Long-Term Performance Of Foreign Food And Beverage Equities Traded On The New York Stock Exchange: A Look At Investment Opportunities

Because of the growth of international trade and the increase in sales and profits in the food and beverage industry in recent years investors may believe there is a great opportunity to reap high returns from foreign equities.  Cumulative excess returns from all newly issued foreign food and beverage equities over a 36-month period following the date listed on the New York Stock Exchange are tested for significant differences in performance to determine whether they outperform the S & P 500 returns.  Although the 36-month cumulative excess returns are not significant, findings indicate that the food and beverage ADRs performed 13.55 percent lower than the S & P 500 Index which serves as a proxy for the market in general.  Food and beverage seasoned equity offerings outperformed initial public offerings

American Depository Receipts: A Case Study Of The Performance Of Foreign Manufacturing Firm Equities Listed On The New York Stock Exchange

With the growth of free-trade agreements and the development of a global economy, foreign equities may seem to provide a lucrative and diversified alternative for portfolio managers and individual investors.  During the study period, all 35 newly issued foreign manufacturing firm equities from 18 countries listed on the New York Stock Exchange traded as American Depository Receipts (ADRs) are examined to determine short term investment performance relative to the market.  The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index serves as a proxy for the performance of the market. Data are tested for significant differences in returns during the period of January 1, 1990 to December 31, 2002 during the first 21 days of trading after their initial listing.  In addition, the equities are examined to determine whether differences exist in those from emerging and developed countries and whether the timing of issue (in the U.S. bull and bear market) affects returns.  Findings suggest no significant difference in the overall short-term performance of the manufacturing firm ADRs relative to the S&P500 Index during the first 21 days of trading.  Further examination indicates that initial public offerings significantly out-perform the market by 5.0 percent and seasoned equity offerings performance is not significantly different from the S&P 500.  Manufacturing firm ADR returns from developed markets and their counterparts from emerging markets show no significant difference from the performance of the market index.  However, timing of the issue shows the most dramatic contrast in performance.  ADRs issued before 1/1/98, primarily in a bull market, significantly underperformed the market by 26.51 percent.  Those issued in the bear market after 1/1/98 show 9 months of returns that are positive and significant during the 36-month holding period.  Evidence suggests that initial public offerings and timing of issue may affect manufacturing firm ADR portfolio performance to achieve returns greater than the market.      

Foreign Financial Institution Equities: Returns From Emerging Markets And Developed Markets Differ

With the vicissitude of the capital markets, investors continually seek new and innovative techniques that will identify securities that outperform the market.  In addition to the usual fundamental and technical analysis, the international markets may provide enhanced profit potential.  Investors may purchase securities of foreign companies to gain greater diversity and new investment opportunities

Home Health Care Services: A Look At Audit Opinion Announcements And The Contagion Or Competitive Effect On Rival Firms

With the aging of the American population and the increase in demand for health care services, we can expect an increase in investment activity in the health care market.  This study focuses on whether intra-industry information transfers from going-concern audit opinion announcements create contagion or competitive stock price reactions in rival home health care firms.  Data are derived from a sample of firms traded on the NASDAQ, the New York Stock Exchange, or the American Stock Exchange.  Average standardized abnormal returns for each firm are computed during an 8-year period.  The findings suggest a dominating competitive effect for rival home health care and miscellaneous home service firms significant at the .05 level

Optical fibre-tip probes for SERS: numerical study for design considerations.

Enhancement of sub-wavelength optical fields using sub-micron plasmonic probes has found many applications in chemical, material, biological and medical sciences. The enhancement is via localised surface-plasmon resonance (LSPR) which enables the highly sensitive vibrational-spectroscopy technique of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). Combining SERS with optical fibres can allow the monitoring of biochemical reactions in situ with high resolution. Here, we study the electromagnetic-field enhancement of a tapered optical fibre-tip coated with gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) using finite-element simulations. We investigate the electric-field enhancement associated with metallic NPs and study the effect of parameters such as tip-aperture radius, cone angle, nanoparticle size and gaps between them. Our study provides an understanding of the design and application of metal-nanoparticle-coated optical-fibre-tip probes for SERS. The approach of using fibre-coupled delivery adds flexibility and simplifies the system requirements in SERS, making it suitable for cellular imaging and mapping bio-interfaces.Trinity College, Cambridge for a PhD studentship Darwin College, Cambridge for a Henslow Research Fellowshi

