Does Weather Still Affect The Stock Market?

This paper examines the impact of weather phenomena on the German stock market, evaluating cloud cover, humidity, air pressure, precipitation, temperature, and wind speed as weather variables. We use stock market data (returns, trading volume, and volatility) from the DAX, MDAX, SDAX, and TecDAX for the period from 2003 to 2017 and show, with modern time-series (GARCH) models that air pressure is the only weather variable that exerts a potentially consistent effect on the stock market. Air pressure reduces the trading volume on the SDAX and TecDAX, and changes in air pressure lead to increases in returns on the DAX, MDAX and SDAX. The effects of the other weather variables show no clear pattern and are critically discussed. In addition, this article contains an overview of the historical research results on the effects of weather on stock markets.

Sticky Stock Market Analysts

Technological progress in recent years has made new methods available for making forecasts in a variety of areas. We examine the success of ex-ante stock market forecasts of three major stock market indices, i.e., the German Stock Market Index (DAX), the Dow Jones Industrial Index (DJI), and the Euro Stoxx 50 (SX5E). We test whether the forecasts prove true when they reach their effective dates and are therefore suitable for active investment strategies. We revive the thoughts of the American sociologist William Fielding Ogburn, who argues that forecasters consistently underestimate the variability of the future. In addition, we draw on some contemporary measures of forecast quality (prediction-realization diagram, test of unbiasedness, and Diebold–Mariano test). We reveal that (a) unusual events are underrepresented in the forecasts, (b) the dispersion of the forecasts lags behind that of the actual events, (c) the slope of the regression lines in the prediction-realization diagram is <1, (d) the forecasts are highly biased, and (e) the quality of the forecasts is not significantly better than that of naïve forecasts. The overall behavior of the forecasters can be described as “sticky” because their forecasts adhere too strongly to long-term trends in the indices and are thus characterized by conservatism.

Impact of MiFID II on Romanian Stock Market Liquidity—Comparative Analysis with a Developed Stock Market

In light of previous literature that has investigated the effects of MiFID and MiFID II regulation on stock market liquidity, we investigate whether the introduction of MiFID II in Romania has had any effect on the stock market liquidity. Through our empirical analysis, we were able to estimate a meaningful reduction of liquidity in the Romanian stock market liquidity, in response to MiFID II, in line with the previous empirical literature. We find that the liquidity of the BET index constituents has decreased in the period following MiFID II. We find contradictory results in what concerns the German stock market, which could be explained by the different level of development of the stock markets and of the financial education of investors.

Can the FSCORE add value to anomaly-based portfolios? A reality check in the German stock market

This paper examines the added value of using financial statement information, particularly that of Piotroski’s (J Account Res 38:1, 2000. https://doi.org/10.2307/2672906) FSCORE, for equity portfolio selection in the German stock market in a realistic research setting in which the critique against the implementability of FSCORE-based trading strategies is taken into account. We show that the performance of annually rebalanced long-only portfolios formed on any of the examined 12 accounting-based primary criteria improves by including the FSCORE as a supplementary criterion. Our study is the first to show that although the FSCORE boost is strongest for the 1-year holding period length, it also holds, on average, for the 3-year holding period. The use of a 3-year updating frequency is particularly beneficial for the low-accrual portfolio that—when supplemented with the high-FSCORE threshold—generates the best overall performance among all 75 portfolios examined. Moreover, we show that a high FSCORE is also an efficient stand-alone criterion for long-only portfolio formation.

Exploiting the dividend month premium: evidence from Germany

Dividend payments are firm events on a recurring and predictable basis. High returns in the period between announcement-date and ex-dividend date are the main driver for the so-called dividend month premium, which are positive abnormal returns in months in which corporations are predicted to issue dividend payments. In our empirical analysis of the German stock market, we find a robust dividend month premium, which is particularly high for stocks with positive dividend surprise. Knowing the dates of dividend announcements and payments enable portfolio managers to exploit the dividend month premium. Also taking into account tracking error and transaction costs, we show that simple portfolio-enhancing strategies lead to highly significant abnormal returns.

The Standard Portfolio Choice Problem in Germany*

We study an investment experiment with a representative sample of German households. Respondents invest in a safe asset and a risky asset whose return is tied to the German stock market. Experimental investments correlate with beliefs about stock market returns and exhibit desirable external validity at least in one respect: they predict real-life stock market participation. But many households are unresponsive to an exogenous increase in the risky asset’s return. The data analysis and a series of additional laboratory experiments suggest that task complexity decreases the responsiveness to incentives. Modifying the safe asset’s return has a larger effect on behaviour than modifying the risky asset’s return.

Seasonalities in the German stock market

This paper suggests innovative investment strategies drawing on return seasonalities. By means of an out-of-sample study of the German stock market, we report that these long–short investment strategies earn on average raw returns up to 233 basis points per month throughout two decades from 1998 to 2017. On a monthly basis, this documents an outperformance of the corresponding Heston and Sadka (J Financ Econ 87(2):418–445, 2008) strategy by 66%. This outperformance is robust in magnitude even after adjusting for common risk factors along both the three-factor Fama and French (J Financ Econ 33(1):3–56, 1993) model and the four-factor Carhart (J Finance 52(1):57–82, 1997) model. Categorizing stocks into three risk profiles lets us conclude that long–short momentum portfolios of stocks with a low-risk profile generate robust investment performance.