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The purpose of this study is to compare market reactions to the change in the demand by index funds between large and small company stocks by examining the transition of the S&P 500, S&P 400 MidCap and S&P 600 SmallCap indexes from market capitalization to free-float weighting. This unique information-free event allows not only avoiding confounding information signaling and investor awareness effects but also comparing the effect of the decrease in demand on stocks of different sizes.

This study uses the event study methodology to calculate abnormal returns and trading volume around the full-float adjustment day. It also tests for significant changes in institutional ownership and liquidity. Multivariate regressions are used to examine the relation of liquidity changes and price elasticity of demand to the cumulative abnormal returns around the full-float adjustment day.

This study finds significant decreases in stock price accompanied with significant increases in trading volume on the full-float adjustment day, and significant gains in quasi-indexer institutional ownership and liquidity. The main finding is that cumulative abnormal returns around the event period are related to changes in the number of quasi-indexer and transient institutional shareholders, not to changes in liquidity or price elasticity of demand.

This study provides the first comprehensive comparison analysis of stock market reactions to the decline in demand between large and small company stocks. As an important implication for future studies of the index effect, changes in institutional ownership should be considered in the analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to examine changes in stock returns, liquidity, institutional ownership, analyst following and investor awareness for companies added to and deleted from the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) index. Previous studies report conflicting evidence regarding the market reactions to changes in the DJIA index membership.

This study uses the event-study methodology to calculate abnormal returns and trading volume around the announcement and effective days of DJIA index changes from 1929 to 2015. It also tests for significant changes in liquidity, institutional ownership, analyst following and investor awareness in the 1990–2015 period. Multivariate regressions are used to perform a simultaneous analysis of competing hypotheses.

This study resolves the mixed results of previous DJIA index papers by documenting different stock price and trading volume reactions over the 1929–2015 period. Focusing on the most recent period, 1990–2015, the study finds that stocks added to (deleted from) the index experience a significant permanent stock price gain (loss). The observed stock price reaction seems to be associated with changes in liquidity proxies thus lending support for the liquidity hypothesis.

Limited data availability for the periods prior to 1990 prevents this study from identifying the exact reasons for different stock price and trading volume reactions across subperiods of the 1929–2015 period.

This study provides the most comprehensive examination of market reactions to changes in the DJIA index and resolves the mixed results of previous studies. A better understanding of market reactions around the DJIA index changes can help both individual and institutional investors with developing effective trading strategies and index managing companies with designing optimal announcement policies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine stock price and trading volume reactions to name changes of the Toronto Stock Exchange listed companies. Previous studies present conflicting evidence on reactions to corporate name changes in US and other capital markets.

This study uses the event study methodology to calculate abnormal returns and trading volume around the announcement, approval, and effective dates of corporate name changes. It also contrasts abnormal returns between major and minor name changes, signaling focused and diversified strategies, accompanied with a ticker symbol change and without a ticker change, structural and pure name changes, as well as brand adoption and radical name changes.

Companies tend to experience a significant run-up in stock price in the period preceding the announcement of a name change. The stocks also show a significant positive abnormal return around the effective date. In addition, corporate name changes are associated with significant increases in trading volume for several days starting from the approval date. Most importantly, the type of a name change matters, as reflected in significance levels of abnormal return and trading volume reactions to various types of corporate name changes.

The limitation of this study comes from the difficulty to precisely identify the date when the market learns about a possible corporate name change.

This study is the first to examine market reactions to name changes of Toronto Stock Exchange listed companies. Most importantly, whereas previous studies focus on the announcement day, this paper also considers the approval and effective days. It also contrasts responses between name changes accompanied with a new ticker and name changes without a ticker change.

The purpose of this paper is to study synchronization in stock index cycles across 82 countries and the linkage between macroeconomic and financial integration and stock market synchronization.

The author document the synchronization structure of the world equity index cycles and its evolution over time. The author examine the explanatory power of various economic and financial variables on cycle comovements.

Trade openness, capital openness, and an EU membership contribute to higher stock index cycle synchronization. Additionally, the macroeconomic and financial variables have asymmetric impacts on countries of different development levels.

The author is the first to thoroughly chronicle the turning points, i.e., bear and bull regimes, of world equity indexes and empirically examine determinants of their cyclical comovement across nations.

The purpose of this paper is to present an alternative approach to equity trading that is based on cointegration. If there are long-run equilibria among financial assets, a cointegration-based trading strategy can exploit profitable opportunities by capturing mean-reverting short-run deviations.

First, the author introduces an equity indexing technique to form cointegration tracking portfolios that are able to replicate an index effectively. The author later enhances this tracking methodology in order to construct more complex portfolio-trading strategies that can be approximately market neutral. The author monitors the performance of a wide range of trading strategies under different specifications, and conducts an in-depth sensitivity analysis of the factors that affect the optimal portfolio construction. Several statistical-arbitrage tests are also carried out in order to examine whether the profitability of the cointegration-based trading strategies could indicate a market inefficiency.

