. We see the two basic macroeconomic arguments that should affect market value between the two parties: differences in risk free interest rates and differences in economic growth. On average the Democrats follow a policy of low interest rates. The rate of return on short term T-bills averages 4.55% under the GOP and a 2.48% under Democrats. Further, the Democrats overall economic policies create a higher average real growth rate with a 4.8% average versus only 1.8% under Republican administrations. These together do not explain the differences in equity market returns. Using a basic OLS approach with annual value weighted market returns minus the corresponding risk free rate as the dependent variable, neither interest rates nor real economic growth are significant in explaining returns though the party in power is significant.
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Vladimir Atanasov et al.
Journal of Corporate Finance, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine a fund manager's alleged manipulation of platinum and palladium futures settlement prices. Using benchmarks from parallel electronic markets, we find that the manager’s market-on-close trading causes significant settlement price artificiality. Defying predictions that competition among floor traders should limit any artificiality, the artificiality increases in the second half of the alleged manipulation period. Between 35% and 52% of the latter-period artificiality is directly attributable to noncompetitive floor prices. Inflated floor volume contributes a similar proportion to artificiality via the exchange’s trade-weighted settlement price formula. We estimate that floor counterparties reaped more than $6.0 million in excess profits.
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Hedge Fund Crowds and Mispricing
Richard Sias, H.J. Turtle & Blerina Zykaj
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent models and the popular press suggest that large groups of hedge funds follow similar strategies resulting in crowded equity positions that destabilize markets. Inconsistent with this assertion, we find that hedge fund equity portfolios are remarkably independent. Moreover, when hedge funds do buy and sell the same stocks, their demand shocks are, on average, positively related to subsequent raw and risk-adjusted returns. Even in periods of extreme market stress, we find no evidence that hedge fund demand shocks are inversely related to subsequent returns. Our results have important implications for the ongoing debate regarding hedge fund regulation.
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Do social factors influence investment behavior and performance? Evidence from mutual fund holdings
Arian Borgers et al.
Journal of Banking & Finance, forthcoming
Abstract:
When tastes affect investment decisions of a significant number of investors they have the potential to affect asset prices and consequently also expected returns (Fama and French, 2007). In this paper we evaluate whether tastes for socially sensitive stocks affect holdings of U.S. equity mutual funds. We start with a comparison of socially responsible investment funds to conventional funds and document on the existence of conventional funds that have “more socially responsible” holdings than SRI labeled funds. Subsequently, we analyze whether these exposures to socially sensitive stocks affect mutual fund performance. Our findings indicate that especially investments in Tobacco, Alcohol, and Gambling stocks have the potential to positively affect risk-adjusted fund returns, while exposures to the most socially responsible firms negatively affect performance. This potential is not fully exploited by the mutual funds in our sample as they hold diversified portfolios resulting in small exposure differences between funds. These small exposure differences also explain why the literature has generally found no performance differences between SRI labeled and conventional funds. Based on our main findings we advice the use of holdings based analyses when investigating the effects of social tastes on investment portfolios.
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Perceptions and Price: Evidence from CEO Presentations at IPO Roadshows
Elizabeth Blankespoor, Bradley Hendricks & Gregory Miller
Stanford Working Paper, May 2015
Abstract:
This paper examines the relation between rapidly formed basic cognitive impressions of management and firm valuation. We develop a composite measure of investor perception using 30-second content-filtered video clips of initial public offering (IPO) roadshow presentations. We show that this measure, designed to capture viewers’ impressions of a CEO’s competence, trustworthiness, and attractiveness, is positively associated with an IPO firm’s secondary market value. The result is robust to controls for traditional determinants of firm value. We also show that firms with highly perceived management are more likely to be matched to high-quality underwriters. Finally, we examine components of IPO price formation and find that our composite measure of perception is positively associated with both the price proposed for the offering and the price revision that occurs from this proposed price to the firm’s secondary market valuation. Taken together, our results provide evidence that investors’ instinctive impressions of management are incorporated into investors’ assessments of firm value.
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Institutional Trading during a Wave of Corporate Scandals: “Perfect Payday”?
Gennaro Bernile, Johan Sulaeman & Qin Wang
Journal of Corporate Finance, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the role of institutional trading during the option backdating scandal of 2006-2007. Unlike their inability to anticipate other corporate events, institutional investors as a group display negative abnormal trading imbalances (i.e., buy minus sell volumes) in anticipation of firm-specific backdating exposures. Consistent with informed trading, the underlying trades earn positive abnormal short- and long-term profits. Moreover, the negative abnormal imbalances are larger in magnitude when backdating is likely a more severe issue. Local institutions, in particular, display negative trading imbalances earlier in event-time and earn consistently higher trading profits than non-local institutions. Although we find some evidence of over-reaction following the arrival of information about the backdating scandal, these patterns are short-lived and exclusively due to the activity of non-local institutions. Overall, institutional investors behave as informed investors, particularly in local stocks, during this prolonged period of heightened uncertainty about corporate reporting and governance practices.