Performance Of Chilean ADRs On The New York Stock Exchange

In this study, we examine NYSE-listed American Depository Receipts from Chile to determine overall short and long-term investment performance and whether the type of issue (IPO versus SEO) affects ADR performance relative to the S&P 500.  Short-term performance suggests Chilean ADRs did not perform significantly different than the market index.  However, the Chilean ADRs significantly underperformed the S&P 500 by over 32 percent during the three-year trading horizon.  In comparing long-run excess returns of SEOs versus those of IPOs, the SEO subset performed similar to the market while the IPOs significantly underperformed the market index by 45 percent.  These results provide evidence that the type of issue (IPO versus SEO) affects portfolio returns when investing in Chilean ADRs

Exclusion of Stellar Companions to Exoplanet Host Stars

Given the frequency of stellar multiplicity in the solar neighborhood, it is important to study the impacts this can have on exoplanet properties and orbital dynamics. There have been numerous imaging survey projects established to detect possible low-mass stellar companions to exoplanet host stars. Here we provide the results from a systematic speckle imaging survey of known exoplanet host stars. In total, 71 stars were observed at 692~nm and 880~nm bands using the Differential Speckle Survey Instrument (DSSI) at the Gemini-North Observatory. Our results show that all but 2 of the stars included in this sample have no evidence of stellar companions with luminosities down to the detection and projected separation limits of our instrumentation. The mass-luminosity relationship is used to estimate the maximum mass a stellar companion can have without being detected. These results are used to discuss the potential for further radial velocity follow-up and interpretation of companion signals.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in A

Thermal Decoupling of Molecular-Relaxation Processes from the Vibrational Density of States at Terahertz Frequencies in Supercooled Hydrogen-Bonded Liquids.

At terahertz frequencies, the libration-vibration motions couple to the dielectric relaxations in disordered hydrogen-bonded solids. The interplay between these processes is still poorly understood, in particular at temperatures below the glass transition temperature, Tg, yet this behavior is of vital importance for the molecular mobility of such materials to remain in the amorphous phase. A series of polyhydric alcohols were studied at temperatures between 80 and 310 K in the frequency range of 0.2-3 THz using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. Three universal features were observed in the dielectric losses, ϵ″(ν): (a) At temperatures well below the glass transition, ϵ″(ν) comprises a temperature-independent microscopic peak, which persists into the liquid phase and which is identified as being due to librational/torsional modes. For 0.65 Tg < T < Tg, additional thermally dependent contributions are observed, and we found strong evidence for its relation to the Johari-Goldstein secondary β-relaxation process. (b) Clear spectroscopic evidence is found for a secondary β glass transition at 0.65 Tg, which is not related to the fragility of the glasses. (c) At temperatures above Tg, the losses become dominated by primary α-relaxation processes. Our results show that the thermal changes in the losses seem to be underpinned by a universal change in the hydrogen bonding structure of the samples.J.S. would like to thank the U. K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for financial support.This is the final published version, which can also be viewed on the publisher's website at: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jz500730

Structure and Bonding in Amorphous Red Phosphorus

Amorphous red phosphorus (a-P) is one of the remaining puzzling cases in the structural chemistry of the elements. Here, we elucidate the structure, stability, and chemical bond-ing in a-P from first principles, combining machine-learning and density-functional theo-ry (DFT) methods. We show that a-P structures exist with a range of energies slightly higher than those of phosphorus nanorods, to which they are closely related, and that the stability of a-P is linked to the degree of structural relaxation and medium-range order. We thus complete the stability range of phosphorus allotropes [Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 11629] by now including the previously poorly understood amorphous phase, and we quantify the covalent and van der Waals interactions in all main phases of phos-phorus. We also study the electronic densities of states, including those of hydrogenated a-P. Beyond the present study, our structural models are expected to enable wider-ranging first-principles investigations - for example, of a-P-based battery materials