Risks of investing in the Russian stock market: Lessons of the first decade

The modern history of the Russian stock market has mirrored ups and downs of the country’s transition as well as swings in investor perceptions. In this paper, we describe the evolution of the Russian stock market over its first decade, with particular attention to the risk factors driving stock returns. First, we analyze the development of the institutional infrastructure and dynamics of the market’s size and liquidity measured by the number of listed and traded stocks, depositary receipts and IPOs as well as trading volume in the local stock exchanges and abroad. Then, we examine major political and economic events, which influenced the investor perceptions of the country risk and were reflected in stock prices. Finally, we carry out quantitative analysis of risk factors explaining considerable time and cross-sectional variation in Russian stock returns. We document a significant role of corporate governance, political risk, and macroeconomic risk factors, such as global equity markets performance, oil prices, and exchange rates, whose relative importance varied a lot over time.financial institutions, risk factors, Russian stock market

Is Political Risk Company-Specific? The Market Side of the Yukos Affair

The Yukos affair, a high-profile story of the state-led assault on a private Russian company, provides an excellent opportunity for an inquiry into the nature of company-specific political risks in emerging markets. News associated primarily with law enforcement agencies’ actions against company’s managers, not formally related to the company itself, caused significant negative abnormal returns for Yukos. The results are robust and not driven by a few major events, such as the arrests of Yukos’ top managers and shareholders. Stocks of less transparent private Russian companies have been more sensitive to Yukos-related events, especially employee-related charges by law enforcement agencies. The situation was different for less transparent government-owned companies such as the world-largest natural gas producer Gazprom: they appear to be significantly less sensitive to these events. Actions of regulatory agencies have had predominantly industry-wide impact, whereas law-enforcement agencies’ actions affected shares of large private companies, especially those privatized in the notorious loans-for-shares privatization auctions.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40158/3/wp772.pd

Is Political Risk Company-Specific? The Market Side of the Yukos Affair

The Yukos affair, a high-profile story of the state-led assault on a private Russian company, provides an excellent opportunity for an inquiry into the nature of company-specific political risks in emerging markets. News associated primarily with law enforcement agencies’ actions against company’s managers, not formally related to the company itself, caused significant negative abnormal returns for Yukos. The results are robust and not driven by a few major events, such as the arrests of Yukos’ top managers and shareholders. Stocks of less transparent private Russian companies have been more sensitive to Yukos-related events, especially employee-related charges by the law enforcement agencies. The situation was different for less transparent government-owned companies such as the world-largest natural gas producer Gazprom: they appear to be significantly less sensitive to these events. Actions of regulatory agencies have had predominantly industry-wide impact, whereas law-enforcement agencies’ actions affected shares of large private companies, especially those were privatized in the notorious loans-for-shares privatization auctions.company specific political risk; event study; oil; privatization; Russian stock market

Mutual fund tournament: risk taking incentives induced by ranking objectives

There is now extensive empirical evidence showing that fund managers have relative performance objectives and adapt their investment strategy in the last part of the calendar year to balance their performance in the early part of the year. Emphasis was, however, put on returns in excess of some exogenous benchmark return. In this Paper, we investigate whether fund managers have ranking objectives (as in a tournament). First, in a two-period model, we analyse the game played by two risk-neutral fund managers with ranking objectives. We show that ranking objectives provide incentives for an interim loser to increase risk in the last part of the year. In the second part of the Paper, we test some predictions of the model. We find evidence that funds ranked in the top decile after the first part of the year have risk incentives generated by ranking objectives and that risk induced by ranking objectives is mainly systematic

Mutual Fund Tournament: Risk Taking Incentives Induced By Ranking Objectives

There is now extensive empirical evidence showing that fund managers have relative performance objectives and adapt their investment strategy in the last part of the calendar year to balance their performance in the early part of the year. However, emphasis was put on returns in excess of some exogenous benchmark return. In this Paper, we investigate whether fund managers have ranking objectives (as in a tournament). First, in a two-period model, we analyse the game played by two risk-neutral fund managers with ranking objectives. We show that ranking objectives provide incentives for an interim loser to increase risk in the last part of the year. In the second part of the Paper, we test some predictions of the model. We find evidence that funds ranked in the top decile after the first part of the year have risk incentives generated by ranking objectives and that risk induced by ranking objectives is mainly systematic.Interim Performance; Ranking-Based Objectives; Risk-Taking Incentives

Performance information dissemination in the mutual fund industry

This paper studies the dissemination of performance information in the mutual fund industry. We document a hump-shaped lag pattern for the reaction of mutual fund flows to past performance, i.e., we find that very recent performance is less important than performance several months ago. We attribute this pattern to the presence of less sophisticated investors that update performance information only infrequently. In the 1990s the effect is observed for all funds, but is especially pronounced for highly marketed funds. For the 2000s, we find a substantial increase in the overall probability of investors timely updating mutual fund performance information. As a result, the hump-shaped flow-performance lag pattern disappeared for all but the highly marketed funds.