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We use stochastic dominance to test whether investors should prefer riskier securities as the investment horizon lengthens. Simulated return distributions for stocks, bonds, and U.S. Treasury bills are generated for holding periods of one to 20 years and stochastic dominance tests are run to establish preferences among the alternative portfolios. With independent returns, we find no evidence that high-risk securities (stocks) dominate low-risk securities (bonds) as the investment horizon lengthens. Under the assumption that security returns are correlated across time, we find that common stocks dominate corporate bonds and U.S. Treasury bills for sufficiently long investment horizons.

This study presents evidence of a statistically significant negative correlation between crude oil and equities over the past 20 years. Including proper proportions of negatively correlated assets in a diversified portfolio can improve the ratio of reward relative to risk, and therefore, adding crude oil with equities into a diversified portfolio can provide superior portfolio performance, compared with equities alone. Because crude oil prices held stable for nearly a century before the oil crisis of 1973, and oil derivatives did not begin trading actively on public markets until the 1980s, the diversification value of oil is a relatively new phenomenon. Also contributing to the phenomenon, the majority of oil reserves and the majority of crude oil production capacity worldwide are held by entities that are not traded in public equity markets, and therefore, the diversification benefits of oil cannot be fully realized by holding a portion of the global market portfolio of equities.

Overnight risk is of particular interest for many market participants including traders who provide liquidity to the market, but also to market participants with longer investment horizons who want to determine whether a given risk–return tradeoff can justify possible intermediate portfolio hedging transactions. Overnight risk may in particular play a highly significant role in emerging markets, given that information is incorporated into prices at a slower rate and liquidity may hinder a quick unwinding of portfolio positions.

Historical stock prices have long been used to evaluate a stock’s future returns as well as the risks associated with those returns. Similarly, historical dividends have been used to evaluate the intrinsic value of a stock using, among other methods, a dividend discount model. In this chapter, we propose an alternate use of the dividend discount model to enable an investor to assess the risks associated with a particular stock based on its dividend history. In traditional applications of the dividend discount model for stock valuation, the value of a stock is the net present value of its future cash dividends. We propose an alternative approach in which we calculate the internal rate of return for a stream of future cash dividends assuming the current stock price. We use a bootstrapping approach to generate a stream of future cash dividends, and use a Monte Carlo simulation approach to run multiple trials of the model. The probability distribution of the internal rates of return obtained from the simulation model provides an investor with an expected percentage return and the standard deviation of the return for the stock. This allows an investor to not only compare the expected internal rates of return for a group of stocks but to also evaluate the associated risks. We illustrate this internal rate of return approach using stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

We revisit the performance of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) in Japan against the backdrop of the Tokyo Stock Exchange's historical nine-year run up from 1980 to 1989, with the time period chosen for the purpose of comparison to previous studies. We analyze the long-run performance of 427 issues or 387 Japanese firms that conducted SEOs from 1980–1990. Initial results indicate that SEOs firms underperform standard benchmarks over subsequent 3- and 5-year periods after issuing. The results from value-weighted portfolios, however, show that SEOs outperform three out of five benchmarks. The results from the Fama-French three factor model show that all of the 16 SEO portfolios (formed by size and book-to-market quartiles) have positively significant intercepts, and most loadings are significant. The size loadings from time series three-factor model of value-weighted portfolio show that SEO sample firm returns exhibit characteristics of large firms as opposed to those of small firms under equally weighted portfolios. Our results support the arguments that (1) the returns of issuing firms are not idiosyncratic, but rather covary with the common factors of nonissuing firms and that (2) the underperformance of SEOs is sensitive to the precise test specifications.

We empirically investigate the hypothesis that the less transparent (more difficult to value) the target’s assets are the more likely it is that the acquiring firm can obtain higher short- and long-term returns. We analyze a sample of 1,538 friendly acquisitions partitioned in two separate dimensions: acquisitions of public versus private firms, and acquisitions of a firm’s assets versus acquisitions of a firm’s assets and its management. Using a sample of (nondiversifying) real estate transactions with a public REIT as the acquirer, we find that acquisitions of public firms have insignificant short-term abnormal returns. Acquisitions of private targets have positive and significant short-term abnormal returns. The acquirer’s abnormal returns are higher in both cases when the transactions involve acquisition of the target firm’s management. We find parallel results when analyzing the acquirer’s Q over the merger year and the three following years. Our conclusions are robust to the type of financing (cash, stock, or a combination) used in the acquisition.

We examine the market valuation of targets with multiple large shareholders (MLS) and single large shareholder (SLS) structures, in an international sample of M&A announcement in 19 countries outside North America. We find that the presence and power of MLS in these firms are negatively associated with abnormal returns and first-bid-to-merger-completion returns, suggesting that MLS mitigate agency problems in the target, and hence their acquisition is perceived as “a loss of good governance.” The negative association between MLS targets and returns is stronger in widely held firms suggesting that MLS indeed curb expropriation of minority shareholders. By contrast, when the second largest shareholder in the MLS structure of the target is a family, we find positive cumulative abnormal returns at the merger announcement, suggesting exacerbated agency problems in these firms that should benefit from the “acquisition of good governance.” Our evidence is robust to a battery of tests and to addressing potential endogeneity.

This study presents evidence on the relations of stock market performance and industrial production growth for a group of 20 industrial markets. Evidence supports the notion that an increase in stock returns or a rise in the market value of stocks contributes positively to industrial production growth. Evidence suggests that stock market risk has a significantly negative effect on production growth for advanced markets. The Granger test finds a unidirectional causality running from stock returns or stock volatility to industrial growth. However, the United States shows a bilateral causality between stock volatility and industrial production growth.

Many researchers suggest that investment bankers underprice IPOs. However, from 1989 to 1996, all Japanese IPOs were auctioned, reducing the role of underwriters. Initial returns of Japanese price-competitive IPOs are not found lower than underwriter-priced U.S. IPOs. Issue size, firm size, general market movements, insider sales levels, and underwriter quality are not highly related to initial returns under price-competitive auctions. However, there appears to be a strong partial adjustment phenomenon. Thus, price-competitive auctions did not result in significantly lower initial returns, but did reduce the impacts of many traditional variables found to significantly affect initial returns in U.S. underwriter-priced IPOs.