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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.

This study uses empirical analyses based on stock returns and annual analysts’ consensus forecasts.

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.

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.

We investigate the impact of the creation of a new incentive structure for CEOs resulting from firms introducing equity-based compensation (EBC) as a means of paying top executives on policy decisions. Contrasting a firm’s stock and operating performance in the period the CEO is compensated with EBC (EBC period) and the period when EBC is not a component of the same executive’s pay (No EBC period) leads us to conclude that awarding stock options and restricted shares to executives is not associated with improved firm performance. However, firms initiate EBC after superior performance suggesting that CEOs are awarded compensation in this form as a reward for past performance. Firms have higher unsystematic and total risk levels in the EBC period suggesting EBC influences CEOs’ risk-taking behavior and reduces agency costs arising from managerial risk aversion. While there is no change in R&D expenses and cash ratios there is a decrease in capital expenditures in the EBC period, which is consistent with reduced overinvestment agency costs. Finally, leverage and payout ratios are similar in both periods implying that firms’ financing policy is not influenced by changes in CEOs’ compensation structure.

This paper studies whether individual stocks provide higher returns than government bond in the Chinese market.

The authors compare individual stock returns and government bond returns in the Chinese market.

The authors find that more than half of individual stocks underperform government bonds over the same period in China, which highlights the important role of positive skewness in the distribution of individual stock returns. The high return of a few stocks is the reason why the stock market return is higher than that of government bond in China.

The results of this paper emphasize that portfolio diversification plays an important role in the Chinese market.

Motivated by the lack of research on the value relevance of accounting information in the emerging markets of Middle Eastern countries, and the unique institutional and accounting setting in Egypt, this paper aims to investigate the relation between capital market and accounting information in the emerging market of Egypt. Specifically, based on Egyptian data, this study examines the value relevance of earnings, cash flows from operations and book values.

To examine the value relevance of the above accounting measures, this study uses statistical associations between accounting information and capital market values: the association between earnings and annual returns; the association between cash flows and accruals, and annual returns; and the association between earnings and book values of equity, and stock prices.

The results show that, first, earnings have value relevance. However, earnings changes are significantly more successful than earnings levels in explaining security returns. These results suggest that changes in earnings are largely permanent; hence, earnings follow (close to) a random walk model. Second, contrary to what is stated in the literature, cash flows from operations are not successful in explaining stock returns. This result suggests that cash flows are less important and not value relevant in Egypt compared to the USA or the UK. A possible explanation is that cash flows in Egypt are very volatile (high variance) and not persistent, so the market does not rely on them. Third, individually, both earnings and book values significantly explain stock prices; however, jointly, earnings have incremental explanatory power beyond book values for stock prices whereas book values do not. These results suggest that in Egypt the income statement is much more important than the balance sheet for valuation purposes. Overall, these results are interesting because they do not completely replicate the results from other countries.

The existence of value relevance for earnings despite the apparent lack of value relevance for cash flows can be interpreted as indicating that accruals are designed to offset and smooth cash flows’ volatility and low value relevance, so that earnings are relatively more persistent and relevant. These results show that earnings potentially are a much more important and informative measure of a firm’s value than cash flows from operations in Egypt. However, we certainly need the cash flows information as an ex-post validation of the prior earnings. Overall, it appears that the investors in Egypt are looking at the accounting data when evaluating the value of the firm, which is a good sign. However, the empirical findings of this paper are discussed.

This study contributes to the limited research on value relevance of accounting information in the emerging market of Egypt.

The purpose of this study is to examine within a unified framework the timeliness and conservatism of accounting disclosure accommodating the transmission of news among the Scandinavian stock markets.

To this end the authors have used an augmented ordinary least squares (OLS) approach and univariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic and vector autoregressive (VAR) modeling. The sample covers the period from 1987 to 2020, totaling 1452 observations. The sample was collected from the datastream database.

The empirical results of this study are consistent with previous findings and provide evidence that accounting reporting is timely and conservative while news is transmitted amongst the Scandinavian stock markets.

The findings could be important for investors, firms and regulators since failure of considering information that is derived from more advanced approaches could result in lower quality of annual reports of companies.

The authors examined the relationship between earnings yield and conditional risk using an augmented OLS model and the transmission of news among Scandinavian stock markets using a VAR model.

This study examines the effect of stock liquidity on the magnitude of the accrual anomaly.

This paper examines the relation—both time-series and cross-sectional—between stock liquidity and the magnitude of the accrual anomaly and use the 2001 minimum tick size decimalization as a quasi-experiment to establish causality.

