Market earnings expectation, measurement error in analysts’ consensus forecasts and prediction of stock returns

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-266
Author(s):  
Jung Hoon Kim
Keyword(s):  
Measurement Error ◽  
Stock Returns ◽  
Capital Markets ◽  
Investment Strategy ◽  
Price Ratio ◽  
Investment Strategies ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Consensus Forecasts ◽  
Earnings Expectation

Purpose In capital markets research, analysts’ consensus forecasts are widely used as a proxy for unobservable market earnings expectation. However, they measure the market earnings expectation with error that may vary cross-sectionally, as the market does not consistently rely on analysts’ consensus forecasts to form earnings expectation (Walther, 1997). Based on this notion, this paper aims to relate the prediction of future stock returns to the cross-sectional variation of the error in measuring market earnings expectation embedded in analysts’ consensus forecasts. Design/methodology/approach This study uses empirical analyses based on stock returns and annual analysts’ consensus forecasts. Findings Based on the analytical work by Abarbanell et al. (1995), this study reports that when the measurement error in annual analysts’ consensus forecasts is the smallest, forward earnings-to-price ratio (constructed with annual analysts’ consensus forecasts) best explains future stock returns, and the forward earnings-to-price ratio-based investment strategy is the most profitable. Originality/value Findings of this study are useful to capital markets research that relies on the market earnings expectation and to practitioners seeking more profitable investment strategies.

The profitability of herding: evidence from Taiwan

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (7) ◽  
pp. 919-934 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chun-Da Chen ◽  
Riza Demirer
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
State Space Model ◽  
Investment Strategy ◽  
Investment Strategies ◽  
Past Performance ◽  
Absolute Deviation ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Space Model ◽  
High Level

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to show that the level of herding in an industry can be the basis for a profitable investment strategy. Design/methodology/approach The authors apply three different herding measures in the paper, including cross-sectional standard deviation, cross-sectional absolute deviation and non-linear model – state–space model. Findings The authors find that industries that experience a high level of herding yield higher subsequent returns regardless of their past performance. Consequently, the authors show that a herding-based investment strategy generates significant profits, even after adjusting for risk. The findings also show that the herding effect when combined with past performance as part of a conditional investment strategy yields significant profits regardless of the formation and holding periods. The findings suggest that the level of herding could serve as a systematic driver of returns and could be exploited for profitable investment strategies. Originality/value To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first study in the literature to show that herding by itself can serve as a determinant of returns regardless of past performance.

An investor’s perspective on risk-models and characteristic-models

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 262-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Fieberg ◽  
Thorsten Poddig ◽  
Armin Varmaz
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factor ◽  
Portfolio Optimization ◽  
Stock Returns ◽  
Optimization Approach ◽  
Investment Strategies ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Factor Loadings ◽  
Market Portfolio ◽  
Out Of Sample

Purpose In capital markets, research risk factor loadings and characteristics are considered as opposing explanations for the cross-sectional dispersion in average stock returns. However, there is little known about the performance an investor would obtain who believes either in the characteristics explanation (CB-investor) or in the risk factor loadings explanation (RB-investor). The purpose of this paper is to compare the performance of CB- and RB-investors. Design/methodology/approach To compare the competing strategies, the authors propose a simple new approach to equity portfolio optimization in the style of Brandt et al. (2009) by modeling the portfolio weight in each asset as a function of the asset's risk factor loadings or characteristics. The authors perform an empirical analysis on the German stock market, exploiting the risk factor loadings from the Carhart (1997) four-factor model and the respective characteristics size, book-to-market equity ratio and momentum. Findings The results show that investment strategies relying on characteristics (particularly on momentum) outperform risk-based investment strategies in horse races. These findings hold in- and out-of-sample. Furthermore, the characteristics-based investment strategies outperform a value-weighted market portfolio strategy in- and out-of-sample. Originality/value The authors introduce a portfolio optimization approach that enables investors to directly link portfolio decisions to the firm’s characteristics or risk factor loadings.

