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Working Paper
Efficiency in index options markets and trading in stock baskets
Researchers have reported mispricing in index options markets. This study further examines the efficiency of the S&P 500 index options market by testing theoretical pricing relationships implied by no-arbitrage conditions. The effect of a traded stock basket, Standard and Poor's Depository Receipts (SPDRs), on the link between index and options markets is also examined. Pricing efficiency within options markets improves, and the evidence supports the hypothesis that a stock basket enhances the connection between markets. However, when transactions costs and short sales constraints are ...
Working Paper
Stochastic trends and cointegration in the market for equities
We use a no-arbitrage, cost-of-carry pricing model to examine whether equity spot and futures markets are cointegrated. A stock index and its futures price should be cointegrated if the cost of carry is stationary. Otherwise, the appropriate cointegrating relationship is trivariate and includes the index, futures price, and cost of carry. We study the relationships among the Standard and Poor's 500 index, associated index futures price series, and interest rate for January 4, 1988, through June 30, 1995, and find that all three series are nonstationary. We further find that the index and ...
Working Paper
Time-varying volatility in Canadian and U.S. stock index and index futures markets: A multivariate analysis
We use a multivariate generalized autoregressive heteroskedasticity model (M-GARCH) to examine three stock indexes and their associated futures prices: the New York Stock Exchange Composite, Standard and Poor's 500, and Toronto 35. The North American context is significant because markets in Canada and the United States share similar structures and regulatory environments. Our model allows examination of dependence in volatility as it captures time variation in volatility and cross-market influences. Estimated time-variation in volatility is significant, and the volatilities are highly ...
Working Paper
Intrinsic bubbles: the case of stock prices: a comment
Some recent empirical evidence suggests that stock prices are not properly modelled as the present discounted value of expected dividends and that empirical models incorporating nonlinear bubble components better fit the data. In this paper we show that the nonlinearity in the relationship between prices and dividends may arise from how managers choose dividend payout. In particular, we propose a model of managed dividends which can explain observed long-term trends in stock prices. This model of managed dividends is shown to be observationally equivalent to the popular intrinsic bubbles ...
Journal Article
Evidence on the efficiency of index options markets
Index options have been one of the most successful of the many innovative financial instruments introduced over the last few decades, as their high trading volume indicates. Given their prominence, the pricing efficiency of these markets is of great importance. ; Detecting inefficient pricing, or mispricing, requires comparing a theoretically efficient price with prices of options traded in financial markets. One popular approach to deriving pricing relationships is based on a principle called no-arbitrage, which simply assumes that arbitrageurs enter the market and quickly eliminate ...
Journal Article
Competitiveness and price setting in dealer markets
The behavior of securities dealers has been closely scrutinized in the 1990s. Recent investigations of the National Association of Securities Dealers and the Nasdaq market by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission suggest that market makers colluded to fix prices and widen bid-ask spreads in attempts to increase dealers' profits at investors' expense. At a minimum, market makers appear to have adopted a quoting convention that can be viewed as anticompetitive behavior. ; This article explores the Nasdaq pricing controversy in light of economic theory and ...
Journal Article
Emotion and financial markets
Psychologists and economists hold vastly different views about human behavior. Psychologists contend that economists' models bear little relation to actual behavior. This view is supported by a large body of psychological research that shows that emotional state can significantly affect decision making. ; Economists, on the other hand, argue that psychological studies have no theoretical basis and offer little empirical evidence about people's decision-making processes. The reigning financial economics paradigm-the efficient market hypothesis (EMH)-assumes that individuals make rational ...
Working Paper
Institutional investors, analyst following, and the January anomaly
Studies have documented that average stock returns for small, low-stock-price firms are higher in January than for the rest of the year. Two explanations have received a great deal of attention: the tax-loss selling hypothesis and the gamesmanship hypothesis. This paper documents that seasonality in returns is not a phenomenon observed only for small firms' stock or those with low prices. Strong seasonality in excess returns is reported for a sample of widely followed firms. Sample firms have unusually low excess returns in January, and returns adjust upward over the remainder of the year. ...
Working Paper
A simultaneous equations analysis of analysts’ forecast bias and institutional ownership
In this paper we use a simultaneous equations model to examine the relationship between analysts' forecasting decisions and institutions' investment decisions. Neglecting their interaction results in model misspecification. We find that analysts' optimism concerning a firm's earnings responds positively to changes in the number of institutions holding the firm's stock. At the same time, institutional demand responds positively to increases in analysts' optimism. We also investigate several firm characteristics as determinants of analysts' and institutions' decisions. We conclude that ...