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The primary objective of the paper is to examine the short and long run price linkages between Malaysian unit trust funds and the stock market index as proxied by the Kuala Lumpur composite index (KLCI) over the period 1996‐2000.

Cointegration analyses are used to identify the long run relationship between unit trust funds and the stock market index while Granger causality tests are used to measure the short run price linkages.

Cointegration results show that the long run pricing performance of the unit trust funds differs significantly from that of the KLCI. Interestingly, the findings also reveal that two index funds are found not to be cointegrated with the stock market index. In the short run, one‐way Granger causality test shows that changes in the KLCI Granger causes changes in the unit trust funds. This suggests that fund managers are responding to the past changes in the stock market index over the short run.

The findings of non‐cointegration between passively managed funds and the KLCI are restricted to only two index funds in the sample among other actively managed funds. Since there were not enough index funds available over the study period, future research should include more index funds in the analysis.

In the short run, investors may gather information on the changes in their portfolio composition by observing the movement in the KLCI.

The paper represents the first evidence on the pricing relationships between unit trust funds and the local stock market index and the findings are important to investors in terms of their investment strategies.

This paper explores some institutional aspects of the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE) and investigates the time‐series properties of three major ASE stock indices. The results depict that future returns on these indices are difficult to predict. However, volatility in these indices can be predictable using the GARCH models. Various models for predicting volatility patterns are presented.

The chapter describes the recent history of Sustainability Indices in three Latin American countries: Brazil, Mexico, and Chile. In these countries, local Stock Exchanges have been recently launching their own Sustainability Indices. This ongoing trend may indicate a particular way of addressing Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) in the region. The chapter relies on secondary data, mainly documents published by the Stock Exchanges themselves, and on some selected academic and practitioner oriented articles. All three countries present some common features. In all cases, local stock markets launched Sustainability Indices, and their composition has been publicly available from the beginning. Consequently, SRI is now developing in the region in a different way from that of developed markets. The chapter is based on secondary data only. Further research may involve interviews and surveys with different stakeholders (i.e., investors, quoted companies, public officials). The illustration of a different way of developing an SRI market may help public officials and investors from other countries, either in Latin America or elsewhere, who intend to promote SRI. There are few studies on SRI in Latin America, and comparative research between different countries in the region is still rare.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate sustainability have gained prominence in the major capital markets. In Brazil, the São Paulo Stock Exchange (BM&FBovespa) has created the Corporate Sustainability Index (ISE) and the Carbon Efficient Index (ICO2), responsible for indicating the performance of sustainable companies. Therefore, this study proposes to examine and compare the stock returns of the sustainability index member companies with the returns of companies out of these indexes. In this methodology we selected the two principal negotiability indexes of that market (IBOV and IBrX50), which are indexes that meet the most traded stocks of BM&FBovespa, and calculated the average daily returns of the four indexes in order to make performance comparisons over the period 2005–2014, based on nonparametric statistical tests. Our findings indicate that the average returns of sustainability indexes were higher, but these differences were not statistically significant, confirming previous evidence. Additionally, by means of a cointegration test, we found that the indexes are cointegrated in the long term. These findings are limited to the analyzed emerging market and are also subject to the limitations of the estimated models. Thus, we can infer that presence in the sustainability indexes does not indicate statistically significant higher returns, which means that companies with sustainable practices in Brazil are not only concerned with economic performance, but also with social, cultural, and environmental issues. The main findings are aligned with the concept of triple bottom line, even in the case of an emerging market.

We examine the impact of the unique Japanese stock market microstructure on the pricing of stock index futures contracts. We use intraday transactions data for the Nikkei 225 Futures contracts in Osaka and the corresponding Nikkei 225 Index in Tokyo. Incorporating more realistic transaction-cost estimates and various institutional impediments in Japan, we find that the time-varying liquidity of some component shares of the index in Tokyo represents the most critical impediment to intraday arbitrage and often causes futures prices in Osaka to deviate significantly and persistently from their no-arbitrage boundary, especially for longer-lived contracts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the current global crisis on the integration and co‐movements of selected stock index futures markets.

Time series techniques of cointegration and weekly data covering the period from January 2001 to December 2009 were used in this study. The period of analysis was divided into two periods, namely the pre‐crisis period (January 2001‐July 2007) and during crisis period (August 2007‐December 2009).

No evidence was found of cointegration among the stock index futures markets in both periods. Accordingly, the 2007 subprime crisis does not seem to affect the long‐run co‐movements among the stock index futures markets.

The stock index futures markets provide opportunity for the potential benefits from international portfolio diversification and hedging strategies even after the subprime crisis. The stock index futures significantly extended the variety of investment and risk management strategies available to investors.

Examining the effects of the US subprime crisis on the stock index futures markets integration, to the best of the authors' knowledge, goes clearly beyond the existing literature on the subject matter.

The various stock market indexes are interrelated due to the similar fundamentals which determine the movement in the respective markets. Applying the efficient market hypothesis, an investor should not be able to predict the movement of one index based on the past movement of another index. If the stock markets are efficient, then no long term comovement should exist between stock market indexes. The existence of a long term relation can be tested by use of cointegration tests and common serial correlation feature tests. If no cointegration exists and if no common serial correlation feature exists, then we would not be rejecting efficiency of the stock markets. Using the S&P 500 stock index, the Wilshire 5000 index, and the NASDAQ index, the Hang Seng index, the Footsie index, and the Nikkei index to proxy world stock market indexes, the empirical results of the cointegration and common feature test support the efficiency of the stock markets in most instances. However, the Footsie index consistently demonstrated a relation with the three US stock market indexes included in the study.

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.

This paper aims to investigate Chinese bull and bear markets. The Chinese stock market has experienced a long period of bear cycle from early 2000 until 2006, and then it fluctuated greatly until 2010. However, the cyclical behaviour of stock markets during this period is less well established. This paper aims to answer the question why the Chinese stock market experienced a long duration of bear market and what factors would have impacted this cyclical behaviour.

By comparing the intervals of bull and bear markets between stocks and indices based on a Markov switching model, this paper examines whether different industries or A- and B-share markets could lead to different stock market cyclical behaviour and whether firm size can determine the relationship between the firm stock cycles on the market cycles.

This paper finds a high degree of overlapping of bear cycles between stocks and indices and a high level of overlapping between the bear market and a fraction of stock with increasing stock prices. This leads to the conclusion that the stock performance and trading behaviour are widely diversified. Furthermore, the paper finds that the same industry may have different overlapping intervals of bull or bear cycles in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets. Firms with different sizes could have different overlapping intervals with bull or bear cycles.

This paper fills the literature gap by establishing the cyclical behaviour of stock markets.

This paper explored the new features of emerging stock markets, in order to point out the most associated indicators of increasing stock return volatility, which may lead to instability of emerging markets. The study covers a sample of five geographical areas of emerging economies, including Mexico, Korea, South Africa, Turkey, and Malaysia. It used the backward multiple‐regression technique to examine the relationship between monthly changes of stock price indices as dependent variable and the associated predicting local as well as international variables, which represent possible causes of increasing price volatility and initiating crises in emerging stock markets. The study covered monthly data for a period of forty‐eight months from January 1997 to December 2000. The study revealed that stock trading volume and currency exchange rate respectively represent the highest positive correlation to the emerging stock price changes; thus represent the most predicting variables of increasing price volatility. International stock price index, deposit interest rate, and bond trading volume were moderate predicting variables for emerging stock price volatility. While changes in inflation rate showed the least positive correlation to stock price volatility, thus represents the least predicting variable.