Information risk, stock returns, and asset pricing: Evidence from China

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raheel Safdar ◽  
Chen Yan
Keyword(s):  
Stock Returns ◽  
Factor Model ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Market Pricing ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Information Risk ◽  
Accruals Quality ◽  
Three Factor

Purpose This study aims to investigate information risk in relation to stock returns of a firm and whether information risk is priced in China. Design/methodology/approach The authors used accruals quality (AQ) as their measure of information risk and performed Fama-Macbeth regressions to investigate association of AQ with future realized stock returns. Moreover, two-stage cross-sectional regression analysis was performed, both at firm level and at portfolio level, to test if the AQ factor is priced in China in addition to existing factors in the Fama French three-factor model. Findings The authors found poor AQ being associated with higher future realized stock returns. Moreover, they found evidence of market pricing of AQ in addition to existing factors in the Fama French three-factor model. Further, subsample analysis revealed that investors value AQ more in non-state owned enterprises than in state owned enterprises. Research limitations/implications The study sample comprises A-shares only and the generalization of the findings is limited by the peculiar institutional and economic setup in China. Originality/value This study contributes to market-based accounting literature by providing further insight into how and if investors value information risk, and it seeks to fill gap in empirical literature by providing evidence from the Chinese capital market.

Regulation and information asymmetry

2008 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robyn McLaughlin ◽  
Assem Safieddine
Keyword(s):  
Information Asymmetry ◽  
Stock Returns ◽  
Operating Performance ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Information Asymmetries ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Industrial Firms ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Regulated Utilities

PurposeThis paper seeks to examine the potential for regulation to reduce information asymmetries between firm insiders and outside investors.Design/methodology/approachExtensive prior research has established that there are substantial effects of information asymmetry in seasoned equity offers (SEOs). The paper tests for a mitigating effect of regulation on such information asymmetries by examining differences in long‐run operating performance, changes in that performance, and announcement‐period stock returns between unregulated industrial firms and regulated utilities that issue seasoned equity. The authors also segment the samples by firm size, since smaller firms are likely to have greater asymmetries.FindingsConsistent with regulated utility firms having lower levels of information asymmetry, they have superior changes in abnormal operating performance than industrial firms pre‐ to post‐issue and their announcement period returns are significantly less negative. These findings are most pronounced for the smallest firms, firms likely to have the greatest information asymmetries and where regulation could have its greatest effect.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper does not examine costs of regulation. Thus, future research could seek to measure the cost/benefit trade‐off of regulation in reducing information asymmetry. Also, future research could examine cross‐sectional differences between different industries and regulated utilities.Practical implicationsRegulation reduces information asymmetry. Thus, regulation or mandated disclosure may be appropriate in industries/markets where information asymmetry is severe.Originality/valueThis paper is the first to compare the operating performance of regulated and unregulated SEO firms.

Does uncertainty boost overconfidence? The case of financial analysts' forecasts

2014 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 300-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Véronique Bessière ◽  
Taoufik Elkemali
Keyword(s):  
Stock Returns ◽  
Private Information ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Forecast Dispersion ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Announcement ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Sectional Analysis

Purpose – This article aims to examine the link between uncertainty and analysts' reaction to earnings announcements for a sample of European firms during the period 1997-2007. In the same way as Daniel et al., the authors posit that overconfidence leads to an overreaction to private information followed by an underreaction when the information becomes public. Design/methodology/approach – In this study, the authors test analysts' overconfidence through the overreaction preceding a public announcement followed by an underreaction after the announcement. If overconfidence occurs, over- and underreactions should be, respectively, observed before and after the public announcement. If uncertainty boosts overconfidence, the authors predict that these two combined misreactions should be stronger when uncertainty is higher. Uncertainty is defined according to technology intensity, and separate two types of firms: high-tech or low-tech. The authors use a sample of European firms during the period 1997-2007. Findings – The results support the overconfidence hypothesis. The authors jointly observe the two phenomena of under- and overreaction. Overreaction occurs when the information has not yet been made public and disappears just after public release. The results also show that both effects are more important for the high-tech subsample. For robustness, the authors sort the sample using analyst forecast dispersion as a proxy for uncertainty and obtain similar results. The authors also document that the high-tech stocks crash in 2000-2001 moderated the overconfidence of analysts, which then strongly declined during the post-crash period. Originality/value – This study offers interesting insights in two ways. First, in the area of financial markets, it provides a test of a major over- and underreaction model and implements it to analysts' reactions through their revisions (versus investors' reactions through stock returns). Second, in a broader way, it deals with the link between uncertainty and biases. The results are consistent with the experimental evidence and extend it to a cross-sectional analysis that reinforces it as pointed out by Kumar.