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Stock Ownership and Political Behavior: Evidence from Demutualizations
Markku Kaustia, Samuli Knüpfer & Sami Torstila
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
A setting in which customer-owned mutual companies converted to publicly listed firms created a plausibly exogenous increase in stock ownership. We use this shock to identify the effect of ownership of publicly listed shares on political behavior. Using instrumental variable regressions, difference-in-differences analyses, and matching methods, we find the shock changed the way people vote in the affected areas, with the demutualizations being followed by a 1.7–2.7-percentage-point increase in right-of-center vote share. Analyses of demutualizations that did not involve public listing of shares suggest that explanations based on wealth, liquidity, and tax-related incentives do not drive the results, and that the ownership of publicly listed shares was instrumental in generating the increase in conservative voting.
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Thinking Outside the Borders: Investors’ Underreaction to Foreign Operations Information
Xing Huang
Review of Financial Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
I use industry-level returns in foreign markets to examine the hypothesis that value-relevant foreign information slowly diffuses into the stock prices of U.S. multinational firms. A trading strategy that exploits foreign information generates abnormal returns of 0.8% monthly. I find that the market responds more slowly in periods with lower media coverage of foreign news and to information from more linguistically and culturally distant countries. These results suggest that both investors’ inattention and lack of understanding of foreign information slow the incorporation of new information into prices. I further separate these two mechanisms by examining market responses to earnings surprises.
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Cortisol and testosterone increase financial risk taking and may destabilize markets
Carlos Cueva et al.
Scientific Reports, July 2015
Abstract:
It is widely known that financial markets can become dangerously unstable, yet it is unclear why. Recent research has highlighted the possibility that endogenous hormones, in particular testosterone and cortisol, may critically influence traders’ financial decision making. Here we show that cortisol, a hormone that modulates the response to physical or psychological stress, predicts instability in financial markets. Specifically, we recorded salivary levels of cortisol and testosterone in people participating in an experimental asset market (N = 142) and found that individual and aggregate levels of endogenous cortisol predict subsequent risk-taking and price instability. We then administered either cortisol (single oral dose of 100 mg hydrocortisone, N = 34) or testosterone (three doses of 10 g transdermal 1% testosterone gel over 48 hours, N = 41) to young males before they played an asset trading game. We found that both cortisol and testosterone shifted investment towards riskier assets. Cortisol appears to affect risk preferences directly, whereas testosterone operates by inducing increased optimism about future price changes. Our results suggest that changes in both cortisol and testosterone could play a destabilizing role in financial markets through increased risk taking behaviour, acting via different behavioural pathways.
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Once Burned, Twice Shy: Money Market Fund Responses to a Systemic Liquidity Shock
Philip Strahan & Başak Tanyeri
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, April 2015, Pages 119-144
Abstract:
After Lehman’s collapse in 2008, investors ran from risky money market funds. In 27 funds, outflows overwhelmed cash inflows, thus forcing asset sales. These funds sold their safest and most liquid holdings. Funds were thus left with riskier and longer maturity assets. Over the subsequent quarter, however, the hard-hit funds reduced risk more than other funds. In contrast, money funds hit by idiosyncratic liquidity shocks before Lehman did not alter portfolio risk. The result suggests that moral hazard concerns with the Treasury Guarantee of investor claims did not increase risk taking. Funds that benefited most from the government bailout reduced risk.
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The Public Corporation as an Intermediary between “Main Street” and “Wall Street”
Ramesh Rao
Journal of Corporate Finance, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the perfect markets corporate finance theory (Modigliani-Miller), public corporations (firms) have no economic function. Their existence therefore cannot be justified. An unsettling implication is that the extant corporate finance theory applies to an economy in which firms are irrelevant. This research precludes this implication by identifying an economic function for firms in perfect markets. Specifically, I show that firms exist to intermediate between “Main Street” (the real sector that supplies non-financial inputs) and “Wall Street” (the financial sector that supplies cash), and that this intermediation maximizes an investment’s operating cash flows by minimizing the cost of the non-financial inputs. Key implications of this rationale for the firm include: i) an investment’s NPV depends on the firm’s cash holdings; working capital policy is thus an integral part of investment policy, ii) operating characteristics determine the firm’s minimum size (equity capitalization) and “boundaries,” and iii) cash on corporate balance sheets is a “fundamental” for stock-pricing.
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Jonathan Berk & Jules Van Binsbergen
Stanford Working Paper, June 2015
Abstract:
Active fund managers are skilled and, on average, have used their skill to generate about $3.2 million per year. Large cross-sectional differences in skill persist for as long as ten years. Investors recognize this skill and reward it by investing more capital in funds managed by better managers. These funds earn higher aggregate fees, and a strong positive correlation exists between current compensation and future performance.
