Finnish Short-Term Stock Returns

Functioning capital markets are a crucial part of a competitive economy since they provide the mechanisms to allocate resources. In order to be well functioning a capital market has to be efficient. Market efficiency is defined as a market where prices at any time fully reflect all available information. Basically, this means that abnormal returns cannot be predicted since they are dependent on future, presently unknown, information. The debate of market efficiency has been going on for several decades. Most academics today would probably agree that financial markets are reasonably efficient since virtually nobody has been able to achieve continuous abnormal positive returns. However, it is clear that a set of return anomalies exists, although they are apparently to small to enable substantial economic profit. Moreover, these anomalies can often be attributed to market design. The motivation for this work is to expand the knowledge of short-term trading patterns and to offer some explanations for these patterns. In the first essay the return pattern during the day is examined. On average stock prices move during two time periods of the day, namely, immediately after the opening and around the formal close of the market. Since stock prices, on average, move upwards these abnormal returns are generally positive and cause the distinct U-shape of intraday returns. In the second essay the results in the first essay are examined further. The return pattern around the former close is shown to partly be the result of manipulative action by market participants. In the third essay the focus is shifted towards trading patterns of the underlying stocks on days when index options and index futures on the stocks expire. Generally no expiration day effect was found. However, some indication of an expiration day effect was found when a large amount of open in- or at-the-money contracts existed. Also, the effects were likelier to be found for shares with high index-weight but fairly low trading volume. Last, in the forth essay the attention is turned to the behaviour of different tax clienteles around the dividend ex-day. Two groups of investors showed abnormal trading behaviour. Domestic non-financial investors, especially domestic companies, showed a dividend capturing behaviour, i.e. buying cum-dividend and selling ex-dividend shares. The opposite behaviour was found for foreign investors and domestic financial institutions. The effect was more notable for high yield, high volume stocks

The expiration day effect of indexoptions and index futures on the underlying shares

This paper studies the effect of the expiration day of index options and futures on the trading volume, variance and price of the underlying shares. The data consists of all trades for the underlying shares in the FOX-index for expiration days during the period October 1995 to the mid of yer 1999. The main results seem to support the findings of Kan 2001, i.e. no manipulation on a larger scale. However, some indication of manipulation could be found if certain characteristics are favorable. These characteristics include: a) a large quantity of outstanding futures or at/in the money options contracts, b) there exists shares with high index weight but fairly low trading volume. Lastly, there is some indication that manipulation might be more popular towards the end of the examined time period

Short-, Long- and Cross-Term Comovement of OMXH25 Stocks

Using novel, nonparametric comovement measures based on the Thick Pen Transform, we study the OMXH25 stocks in the post-financial-crisis decade. The new measures allow us to work with stationary returns and with nonstationary volumes. The comovement can be monitored in time, it is possible to distinguish between comovement on different time scales, and even cross-term comovement can be quantified. The approach is visually-interpretable and multivariate in nature. The results indicate the presence of a cyclical pattern in the relatively strong comovement of returns on semi-annual and annual time scales, with more oscillations in the comovement on quarterly and monthly time scales, and the presence of a slight increasing pattern in the relatively weak comovement of volumes on semi-annual and annual time scales. Cross-term dependence between Nokia’s weekly and monthly features in returns and longer-term features in returns of other stocks is more variable than that based on volumes.peerReviewe

Credit supply, post-acquisition performance and financial constraints

International audienc

Third-party certification and post-IPO acquisitions

International audienc

Do bidders pay cash for underleveraged targets?

The relationship between acquirer capital structure and the payment choice in acquisitions is well documented. However, the target firm's capital structure has been overlooked. We find that acquisitions of underleveraged targets are more likely to be financed by cash than by equity. A 1% increase of the target firm's deviation from normal leverage decreases the proportion of cash used by 0.76%. We conclude that target firm capital structure is important for the choice of payment.peerReviewe

Strategic underleveraging and acquisitions

TThis paper investigates the Morellec and Zhdanov (2008) (MZ) prediction that firms strategically underleverage to win takeover contests. We document support for several specific MZ model predictions: pre-bid underleveraging increases with bidding competition, synergies offered by targets, investment type, industry concentration, and with firms actively adjusting their capital structure in advance of bidding. An empirically verified financial frictions explanation does not fully account for these patterns. Taken together, we find consistent evidence that strategic underleveraging conditional on the acquisition outlook is an important determinant of capital structure dynamics.peerReviewe