Overreaction evidence from large-cap stocks

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 310-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tibebe Abebe Assefa ◽  
Omar A. Esqueda ◽  
Emilios C. Galariotis
Keyword(s):  
Stock Returns ◽  
Factor Model ◽  
Investment Strategy ◽  
Past Performance ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Multifactor Models ◽  
Contrarian Strategy ◽  
Fama And French ◽  
Investment Portfolios ◽  
Three Factor

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess the performance of a contrarian investment strategy focusing on frequently traded large-cap US stocks. Previous criticisms that losers’ gains are not due to overreaction but due to their tendency to be thinly traded and smaller-sized firms than winners are addressed. Design/methodology/approach – Portfolios based on past performance are constructed and it is examined whether contrarian returns exist. The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), Fama and French three-factor model and the Carhart’s (1997) momentum portfolio are used to test whether excess returns are feasible in a contrarian strategy. Findings – The results show an asymmetric performance following portfolio formation. Although both, winners and losers portfolios, have gains during holding periods, losers outperform winners at all times, and with a differential of up to 29.2 per cent 36 months after portfolio formation. Furthermore, the loser and the winner portfolios’ alphas are significant, suggesting that the CAPM and the multifactor models are unable to explain return differentials between winners and losers. Our evidence supports two main conclusions. First, stock market overreaction still holds for a sample of large firms. Second, this is robust to the Fama and French’s (1993, 1996) three-factor model and Carhart’s (1997) momentum portfolio. Findings emphasize the relevance of a contrarian strategy when rebalancing investment portfolios. Practical implications – Portfolio managers can improve stock returns by selling past winners and buying previous loser large-cap US stocks. Originality/value – This paper is the first, to the authors’ knowledge, to examine frequently traded large-cap US stocks to avoid infrequent trading and size concerns.

R&D investment decisions of IPO firms and long-term future performance

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatiana Fedyk ◽  
Natalya Khimich
Keyword(s):  
Stock Returns ◽  
Initial Public Offering ◽  
Investment Decision ◽  
Investment Decisions ◽  
Poor Performance ◽  
Net Income ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Public Offering ◽  
D Investment

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to link valuation of different accounting items to research and development (R&D) investment decisions and investigate how suboptimal R&D choices during initial public offering (IPO) are linked to future operating and market underperformance. Design/methodology/approach For firms with substantial growth opportunities, accounting net income is a poor measure of the firm’s performance (Smith and Watts, 1992). Therefore, other metrics such as R&D intensity are used by investors to evaluate firms’ performance. This leads to a coexistence of two strategies: if earnings are the main value driver, firms tend to underinvest in R&D; and if R&D expenditures are the main value driver, firms tend to overinvest in R&D. Findings The authors show that the R&D investment decision varies systematically with cross-sectional characteristics: firms that are at the growth stage, unprofitable or belong to science-driven industries are more likely to overinvest, while firms that are able to avoid losses by decreasing R&D expenditure are more likely to underinvest. Finally, they find that R&D overinvestment leads to future underperformance as evidenced by poor operating return on assets, lower product market share, higher frequency of delisting due to poor performance and negative abnormal stock returns. Originality/value While prior literature concentrates on R&D underinvestment as a tool of reporting higher net income, the authors demonstrate the existence of an alternative strategy used by many IPO firms – R&D overinvestment.

THE IMPACT OF SAVINGS WITHDRAWALS ON A BANKER’S CAPITAL HOLDINGS SUBJECT TO BASEL III ACCORD

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (02) ◽  
pp. 2050006
Author(s):  
RYLE S. PERERA ◽  
KIMITOSHI SATO
Keyword(s):  
Stock Returns ◽  
Optimal Investment ◽  
Investment Strategy ◽  
Short Selling ◽  
Terminal Condition ◽  
Capital Regulation ◽  
Basel Iii ◽  
Investment Strategies ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Mean Variance

In this paper, we analyze the impact of savings withdrawals on a bank’s capital holdings under Basel III capital regulation. We examine the interplay between savings withdrawals and the investment strategies of a bank, by extending the classical mean–variance paradigm to investigate the bankers optimal investment strategy. We solve this via an optimization problem under a mean–variance paradigm, subject to a quadratic optimization function which incorporates a running penalization cost alongside the terminal condition. By solving the Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman (HJB) equation, we derive the closed-form expressions for the value function as well as the banker’s optimal investment strategies. Our study provides a novel insight into the way banks allocate their capital holdings by showing that in the presence of savings withdrawals, banks will increase their risk-free asset holdings to hedge against the forthcoming deposit withdrawals whilst facing short-selling constraints. Moreover, we show that if the savings depositors of the bank are more stock-active, an economic expansion will imply a greater reduction in bank savings. As a result, the banker will reduce his/her loan portfolio and will depend on high stock returns with short-selling constraints to conform to Basel III capital regulation.