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Exchange trading rules, surveillance and suspected insider trading
Michael Aitken, Douglas Cumming & Feng Zhan
Journal of Corporate Finance, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine the impact of stock exchange trading rules and surveillance on the frequency and severity of suspected insider trading cases in 22 stock exchanges around the world over the period January 2003 through June 2011. Using new indices for market manipulation, insider trading, and broker-agency conflict based on the specific provisions of the trading rules of each stock exchange, along with surveillance to detect non-compliance with such rules, we show that more detailed exchange trading rules and surveillance over time and across markets significantly reduce the number of suspected cases, but increase the profits per suspected case.
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Wealth transfers via equity transactions
Richard Sloan & Haifeng You
Journal of Financial Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research indicates that firms issue shares when their stock is overpriced and repurchase shares when their stock is underpriced. Such transactions transfer wealth from transacting stockholders to ongoing stockholders. We quantify the magnitude of these wealth transfers and analyze their implications. Strikingly, we find that for the average firm-year, these wealth transfers approximate 40% of net income. We also find that these wealth transfers can be predicted using a variety of firm characteristics and that future wealth transfers are an important determinant of current stock prices.
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Do Happy People Make Optimistic Investors?
Guy Kaplanski et al.
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, April 2015, Pages 145-168
Abstract:
Do happy people predict future risk and return differently from unhappy people, or do individuals rely only on economic facts? We survey investors on their subjective sentiment-creating factors, return and risk expectations, and investment plans. We find that noneconomic factors systematically affect return and risk expectations, where the return effect is more profound. Investment plans are also affected by noneconomic factors. Sports results and general feelings significantly affect predictions. Sufferers from seasonal affective disorder have lower return expectations in the autumn than in other seasons, supporting the winter blues hypothesis.
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Credit Conditions and Stock Return Predictability
Sudheer Chava, Michael Gallmeyer & Heungju Park
Journal of Monetary Economics, September 2015, Pages 117–132
Abstract:
U.S. stock return predictability is analyzed using a measure of credit standards (Standards) derived from the Federal Reserve Board's Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices. Standards is a strong predictor of stock returns at a business cycle frequency, especially in the post-1990 data period. Empirically, a tightening of Standards predicts lower future stock returns. Standards performs well both in-sample and out-of-sample and is robust to a host of consistency checks. Standards captures stock return predictability at a business cycle frequency and is driven primarily by the ability of Standards to predict cash flow news.
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Career Concerns of Banking Analysts
Joanne Horton, George Serafeim & Shan Wu
Harvard Working Paper, April 2015
Abstract:
We study how career concerns influence banking analysts’ forecasts and how their forecasting behavior benefits both them and bank managers. We show that banking analysts issue early in the year relatively more optimistic and later in the year more pessimistic forecasts for banks that could be their future employers. This pattern is not observed when the same analysts forecast earnings of companies that are not likely to be their future employers. Moreover, we use the Global Settlement as an exogenous shock, which limited outside opportunities and therefore exacerbated career concerns, and show that this forecast pattern is more pronounced after the Settlement. Both analysts and bank executives benefit from this behavior. Analysts issuing more biased forecasts for potential future employers are more likely to face favorable career outcomes and bank executives appear to profit from the analysts bias since the bias is associated with higher levels of insider trading. Our results highlight the bias created by asking analysts to rate their outside opportunities in the labor market.
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Propagation of Financial Shocks: The Case of Venture Capital
Richard Townsend
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper investigates how venture-backed companies are affected when others sharing the same investor suffer a negative shock. In theory, companies may be helped or hurt in this scenario. To examine the topic empirically, I estimate the impact of the collapse of the technology bubble on non-information-technology (non-IT) companies that were held alongside Internet companies in venture portfolios. Using a difference-in-differences framework, I find that the end of the bubble was associated with a significantly larger decline in the probability of raising continuation financing for these non-IT companies in comparison to others. This does not appear to be driven by unobservable company characteristics such as company quality or IT relatedness; for the same portfolio company receiving capital from multiple venture firms, investors with greater Internet exposure were significantly less likely to continue to participate in follow-on rounds.
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Hans Hvide & Per Östberg
Journal of Financial Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Stock market investment decisions of individuals are positively correlated with those of coworkers. Sorting of unobservably similar individuals to the same workplaces is unlikely to explain this pattern, as evidenced by the investment behavior of individuals who move between plants. Purchases made under stronger coworker purchase activity are not associated with higher returns. Moreover, social interaction appears to drive the purchase of within-industry stocks. Overall, we find a strong influence of coworkers on investment choices, but not an influence that improves the quality of investment decisions.
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Access to Credit and Stock Market Participation
Serhiy Kozak & Denis Sosyura
University of Michigan Working Paper, April 2015
Abstract:
We exploit staggered removals of interstate banking restrictions to identify the causal effect of access to credit on households’ stock market participation and asset allocation. Using micro data on retail brokerage accounts and proprietary data on personal credit histories, we document two effects of the loosening of credit constraints on households’ financial decisions. First, households enter the stock market by opening new brokerage accounts. Second, households increase their asset allocation to risky assets and reduce their allocation to cash, consistent with a lower need for precautionary savings. The effects are stronger for younger and more credit constrained investors. Overall, we establish one of the first direct links between access to credit and households’ investment decisions.