Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announcements, which includes information about the targeted Federal fund rate and revision to the future path of monetary policy on Southeast Asian stock market performance.

This paper has used a sample of five national equity market indexes over the period 1997-2013 that covers 132 scheduled FOMC meetings. The authors have developed the model of Wongswan (2009) and Kontonikas et al. (2013) to quantify target surprise and path surprise.

The results first show that all the stock markets examined do respond to information in FOMC announcements. Second, the target Federal fund rate has more impact on Southeast Asian stocks performance than information about the future path of monetary policy does. Third, different Southeast Asian equity markets respond similarly to targeting the Federal fund rate, while the responses to monetary policy differ from each other. Fourth, the response of each country to the FOMC announcement is not statistically different in the two periods of financial crisis.

Southeast Asian financial markets are increasingly highly correlated to the US market. The main channel in which FOMC announcement has impact on Southeast Asian stock markets is through US price transmission. This is the case of foreign firms borrowing from the US market. Then, an increase in interest rate, which means that the cost of financing increases, will lower firm equity value.

The understanding of the response of the Southeast Asian stock markets to target surprise and path surprise, and the impact of each surprise in different time periods, would be important to investors and encourage further discussion amongst academics in Southeast Asia, where stock markets have been emerging in recent years.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of volatility risk on stock return predictability specified on two global financial crises: the dot-com bubble and recent financial crisis.

Using a broad sample of stock options traded on the American Stock Exchange and the Chicago Board Options Exchange from January 2001 to December 2010, the effect of different idiosyncratic volatility forecasting measures are examined on future stock returns in four different periods (Bear and Bull markets).

First, the authors find clear and robust empirical evidence that the implied idiosyncratic volatility is the best stock return predictor for every sub-period both in Bear and Bull markets. Second, the cross-section firm-specific characteristics are important when it comes to stock returns forecasts, as the latter have mixed positive and negative effects on Bear and Bull markets. Third, the authors provide evidence that short selling constraints impact negatively on stock returns for only a Bull market and that liquidity is meaningless for both Bear and Bull markets after the recent financial crisis.

These results would be helpful to disclose more information on the best idiosyncratic volatility measure to be implemented in global financial crises.

This study empirically analyses the effect of different idiosyncratic volatility measures for a period that involves both the dotcom bubble and the recent financial crisis in four different periods (Bear and Bull markets) and contributes the existing literature on volatility measures, volatility risk and stock return predictability in global financial crises.

This paper aims to analyse the causes and impact of the significant mean price discounts (25 per cent for financial and 29 per cent for non-financial firms) in rights issues in the UK using a sample of 268 observations for the period of 1994 to 2012. It is observed that for non-financial companies, the issue terms announcement returns are negatively affected by the discount size, while firm size, growth prospects and good previous stock performance have a positive impact. It is also investigated which factors seem to influence managers to engage in deeper discounts when these are so disliked by investors. Evidence is provided that firms with more leverage, larger bid-ask spreads or suffering losses tend to choose deeper discounts. The authors conclude that managers balance the expected negative reaction of the market to a price discount with the risks of a costly issue failure, with these being higher when the firm experiences losses, has a higher volatility and also when the stock market climate is more adverse.

The analysis is divided in two stages. In a first step (thereafter pre-announcement), the authors evaluate the firm’s and market conditions that determine the price discount. In a second stage (post-announcement), the authors measure the market reaction to the rights issues announcement by calculating the abnormal announcement returns by cumulating the difference between daily returns (R) and expected market returns (ER) for the period of −2 to 2 relative to the announcement day.

The authors document that price discounts in right issues for non-financial and financial firms are determined by a set of firm-characteristics and market sentiment. They also bring evidence that price discounts are not arbitrarily determined by firm managers.

The results are consistent with the idea that despite the negative signal to investors conveyed by a significant price discount in the new shares, managers of non-financial companies still engage in substantially price-cutting.