Are practitioners right? On the relative importance of industrial factors in international stock returns

This paper investigates the relative influences of industrial and country factors in international stock returns. Until very recently, academic research has consistently found that country factors dominate industrial factors. This result is in contradiction with practitioners beliefs. This paper re-examines this issue by analyzing a sample of more than 4000 stocks quoted in 20 developed countries. We find that on average the country effect still dominates stock returns over the period 1997-2000. This result has to be interpreted with caution though, as an analysis that allows for time-varying relative influences demonstrates the rapidly increasing impact of industry effects in recent times. We find, in particular, that this trend is common to all 20 developed countries considered and not only to those that are members of the European Monetary Union. We interpret this result as evidence of the increasing globalization of international equity markets.International stock markets; industries; global factors; diversification

Application of Simple Technical Trading Rules to Swiss Stock Prices: Is it Profitable?

This paper tests if the use of simple technical trading rules on Swiss stock prices is profitable. It considers several trading rules based on the crossing of moving averages. The use of bands and oscillators such as the relative strength index or the stochastic indicator is also investigated. These rules are tested on daily returns of the Swiss Bank Corporation General Index for the period 1969-1997. It is found that the most profitable rule is a double moving average with averages computed on one and five days. With this rule, an annual average return on the SBC Index of 24.30% is obtained compared to a buy-and-hold annual return of 6.25%. These results are confirmed by bootstrap simulations which consider different return generating processes as the AR(1) model and the GARCH(1,1) model. Similar results are obtained for individual stocks. In the presence of trading costs, these rules are only profitable for a particular kind of investor.Moving average, investment strategy, technical analysis, bootstrap

How To Diversify Internationally: A Comparison of Conditional and Unconditional Asset Allocation Methods

To obtain the maximum benefits from diversification, financial theory suggests that investors should invest internationally because of the larger potential for risk reduction stemming from the lower correlation exisiting between assets of different countries. The question that we raise in this paper is how to choose the best mix of countries to diversify internationally? We compare several methods of asset allocation from a Swiss perspective over the period 1988-2001. We simulate different investment policies and compare conditional and unconditional methods. We find that conditional methods, that explicitly assume time-variation in expected returns, outperform all other asset allocation methods.portfolio management; international diversification; asset pricing models; conditioning information

Evolution of Market Uncertainty around Earnings Announcements

This paper investigates theoretically and empirically the dynamics of the implied volatility (or implied standard deviation - ISD) around earnings announcements dates. The volatility implied by option prices can be interpreted as the level of volatility expected by the market over the remaining life of the option. We propose a theoretical framework for the evolution of the ISD that takes into account two well-known features of the instantaneous volatility: volatility clustering and the leverage effect. In this context, the ISD should decrease after an earnings announcement but the post-announcement ISD path depends on the content of the earnings announcement: good news or bad news. An empirical investigation is conducted on the Swiss market over the period 1989-1998.

The Determinants of Stock Returns in a Small Open Economy

This paper examines the determinants of stock returns in a small open economy using an APT framework. The analysis is conducted for the Swiss stock market which has the particularity of including a large proportion of firms that are exposed to foreign economic conditions. Both a statistical and a macroeconomic implementation of the model are performed for the period 1986-2002 with monthly returns on industrial sector indices. The results show that the statistically determined factors yield a better representation of the determinants of stock returns than the macroeconomic variables and that stock returns are influenced by both global and local economic conditions. This suggests that the Swiss stock market is an internationally imperfectly integrated market.Statistical APT, Macroeconomic APT, Market integration, Risk factors

Portfolio Diversification in Europe

Have the euro and accompanying measures of financial integration had a discernable impact on the degree of diversification of European investors? This is an empirical question that this paper tries to answer by exploring four alternative avenues. First we focus on the final outcome: If European investors are indeed better diversified, their consumption should be increasingly correlated. Second we check more directly what is known about the composition of Europeans’ portfolios. A third perspective focuses on the evolution of returns and prices. If indeed European investors are attempting to exploit new arbitrage opportunities opened up by the euro and European financial integration, then it is likely that these behavioral changes will be matched by significant changes in returns or in the nature of the return generating process. Finally, we explore the possibility that the answer to our question may be better revealed by examining the changes that have taken place in the investment process itself.Risk sharing, Portfolio holdings, financial market integration, cross sectional dispersion

Founding family ownership, stock market returns, and agency problems

This paper explores the relationship between founding family ownership and stock market returns. Using the entire population of non-financial firms listed on the Swiss stock market for 2003–2013, we find that the stock returns of family firms are significantly higher than those of non-family firms after adjusting the returns for different firm characteristics and risk factors. Family firms generate an annual abnormal return of 2.8% to 7.1%. Moreover, family firms potentially having more agency problems earn higher abnormal returns. Although they are more profitable, family firms have lower valuations and regularly surprise markets by announcing better-than-expected earnings. The evidence suggests that outside investors earn a premium for being exposed to the specific agency problems present in family firms

What if dividends were tax-exempt?: evidence from a natural experiment

We study the effect of dividend taxes on the payout and investment policy of listed firms and discuss their implications for agency problems. To do so, we exploit a unique setting in Switzerland where some, but not all, firms were suddenly able to pay tax-exempted dividends to their shareholders following the corporate tax reform of 2011. Using a difference-in-differences specification, we show that treated firms increased their payout much more than control firms after the tax cut. Differently, treated firms did not concurrently or subsequently increase investment. We show that the tax-inelasticity of investment was due to a significant drop in retained earnings - as the rise in dividends was not compensated by an equally-sized reduction in share repurchases. Furthermore, treated firms did not raise more equity and/or did not reduce their cash holdings to compensate for the contraction in retained earnings. Finally, we show that an unintended consequence of cutting dividend taxes is to mitigate the agency problems that arise between insiders and minority shareholders