There is both cross-sectional and time-series evidence that stock liquidity is negatively related to the magnitude of the accrual anomaly. Moreover, the extent to which investors overestimate the persistence of accruals decreases with stock liquidity. Results from a difference-in-differences analysis conducted using the 2001 minimum tick size decimalization as a quasi-experiment suggest that the effect of stock liquidity on the accrual anomaly is causal. The findings of this study are consistent with the enhancing effect of stock liquidity on pricing efficiency.

The study's findings are well aligned with the mispricing-based explanation for the accrual anomaly, suggesting that the improvement in market-wide stock liquidity drives the contemporaneous decline in the magnitude of the accrual anomaly, at least to a great extent.

Economic theory suggests that profits of firms in industries with higher competition are less persistent and more volatile than in industries with lower competition (Stigler, 1963; Mueller, 1977). Extending this reasoning, I hypothesize that accounting-based fundamentals are more effective in predicting performance in industries with lower competition. I find that a measure of fundamentals (Piotroski’s F-score) has greater ability to identify potentially mispriced securities in industries with lower competition. The results are robust to using a variety of competition measures and imply that industry competition is an important consideration in the application of fundamental analysis.

In the increasingly globalized economy, foreign exchange fluctuations have multiple, conflicting effects on domestic stock prices. The purpose of this paper is to examine return data to determine the relation between the dollar’s value and stock prices as it relates to monetary policy.

The authors examine US stock returns over a 40-year period, which is classified according to monetary policy and dollar trend. To better understand the impact of foreign exchange fluctuations, the authors estimate a model of stock returns using the three Fama-French factors and a momentum factor. Then the authors explore the underlying economic fundamentals that drive the sharp difference in annual returns between periods when the dollar is in an uptrend trend with loose monetary policy and periods when the dollar is in a downtrend with tight monetary policy.

Over the last 40 years, US stock returns were 2.5 times higher when the dollar was trending up vs down. The factor model of returns shows that equity returns are positively associated with periods when the dollar appreciated. Returns were particularly high when the dollar was in an uptrend during accommodative monetary policy. During these periods, stocks in the consumer goods and services industries provided relatively high returns. This occurred with strong economic growth due to consumer spending. Stocks exhibited the lowest returns when the dollar was depreciating and the Federal Reserve was tightening.

The key contribution of the research is that currency trends should be analyzed in the light of monetary policy. During periods of accommodative monetary policy and dollar appreciation, the US stock market provided average returns of 18.7 percent compared to −3.29 percent during a period of restrictive monetary policy and dollar depreciation. This result is driven by stronger economic growth, which is composed of consumer spending that more than offsets the dollar’s impact on net exports.

Aims to test to determine whether the selection of the historical return time interval (monthly, quarterly, semiannual, or annual) used for calculating real estate investment trust (REIT) returns has a significant effect on optimal portfolio allocations.

Using a mean‐variance utility function, optimal allocations to portfolios of stocks, bonds, bills, and REITs across different levels of assumed investor risk aversion are calculated. The average historical returns, standard deviations, and correlations (assuming different time intervals) of the various asset classes are used as mean‐variance inputs. Results are also compared using more recent data, since 1988, with, data from the full REIT history, which goes back to 1972.

Using the more recent REIT datarather than the full dataset results in optimal allocations to REITs that are considerably higher. Likewise, using monthly and quarterly returns tends to understate the variability of REITs and leads to higher portfolio allocations.

The results of this study are based on the limited historical return data that are currently available for REITs. The results of future time periods may not prove to be consistent with the findings.

Numerous research papers arbitrarily decide to employ monthly or quarterly returns in their analyses to increase the number of REIT observations they have available. These shorter interval returns are generally annualized. This paper addresses the consequences of those decisions.

It has been shown that the decision to use return estimation intervals shorter than a year does have dramatic consequences on the results obtained and, therefore, must be carefully considered and justified.

The purpose of this paper is to update and re‐examine the role of corporate narrative reporting in improving investors' ability to better forecast future earnings change. The paper also aims to construct a risk factor for disclosure quality (DQ) and test whether such a factor is useful in explaining the time‐series variation of UK stock returns.

The paper uses the return‐future earnings regression model to update and re‐examine the value relevance of DQ for investors. It also constructs a DQ factor and adds it to Fama‐French three‐factor model. This is undertaken in order to investigate the usefulness of such a factor in explaining the time‐series variation of UK portfolio returns over and above the role of the original Fama‐French factors.

The paper contributes to the market‐based accounting research in three crucial ways. First, it offers updated evidence on the usefulness of corporate narrative reporting to investors. Second, it offers evidence that the DQ factor is a significant risk factor in the UK. Third, and finally, it finds that the Fama‐French factors might contain DQ‐related information.

The results suggest that narrative reporting contains value‐relevant information for the stock market. Therefore, regulators should think about asking companies to produce compulsory narrative sections (i.e. operating and financial reviews) in their annual reports.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper is the first to construct and add the DQ factor in the original Fama‐French factors.