Stay at Home: Flight-to-Safety and Home Bias in U.S. ETFs During COVID-19 Pandemic

We examine the relations between dollar flows of U.S. traded ETFs with exposure to the U.S., Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world during the COVID-19 crisis utilizing a Markov Switching Model (MSVAR). We find convincing evidence that investors use ETFs to gain exposure to foreign markets. This study differs from the new stream of research on the effects of COVID-19 on financial markets and investors’ reactions in two major ways. First, we follow the money by using actual dollars of fund flows, whereas previous studies use returns. Second, we investigate the existence of two distinct regimes during this pandemic: (1) a ‘‘normal” regime when all ETFs receive positive flows and (2) a ‘‘panic” regime which emerges when the number of infected people surges in a global location and investors shift their funds from non-U.S. ETFs to U.S.-exposed ETFs. This portfolio rebalancing away from international funds toward U.S. ETFs, is consistent with the flight-to-safety effect and surge in “home bias” investing during the adverse economic shock. Furthermore, we find evidence of rapid portfolio adjustments of U.S. investors in response to the COVID-19 outbreak in a given geographic location.https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/gradposters2021_business/1008/thumbnail.jp

What influences the Changes in REIT CEO Compensation?: Evidence from Panel Data

This study examines what influences the changes in REIT CEO compensation using the following performance measures: average three-year total returns to shareholders, market value added, Tobin's q, and change in funds from operations. In addition, we examine the impact of managerial power on the change in compensation. Unbalanced panel data is employed to capture both the time-series and cross-sectional effects. The empirical evidence indicates that firm performance and size do not influence the change in CEO salary, while risk, tenure, title, ownership, and age have significant impacts. Contrary to previous findings and a priori expectations, bonuses are not influenced by risk, size, or CEO power; however, they are influenced by performance. Option awards are affected by performance and CEO power.

Dokaz “shiga-like” toksigene E. coli u svježim sirevima proizvedenim u Kermanu, Iran

The Shiga-like toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) is the most important group of food-borne pathogens that emerged recently. These bacteria can cause severe health problems in humans like diarrhea, hemorrhagic colitis and hemolytic uraemic syndrome which have become a serious health problem in various countries. Cattle are thought to be a reservoir for E. coli STEC, and many foodborne diseases have been associated with the consumption of minced beef, beefburgers and raw milk. Although some data suggest that STEC are not prevalent within dairy products, the aim of this work was to assess the prevalence of E. coli O157 and non-O157 STEC in raw milk cheeses produced in the Southern part of Iran (Kerman province). For this purpose, 125 samples of soft and semi-soft cheeses made with raw cow milk were analysed with multiplex-PCR method for the presence of STEC. The use of consensus primers detected stx genes in 6.4% of the samples, but STEC strains could be isolated in only five of them (4%). Just one sample was found to be contaminated with E. coli O157. Our results suggest that in our area study raw milk cheeses could be considered a risk for food born STEC contaminationEscherichia coli koja proizvodi “shiga-like” toksin (engl. shiga-toxin producing E. coli; STEC) pripada skupini najvažnijih bakterija trovača hranom te odnedavno ima sve veće značenje. Ta bakterija može uzrokovati teške poremećaje u ljudi, kao što su proljev, hemoragijski kolitis i sindrom hemolitične uremije, koji su postali ozbiljni zdravstveni problemi u različitim zemljama. Goveda se smatraju rezervoarom za E. coli STEC te su mnoge bolesti vezane uz uzimanje mljevene govedine, usitnjena oblikovana goveđeg mesa i sirova mlijeka. Premda neki podatci govore da se STEC ne nalazi u većoj mjeri u mliječnim proizvodima, svrha je ovoga rada procijeniti prevalenciju E. coli O157 i non-O157 STEC u svježim sirevima proizvedenima u južnom dijelu Irana, u pokrajini Kerman. U tu je svrhu 125 uzoraka mekanih i polutvrdih sireva proizvedenih od sirova kravljeg mlijeka bilo analizirano multipleks PCR-om na prisutnost STEC-a. Uporabom sukladnih početnica dokazani su geni stx u 6,4% uzoraka, ali su sojevi STEC bili izdvojeni samo u pet od njih (4%). Samo jedan uzorak bio je kontaminiran bakterijom E. coli O157. Rezultati upućuju na zaključak da se u istraživanom području sirevi od svježeg kravljeg mlijeka mogu smatrati rizičnim za pojavu STEC-a

Does the Market Believe White Knights and Hostile Bidders are acting in Their Shareholders\u27 Interest?

This study examines why white knights suffer significant losses while their rival hostile bidders experience significant abnormal gains. We address two research questions: 1) Does the market believe that white knights and hostile bidders are acting in their shareholders\u27 interest? 2) Does Tobin\u27s q explain why white knights suffer significant losses and hostile bidders experience significant gains upon the announcement of their bids? The results show that hostile bidders are value-maximizing investors and white knights are not acting in their shareholders\u27 interest. Instead, white knights suffered significant reductions in value and historically have not maximized the wealth of investor

What Influences the Changes in REIT CEO Compensation? Evidence from Panel Data

This study examines what influences the changes in REIT CEO compensation using the following performance measures: average three-year total returns to shareholders, market value added, Tobin\u27s q, and change in funds from operations. The impact of managerial power on the change in compensation is also examined. The empirical evidence indicates that firm performance and size do not influence the change in CEO salary, while risk, tenure, title, ownership, and age have significant impacts. Bonuses are not influenced by risk, size, or CEO power; however, they are influenced by performance. Option awards are affected by performance and CEO power

