The Forecasting Ability of Money Market Fund Managers and its Economic Value

The model proposed by Merton(1981) to determine the value of forecasting ability is adapted to investigate whether money market fund managers successfully anticipate changes in the yield curve by adjusting the average maturity of their portfolios in the right direction. The potential economic value of such behavior is assessed, and it is shown that if the portfolios of all money market funds were aggregated it would appear that managers are good forecasters even if individually they possess insignifcant forecasting ability. At the same time, the economic value of the aggregate portfolio will be diminished because of the reduced net change in average maturity. Thus, diversifying into many money market funds will not attain the gain that could be realized if an individual manager had a forecasting ability equal to the quality of the average forecast.A sample of 34 money market funds is investigated. Analysis suggests that a small fraction of the funds exhibited forecasting skills, but even they generated negligible economic value because the changes in their portfolios average maturity were too small.There appears to be no relationship between forecasting ability and economic success of money market funds as measured by asset size and growth.

Performance Evaluation of Market Timers

Previous investigators have shown that the Sharpe measure of the performance of a managed portfolio may be flawed when the portfolio manager has market timing ability. We develop the exact conditions under which the Sharpe measure will completely and correctly order market timers according to ability. The derived conditions are necessary, sufficient, and observable. We compare them to empirical estimates of actual market conditions, and find that the circumstances which can lead to a failure of the Sharpe measure do in fact occur. We show, however, that such failures can be greatly reduced by more frequent sampling.

Valuation and Optimal Exercise of the Wild Card Option in the Treasury Bond Futures Market

The Chicago Board of Trade Treasury Bond Futures Contract allows the short position several delivery options as to when and with which bond the contract will be settled. The timing option allows the short position to choose any business day in the delivery month to make delivery. In addition, the contract settlement price is locked in at 2:00 p.m. when the futures market closes, despite the facts that the short position need not declare an intent to settle the contract until 8:00 p.m. and that trading in Treasury bonds car, occur all day in dealer markets. If bond prices change significantly between 2:00 and 8:00 p.m., the short has the option of settling the contract at a favorable 2:00 p.m. price. This phenomenon, which recurs on every trading day of the delivery month, creates a sequence of 6-hour put options for the short position which has been dubbed the "wild card option." This paper presents avaluation model for the wild card option and computes estimates of the value of that option, as well as rules for its optimal exercise.

Measuring Risk Aversion From Excess Returns on a Stock Index

We distinguish the measure of risk aversion from the slope coefficient in the linear relationship between the mean excess return on a stock index and its variance. Even when risk aversion is constant, the latter can vary significantly with the relative share of stocks in the risky wealth portfolio, and with the beta of unobserved wealth on stocks. We introduce a statistical model with ARCH disturbances and a time-varying parameter in the mean (TVP ARCH-N). The model decomposes the predictable component in stock returns into two parts: the time-varying price of volatility and the time-varying volatility of returns. The relative share of stocks and the beta of the excluded components of wealth on stocks are instrumented by macroeconomic variables. The ratio of corporate profit over national income and the inflation rate ore found to be important forces in the dynamics of stock price volatility.

How Big is the Tax Advantage to Debt?

This paper uses an option valuation model of the firm to answer the question, "What magnitude tax advantage to debt is consistent with the range of observed corporate debt ratios?" We incorporate into the model differential personal tax rates on capital gains and ordinary income. We conclude that variations in the magnitude of bankruptcy costs across firms can not by itself account for the simultaneous existence of levered and unlevered firms. When it is possible for the value of the underlying assets to junip discretely to zero, differences across firms in the probability of this jump can account for the simultaneous existence of levered and unlevered firms. Moreover, if the tax advantage to debt is small, the annual rate of return advantage offered by optimal leverage may be so small as to make the firm indifferent about debt policy over a wide range of debt-to-firm value ratios.

Earnings and Dividend Announcements is there a Corroboration Effect?

We examine abnormal stock returns surrounding contemporaneous earnings and dividend announcements in order to determine whether investors evaluate the two announcements in relation to each other.We find that there is a statistically significant interaction effect.The abnormal return corresponding to any earnings or dividend announcement depends upon the value of the other announcement. This evidence suggests the existence of a corroborative relationship between the two announcements. Investors give more credence to unanticipated dividend increases or decreases when earnings are also above or below expectations, and vice versa.

Debt Policy and the Rate of Return Premium to Leverage

Equilibrium in the market for real assets requires that the price of those assets be bid up to reflect the tax shields they can offer to levered firms.Thus there must be an equality between the market values of real assets and the values of optimally levered firms. The standard measure of the advantage to leverage compares the values of levered and unlevered assets, and can be misleading and difficult to interpret. We show that a meaningful measure of the advantage to debt is the extra rate of return, net of a market premium for bankruptcy risk, earned by a levered firm relative to an otherwise-identical unlevered firm. We construct an option valuation model to calculate such a measure and present extensive simulation results. We use this model to compute optimal debt maturities, show how this approach can be used for capital budgeting, and discuss its implications for the comparison of bankruptcy costs versus tax shields.