Bearish
Fluctuating Attention and Financial Contagion
Michael Hasler & Chayawat Ornthanalai
Journal of Monetary Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Financial contagion occurs when return and volatility transmit between fundamentally unrelated sectors. Our equilibrium model shows that contagion arises because investors pay fluctuating attention to news. As a negative shock hits one sector, investors pay more attention to it. This raises the volatility of equilibrium discount rates resulting in simultaneous spikes in cross-sector correlations and volatilities. We test the economic mechanism of the model on fundamentally unrelated U.S. industries, which are identified using their customer-supplier relationships. Consistent with the model’s predictions, empirical evidence shows that fluctuating attention generates return and volatility spillovers between fundamentally unrelated industries.
Data Abundance and Asset Price Informativeness
Jérôme Dugast & Thierry Foucault
Journal of Financial Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Information processing filters out the noise in data but it takes time. Hence, low precision signals are available before high precision signals. We analyze how this feature affects asset price informativeness when investors can acquire signals of increasing precision over time about the payoff of an asset. As the cost of low precision signals declines, prices are more likely to reflect these signals before more precise signals become available. This effect can ultimately reduce price informativeness because it reduces the demand for more precise signals (e.g., fundamental analysis). We make additional predictions for trade and price patterns.
The mathematics of market timing
Guy Metcalfe
PLoS ONE, July 2018
Abstract:
Market timing is an investment technique that tries to continuously switch investment into assets forecast to have better returns. What is the likelihood of having a successful market timing strategy? With an emphasis on modeling simplicity, I calculate the feasible set of market timing portfolios using index mutual fund data for perfectly timed (by hindsight) all or nothing quarterly switching between two asset classes, US stocks and bonds over the time period 1993–2017. The historical optimal timing path of switches is shown to be indistinguishable from a random sequence. The key result is that the probability distribution function of market timing returns is asymmetric, that the highest probability outcome for market timing is a below median return. Put another way, simple math says market timing is more likely to lose than to win — even before accounting for costs. The median of the market timing return probability distribution can be directly calculated as a weighted average of the returns of the model assets with the weights given by the fraction of time each asset has a higher return than the other. For the time period of the data the median return was close to, but not identical with, the return of a static 60:40 stock:bond portfolio. These results are illustrated through Monte Carlo sampling of timing paths within the feasible set and by the observed return paths of several market timing mutual funds.
How Active Management Survives
J.B. Heaton & Ginger Pennington
University of Chicago Working Paper, July 2018
Abstract:
There is much evidence that passive equity strategies dominate active equity management, but many investors remain committed to active investing despite its poor relative performance. We explore the behavioral-economic hypothesis that investors fall prey to the conjunction fallacy, believing good returns are more likely if investment is accompanied by hard work. This is an especially plausible manifestation of the conjunction fallacy, because in most areas of life hard work leads to greater success than laziness. Our internet survey results show that from 30% to over 60% of higher-income, over-30 individuals fall prey to the conjunction fallacy in this context, raising significant questions for law and regulatory policy, including whether actively-managed equity products should carry warnings, at least for retail investors.
Birds of a Feather: The Impact of Homophily on the Propensity to follow Financial Advice
Oscar Stolper & Andreas Walter
Review of Financial Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Homophily — individuals’ affinity for others like them — is a powerful principle that governs whose opinions people attend to. Using nearly 2,400 advisory meetings, we find that homophily has a significant positive impact on the likelihood of following financial advice. The increased likelihood of following stems from homophily on gender and age for male clients and from sameness on marital and parental status for female advisees. Moreover, the homophily effect is mitigated by reduced information asymmetry between client and advisor and a long-term relationship with the bank. Our results suggest that client-advisor matching increases individuals’ propensity to follow financial advice.
Earnings Announcement Promotions: A Yahoo Finance Field Experiment
Alastair Lawrence et al.
Journal of Accounting and Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study presents a field experiment in which media articles for a random sample of firms with earnings announcements are promoted to a one percent subset of Yahoo Finance users. Promoted firms have higher abnormal returns and some evidence of lower bid-ask spreads on the day of the earnings announcement. These results are more pronounced for less visible firms, negative earnings news, and on days with fewer promoted firms. These findings suggest that investor attention affects the pricing of earnings and that retail investors buy stocks that catch their attention, in a setting where attention is randomly assigned.
IQ from IP: Simplifying Search in Portfolio Choice
Huaizhi Chen et al.
NBER Working Paper, July 2018
Abstract:
Using a novel database that tracks web traffic on the SEC’s EDGAR servers between 2004 and 2015, we show that mutual fund managers gather information on a very particular subset of firms and insiders, and their surveillance is very persistent over time. This tracking behavior has powerful implications for their portfolio choice, and its information content. An institution that downloaded an insider-trading filing by a given firm last quarter increases its likelihood of downloading an insider-trading filing on the same firm by more than 41.3% this quarter. Moreover, the average tracked stock that an institution buys generates annualized alphas of between 9-18% relative to the purchase of an average non-tracked stock. We find that institutional managers tend to track members of the top management teams of firms (CEOs, CFOs, Presidents, and Board Chairs), and tend to share educational and location-based commonalities with the specific insiders they choose to follow. Collectively, our results suggest that the information in tracked trades is important for fundamental firm value, and is only revealed following the information-rich dual trading by insiders and linked institutions.
Inter-Market Competition and Bank Loan Spreads: Evidence from the Securities Offering Reform
Matthew Gustafson
Journal of Banking & Finance, September 2018, Pages 107-117
Abstract:
I provide evidence of a new mechanism by which access to public securities mitigates the bank hold-up problem and reduces loan spreads – it increases a borrower's bargaining power vis-à-vis a lender by offering a bank loan substitute. Difference-in-differences results indicate that loan spreads decline following legislation that makes public securities more attractive, but only when public securities represent a credible substitute for the bank loan (i.e., for term loans taken out by credit rated borrowers). Spreads on revolving lines of credit, which are more complementary with public securities, increase.