News and Social Media Emotions in the Commodity Market

Purpose--Emotion plays a significant role in both institutional and individual investors\u27 decision-making process. Emotions affect the perception of risk and the assessment of monetary value. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence available that addresses how investors\u27 emotions affect commodity market returns. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether media-based emotions can be used to predict future commodity returns. Design/methodology/approach--The authors examine the short-term predictive power of media-based emotion indices on the following five days\u27 commodity returns. The research adopts a proprietary data set of commodity-specific market emotions, which is computed based on a comprehensive textual analysis of sources from newswires, internet news sources and social media. Time series econometrics models (threshold generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity and vector autoregressive) are employed to analyze 14 years (January 1998-December 2011) of daily observations of the CRB commodity market index, crude oil and gold returns, and the market-level sentiments and emotions (optimism, fear and joy). Findings--The empirical results suggest that the commodity-specific emotions (optimism, fear and joy) have significant influence on individual commodity returns, but not on commodity market index returns. Additionally, the research findings support the short-term predictability of the commodity-specific emotions on the following five days\u27 individual commodity returns. Compared to the previous studies of news sentiment on commodity returns (Borovkova, 2011; Borovkova and Mahakena, 2015; Smales, 2014), this research provides further evidence of the effects of news and social media-based emotions (optimism, fear and joy) in the commodity market. Additionally, this work proposes that market emotion incorporates both a sentimental effect and appraisal effect on commodity returns. Empirical results are shown to support both the sentimental effect and appraisal effect when market sentiment is controlled in crude oil and gold spot markets. Originality/value - This paper adopts the valence-arousal approach and cognitive appraisal approach to explain financial anomalies caused by investors\u27 emotions. Additionally, this is the first paper to explore the predictive power of investors\u27 emotions (optimism, fear and joy) on commodity returns

Dokaz “shiga-like” toksigene E. coli u svježim sirevima proizvedenim u Kermanu, Iran

The Shiga-like toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) is the most important group of food-borne pathogens that emerged recently. These bacteria can cause severe health problems in humans like diarrhea, hemorrhagic colitis and hemolytic uraemic syndrome which have become a serious health problem in various countries. Cattle are thought to be a reservoir for E. coli STEC, and many foodborne diseases have been associated with the consumption of minced beef, beefburgers and raw milk. Although some data suggest that STEC are not prevalent within dairy products, the aim of this work was to assess the prevalence of E. coli O157 and non-O157 STEC in raw milk cheeses produced in the Southern part of Iran (Kerman province). For this purpose, 125 samples of soft and semi-soft cheeses made with raw cow milk were analysed with multiplex-PCR method for the presence of STEC. The use of consensus primers detected stx genes in 6.4% of the samples, but STEC strains could be isolated in only five of them (4%). Just one sample was found to be contaminated with E. coli O157. Our results suggest that in our area study raw milk cheeses could be considered a risk for food born STEC contaminationEscherichia coli koja proizvodi “shiga-like” toksin (engl. shiga-toxin producing E. coli; STEC) pripada skupini najvažnijih bakterija trovača hranom te odnedavno ima sve veće značenje. Ta bakterija može uzrokovati teške poremećaje u ljudi, kao što su proljev, hemoragijski kolitis i sindrom hemolitične uremije, koji su postali ozbiljni zdravstveni problemi u različitim zemljama. Goveda se smatraju rezervoarom za E. coli STEC te su mnoge bolesti vezane uz uzimanje mljevene govedine, usitnjena oblikovana goveđeg mesa i sirova mlijeka. Premda neki podatci govore da se STEC ne nalazi u većoj mjeri u mliječnim proizvodima, svrha je ovoga rada procijeniti prevalenciju E. coli O157 i non-O157 STEC u svježim sirevima proizvedenima u južnom dijelu Irana, u pokrajini Kerman. U tu je svrhu 125 uzoraka mekanih i polutvrdih sireva proizvedenih od sirova kravljeg mlijeka bilo analizirano multipleks PCR-om na prisutnost STEC-a. Uporabom sukladnih početnica dokazani su geni stx u 6,4% uzoraka, ali su sojevi STEC bili izdvojeni samo u pet od njih (4%). Samo jedan uzorak bio je kontaminiran bakterijom E. coli O157. Rezultati upućuju na zaključak da se u istraživanom području sirevi od svježeg kravljeg mlijeka mogu smatrati rizičnim za pojavu STEC-a

Trading volume, time-varying conditional volatility, and asymmetric volatility spillover in the Saudi stock market

Despite the well known importance of volatility-volume relationship, there is a paucity of research on this topic in emerging markets. We attempt to partially fill this gap by investigating volatility-volume relationship in the most important exchange market in the Middle East. We test the effect of trading volume on the persistence of the time-varying conditional volatility of returns in the Saudi stock market. Overall our results support the mixture of distribution hypothesis at the firm level. We also use two different proxies for information arrival, intra-day volatility, and overnight indicators. We find that these are good proxies for information and are important as contemporaneous volume in explaining conditional volatility. We also test for the volatility spillover direction between large- and small-cap portfolios. Our results show that the spillover effect is larger and statistically significant from large to small companies.Saudi stock market Trading volume Time-varying conditional volatility Mixture of distribution hypothesis