Knowledge that Transforms

ABSTRACT For many years, scholars and investment professionals have argued that value strategies outperform the market. These value strategies call for buying stocks that have low prices relative to earnings, dividends, book assets, or other measures of fundamental value. While there is some agreement that value strategies produce higher returns, the interpretation of why they do so is more controversial. This article provides evidence that value strategies yield higher returns because these strategies exploit the suboptimal behavior of the typical investor and not because these strategies are fundamentally riskier.

Preface What Is a Growth Stock? A Hypothesis Regarding the Market's Pricing of Growth Stocks Market Expectations and Responses to New Information Using Fundamental Analysis to Segregate Mispriced Growth Stocks Competitive Analysis Implementing the Strategy Market Anomalies of Importance to Trading Diversification, Risk and Market Efficiency Some Concluding Thoughts Notes Bibliography Index

We document abnormal trading profits in Dutch auction self-tenders. Tender period profits buying after announcement and selling just before expiration are 1.74 percent (Bhagat, Brickley, and Lowenstein (1987) report similar profits for interfirm tenders). Buying just before expiration and tendering yields abnormal profits of 1.36 percent (Lakonishok and Vermaelen (1990) report 9 percent for fixed-price self-tenders using a filter rule). Total profits from buying just after announcement and tendering remain positive after adjusting for bid-ask spreads. Trading profits are higher for smaller firms, and positively correlated with tender period unsystematic risk, suggesting that they arise due to the pricing of event risk.

During the 1980s, the centre of financial market power moved from the United States to Japan and Germany. Having made the classic lending mistakes, American bankers were mauled in cut-throat competition. By the end of the decade, however, the inflection point had been reached and new competitive and economic forces had begun to shift the centre of power once again. In Global Champions, Roy Smith shows how the bases of banking competitiveness are changing, from the size of assets and profitable systems protected by regulation to market know-how, innovation, and technology. He reviews the past and present of the US, European and Japanese financial systems, and provides insights into their futures. European banks, he demonstrates, are in the early stages of a free-market renaissance for which many are ill-prepared. For the powerful German banks, events in Eastern Europe and eastern Germany will be a continuing distraction. Japanese banks and brokers, weakened by losses and scandal, have passed their peaks as superpowers. They now face major regulatory changes that will disrupt their once sage and profitable franchises. As the title indicates, Smith foresees a revival in the competitive position of US banking and finance. He shows how US banking will split into two distinct parts: large, technologically advanced retail companies and market-oriented investment bankers and wholesalers. As the 1990s unfold, survivors of the wild ride of the 1980s will adapt to life on the cutting edge of competition and will spearhead a recovery of American financial power.

Wildcard options are embedded in many derivative contracts. They arise when the settlement price of the contract is established before the time at which the wildcard option holder must declare his intention to make or accept delivery and the exercise of the wildcard option closes out the underlying asset position. This paper provides a simple method for valuing wildcard options and illustrates the technique by valuing the sequence of wildcard options embedded in the S&P 100 index (OEX) option contract. The results show that wildcard options can account for an economically significant fraction of OEX option value.