The author shows that under certain parameter specifications, an efficient tracking portfolio is able to produce similar patterns in terms of returns and volatility with the market. The author also finds that a successful long-short strategy of two cointegration portfolios can yield an annualized return of more than 8 percent, outperforming the benchmark and also demonstrating insignificant correlation with the market. Even though some cointegration-based pairs-trading strategies can consistently generate significant cumulative profits, yet they do not seem to converge to risk-less arbitrages, and thus the hypothesis of market efficiency cannot be rejected.

The primary contribution of the research lies within the detailed analysis of the factors that affect the tracking-portfolio performance, thus revealing the optimal conditions that can lead to enhanced returns. Results indicate that cointegration can provide the means to successfully reproducing the risk-return profile of a benchmark and to implementing market-neutral strategies with consistent profitability. By testing for statistical arbitrage, the author also provides new evidence regarding the connection between the profit accumulation of cointegration-based pairs-trading strategies and market efficiency.

The strategic partnership between China and ASEAN has resulted in significant financial reforms at the country and regional level. The scale and pace of these changes call for systematic assessments of their bearing on the development and integration of financial markets in this region. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the level of financial integration of the equity markets in China and ASEAN4 countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand) for the period 2004-2014.

The authors use the β and σ convergence, dynamic conditional correlation, and wavelet correlation to assess the degree, trend, and change across different time scales of the integration of China-ASEAN4 equity markets. Using two measures of change in return per unit risk and variance, we assess the difference in diversification benefits between an equity portfolio China-ASEAN4 and China-EU.

The authors find that financial integration across China-ASEAN4 equity markets fluctuated between a moderate level before and after the recent crisis and a higher level during the crisis. The results indicate that investors achieve higher diversification benefits from a cross-industry than a cross-country investment strategy within this region.

Future research should investigate whether local factors and existing cultural and political differences explain the weak to moderate level of integration of China and emerging ASEAN equity markets.

A good understanding of the degree and evolution of the regional financial integration may be used by investors to allocate capital efficiently when adding ASEAN4 equities to a portfolio of Chinese equities.

Systematic assessments of the regional financial integration contribute to the effort to mitigate the ensuing cross-border financial contagion during crises.

The authors argue that that the increase in correlations of CHINA-ASEAN4 equity markets during the recent crisis does not reflect a permanent shift in the dynamic of the dominant markets in the region. While investors achieve higher diversification benefits from a cross-industry than a cross-country investment strategy within this region, the diversification benefits are lower for long-term than short-term investors.

Leveraged exchange traded funds (ETFs) have become increasingly popular since their introduction in 2006. In recent years, options on leveraged ETFs have been promoted as a means of enhancing returns and reducing risk. The purpose of this paper is to examine the interchangeability of S & P 500 ETF options with leveraged S & P 500 ETF options and to what extent these options allow investors to manage their risk exposure.

With increasing liquidity for these fund’s options, simple option strategies such as covered calls and protective puts can be implemented. This study derives call-call and put-put parity between options on the underlying index and the associated leveraged ETFs. The paper examines comparative measures of return and risk on the underlying indices, along with covered call and protective put positions.

Using the formulations derived, this study shows options on non-leveraged ETFs or on the underlying index can be substituted for leveraged ETF options. Empirical results suggest substituting options on leveraged ETFs with options on the underlying index or index ETF give comparable results, but can differ as the realized leverage ratio over time differs from projected values.

This study is the first to the authors’ knowledge that investigates option strategies on leveraged and inverse ETFs of equity indices. It is also the first to derive call-call and put-put parity relations between options on ETFs and related leveraged and inverse ETFs. The results contribute to securities issuance, investment strategies, and option parity relations.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of the impact of market liquidity on the daily tracking error of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). It puts a special focus on the liquidity cost of individual underlying stocks as well as the process of creation/redemption of ETF shares as key determinants of tracking ability.

The study is based on daily observations of fund data for eight fully replicating German equity ETFs for July 2001-October 2013. A regression model with fund fixed effects is chosen to determine the effect of liquidity cost, creation/redemption and other control variables on daily tracking error. Data were compiled from issuer websites and Datastream. Proprietary XETRA Liquidity Measure, which was used as proxy for liquidity cost was supplied by Deutsche Börse.

The study finds daily tracking error to significantly depend on the liquidity of underlying stocks. This finding emerges even though the ETFs in this study predominantly use in-kind creation/redemption. Even after controlling for creation/redemption, the liquidity impact remains basically unchanged. One reason might be imperfect replication of index weights: Either the in-kind-basket delivered in the course of creation/redemption does not perfectly match the benchmark-weights or the internal rebalancing of weights causes liquidity cost.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that uses a specific liquidity measure for each single stock underlying an ETF. The findings extend the literature by corroborating the view that liquidity of individual stocks in the underlying portfolio has an impact on tracking error.