Stock return predictability when growth and accrual measures are negatively correlated

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miao Luo ◽  
Tao Chen ◽  
Jun Cai
Keyword(s):  
Stock Returns ◽  
Negative Correlation ◽  
Abnormal Returns ◽  
High Growth ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Positive Correlation ◽  
Short Sale ◽  
Asset Growth ◽  
Fama And French

Purpose For most companies, growth measures such as asset growth are positively correlated with accrual measures. Just like investment in fixed assets, current accrual represents one form of investment and is an integral part of a firm’s business growth. This makes it difficult to distinguish between the growth-based and earnings quality-based interpretations of the accrual effects, because high accruals can represent both high growth and inflated earnings. The purpose of this paper is to add to the literature by examining an issue that has not received much attention: the correlation between asset growth and accruals and its implication on stock return predictability. The authors address the issue using Fama and Macbeth’s (1973) cross-sectional regressions that are conditional on the correlations between the two variables. Design/methodology/approach The authors partition firms based on whether the correlation between current accrual and asset growth in the past five years is positive (ρ+) or negative (ρ−). The authors refer to these two types of firms such as “positive correlation” and “negative correlation” groups. For both groups, the authors examine whether firms with higher asset growth and higher accruals are associated with lower future stock returns. The authors implement Fama and MacBeth’s cross-sectional regressions incorporating the effect of correlations between growth and accrual measures. In addition, the authors regress hedge portfolio returns on Fama and French (1993) three-factor and Fama and French (2015) five-factor models to see if the intercepts (a’s) from these regressions are significantly different from 0. Findings For each year, the authors partition firms based on whether the correlation between asset growth and current accrual is positive or negative. For both the “positive correlation” and “negative correlation” firms, the authors examine the association between accruals and future stock returns. The authors find that accruals remain strong in predicting future stock returns for both groups. The accrual effects from the “negative correlation” group cannot be attributed to the growth-based hypothesis because for these firms, when accruals are high, growth measures tend to be relatively low and vice versa. The effects are most likely driven by the alternative hypothesis that investors overvalue the accrual part of earnings. Research limitations/implications There exist a few issues when investors actually implement these strategies. These include liquidity costs, institutional holdings and short sale constraints. Lesmond (2008) concludes that the bulk of the trading profits is derived from the short side of the trade, but that this position suffers from high liquidity costs that reduces institutional holdings with consequent short sale constraints. The net gains after taking into account these issues remain an open question be addressed in the future. Practical implications The empirical results indicate that investors can do an implementable portfolio strategy of going long for a year on an initially equally weighted lowest asset growth (accrual) decile portfolio and going short for a year on an initially equally weighted highest asset growth (accrual) decile portfolio, which produces significant abnormal returns. The results further show that these abnormal returns can be improved if investors classify stocks into “the positive correlation” and “negative correlation” groups and implement trading similar trading strategies. Originality/value The empirical evidence finds that firm-year observations that exhibit a negative correlation between growth and accrual measures represents a significant 30 percent of the total firm-year observations during the sample period from July 1974 to June 2017. This highlights the necessity to undertake a detailed analysis on the issue. The authors continue to find accrual effects among these groups of firms. Therefore, the accrual effect cannot be attributed to the diminishing marginal return hypothesis. This is the main contribution of the paper.

Short- and long-term effects of responsible investment growth on equity returns

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yann Ferrat ◽  
Frédéric Daty ◽  
Radu Burlacu
Keyword(s):  
Stock Returns ◽  
Equity Returns ◽  
Investment Horizon ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Responsible Investment ◽  
Short Run ◽  
Investment Growth ◽  
The Impact

PurposeThe growth of socially responsible assets has been exponential over the last decade, they now account for almost a third of professional investments. As the growth persists, faith and conviction investors reshape the equity markets. To fully comprehend the impact of socially conscious participants on security returns, this paper attempts to provide insights on how responsible investment growth has impacted the returns of sustainable stocks. The examination is split by investment horizon to account for short and long effects.Design/methodology/approachUsing an exclusive dataset of non-financial ratings, provided by MSCI ESG research, the authors examine the cross-sectional returns of US and European sustainability-leading and lagging corporations between 2007 and 2019. Panel models robust to country, firm-year and industry effects were then employed to examine the impact of responsible investment growth on future stock returns.FindingsThe authors find evidence that the impact of responsible investment growth is dual contingent upon the timeframe considered. In the short run, sustainability-leading and lagging firms display similar stock returns. However, the spread in returns is negative over long horizons and increasing over time.Originality/valueThe examination performed in this study highlights the significant effect of responsible investment growth on future stock returns. Overall, the authors’ findings are consistent with the price pressure hypothesis in the short run and the cost of capital alteration over longer horizons.

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