An analysis of Japanese stock return dynamics conditional on U.S. Monday holiday closures

This paper examines a unique data set consisting of Japanese equity returns for the Friday, Monday, and Tuesday surrounding U.S. Monday holiday closures. The objective is to neutralize the impact of spillover effects from New York to Tokyo. Prior studies find that Japanese returns are negative on Tuesday and anomalous; this phenomenon is known as the Japanese-Tuesday effect. One explanation for the Japanese-Tuesday effect is that there exists a cause and effect relationship with Monday returns in New York. Historically, Monday returns in New York are negative, a phenomenon known as the U.S.-Monday effect. The empirical results show that U.S. Monday closures have a significant impact on Japanese return dynamics for surrounding trading days. The empirical evidence does not support the hypothesis that the U.S.-Monday and Japanese-Tuesday effects are related. Potential explanations for the occurrence and then disappearance of the Japanese-Tuesday effect rely on microstructure properties unique to Tokyo. More recently, spillover effects from New York to Tokyo have increased in intensity, and this is attributed to the introduction of the Nikkei 225 index on the SIMEX.Financial markets ; International finance ; Japan ; Stock market

Mutual funds that concentrate on a specific industry earn superior returns

They outperform diversified funds and those with country-specific portfolios, write Takato Hiraki, Ming Liu and Xue Wan

Risk Premia in International Equity Markets Revisited

Recent evidence suggests that global equity markets are becoming more risky. We find that much of the apparent increase in international variance and covariance of returns can be attributed to systematic variations in global risk premia correlated across markets, rather than to any fundamental change in the risk attributes of these markets. This result has interest both for practitioners and for those interested in modeling global asset prices

Investor Sentiment in Japanese and U.S. Daily Mutual Fund Flows

We find evidence that is consistent with the hypothesis that daily mutual fund flows may be instruments for investor sentiment about the stock market. We use this finding to construct a new index of investor sentiment, and validate this index using data from both the United States and Japan. In both markets exposure to this factor is priced, and in the Japanese case, we document evidence of negative correlations between Bull' and Bear' domestic funds. The flows to bear foreign funds in Japan display some evidence of negative correlation to domestic and foreign equity funds, suggesting that there is a foreign vs. domestic sentiment factor in Japan that does not appear in the contemporaneous U.S. data. By contrast, U.S. mutual fund investors appear to regard domestic and foreign equity mutual funds as economic substitutes.

Risk Premia in International Equity Markets Revisited

Recent evidence suggests that global equity markets are becoming more risky. We find that much of the apparent increase in international variance and covariance of returns can be attributed to systematic variations in global risk premia correlated across markets, rather than to any fundamental change in the risk attributes of these markets. This result has interest both for practitioners and for those interested in modeling global asset prices

An Analysis of the Relative Performance of Japanese and Foreign Money Management

Foreign investment management firms have recently started to play a major role in the investment trust business in Japan. In terms of assets under management, their size and market share have almost doubled in the past several years. In part, the relative success of foreign managed firms in attracting market share may be attributed to the fact that Japanese investment trusts have underperformed benchmarks in quite a dramatic fashion over the past two decades. This is at best indirect evidence that Japanese funds underperform their foreign counterparts. In a recent paper (Brown, Goetzmann, Hiraki, Otsuki and Shiraishi 2001) we show that the underperformance can be attributed almost entirely to the unique tax environment of Japanese investment trusts, which had the effect of heavily penalizing early withdrawals. The relaxation of these regulations coincided with a major inflow of new money into the investment trust business. We examine the relative performance of Japanese and foreign investment management firms before and after this change in tax regulations, and find that the poor relative performance of Japanese funds from April 2000 through December 2001 may in part be attributed to the huge inflow of new money into this sector and the style shifts made necessary to accommodate this flow

An Analysis of the Relative Performance of Japanese and Foreign Money Management

Foreign investment management firms have recently started to play a major role in the investment trust business in Japan. In terms of assets under management, their size and market share have almost doubled in the past two years. In part, the relative success of foreign managed firms in attracting market share may be attributed to the fact that Japanese investment trusts have underperformed benchmarks in quite a dramatic fashion over the past two decades. This is at best indirect evidence that Japanese funds underperform their foreign counterparts. In a recent paper (Brown, Goetzmann, Hiraki, Otsuki and Shiraishi 2001) we show that the underperformance can be attributed almost entirely to the unique tax environment of Japanese investment trusts. In this paper we examine the relative performance issue directly by looking at week by week returns for the period January 23, 1998 through to January 14, 2000. Contrary to popular perception, Japanese managers actually outperformed their foreign counterparts over this period of time. Perhaps this indicates that Japanese managers are more skillful. However, the evidence suggests that they happened to be in the right place at the right time. We attribute the superior performance to the asset allocation decision, rather than to any superior skill in selecting securities

Investor Sentiment in Japanese and U.S. Daily Mutual Fund Flows

We find evidence that is consistent with the hypothesis that daily mutual fund flows may be instruments for investor sentiment about the stock market. We use this finding to construct a new index of investor sentiment, and validate this index using data from both the United States and Japan. In both markets exposure to this factor is priced, and in the Japanese case, we document evidence of negative correlations between “Bull” and “Bear” domestic funds. The flows to bear foreign funds in Japan display some evidence of negative correlation to domestic and foreign equity funds, suggesting that there is a foreign vs. domestic sentiment factor in Japan that does not appear in the contemporaneous U.S. data. By contrast, U.S. mutual fund investors appear to regard domestic and foreign equity mutual funds as economic substitutes

Risk Premia in International Equity Markets Revisited

Recent evidence suggests that global equity markets are becoming more risky. We find that much of the apparent increase in international variance and covariance of returns can be attributed to systematic variations in global risk premia correlated across markets, rather than to any fundamental change in the risk attributes of these markets. This result has interest both for practitioners and for those interested in modeling global asset prices

Tenomodulin expression in the periodontal ligament enhances cellular adhesion.

Tenomodulin (Tnmd) is a type II transmembrane protein characteristically expressed in dense connective tissues such as tendons and ligaments. Its expression in the periodontal ligament (PDL) has also been demonstrated, though the timing and function remain unclear. We investigated the expression of Tnmd during murine tooth eruption and explored its biological functions in vitro. Tnmd expression was related to the time of eruption when occlusal force was transferred to the teeth and surrounding tissues. Tnmd overexpression enhanced cell adhesion in NIH3T3 and human PDL cells. In addition, Tnmd-knockout fibroblasts showed decreased cell adhesion. In the extracellular portions of Tnmd, the BRICHOS domain or CS region was found to be responsible for Tnmd-mediated enhancement of cell adhesion. These results suggest that Tnmd acts on the maturation or maintenance of the PDL by positively regulating cell adhesion via its BRICHOS domain