OPTIMAL INTERNATIONAL RESERVES HOLDINGS IN EMERGING MARKETS ECONOMIES: THE BRAZILIAN CASE

This paper discusses the optimal international reserves holding for Brazilian economy. The optimal is determined with the buffer stock (inventory) model, using a time series approach. This paper differs from traditional approaches that run cross-section analysis. We evaluate Brazilian's reserves holdings with the model and discuss the role of IMF accord in the reserves holdings. The paper also presents evidence to support the idea of fewer needs to hold international reserves in a floating foreign exchange rate regime than in a fixed one. Conclusions highlight that Brazilians' foreign reserves are slightly above the optimal level and the model may allow the country to evaluate the needs of IMF accord renew.

Stock selection based on cluster analysis

We put forward a technique based on cluster analysis to group stocks in spot markets according to a risk-return criterion. We show how an informed investor will make money using the cluster analysis to select stocks of major companies from North and South America.

Disposition effect and gender

Investors seem to hold on to their losing stocks to a greater extent than they hold on to their winning stocks. This well-document behavioral regularity is termed disposition effect (Shefrin and Statman 1985). We set an experiment to replicate results from a previous study of the disposition effect (Weber and Camerer 1998), and further show that a subject’s gender may interfere with the effect’s detection.

Evaluating Brazilian mutual funds with stochastic frontiers

We evaluate the performance of 307 Brazilian stock mutual funds employing stochastic frontiers. We list the top ten actively managed funds and the bottom ten for the period April 2001-July 2003, and show that a fund's efficiency increases with management skill to beat the market. We also find that portfolios with low volatility tend to be more efficient. Yet we find no relationship between fund size and performance, though this might be blurred by a survivorship bias.

Stockmarket comovements revisited

We revisit the issue of comovements of emerging and developed stockmarkets, and provide a simultaneous treatment of data for the eighties and nineties. We show that while emerging markets experience greater instability in the long term than their developed counterparts, there is room for short-term strategies to take advantage of profit opportunities in the emerging markets, especially in India.