Knowledge that Transforms

Past trends in fundamentals linked to economic activity and inflation predict currency returns. We find that a trading strategy that goes long currencies with strong economic momentum and short currencies with weak economic momentum exhibits an annualized Sharpe ratio of 0.70 and yields a significant alpha when controlling for standard carry, momentum, and value strategies. The economic momentum strategy subsumes the alpha of carry trades, suggesting that differences in past economic trends capture cross-country differences in carry.

The US Federal Reserve purchased both agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and Treasury securities to conduct quantitative easing. Using micro-level data, we find that banks benefiting from MBS purchases increase mortgage origination, compared with other banks. At the same time, these banks reduce commercial lending and firms that borrow from these banks decrease investment. The effect of Treasury purchases is different: either positive or insignificant in most cases. Our results suggest that MBS purchases caused unintended real effects and that Treasury purchases did not cause a large positive stimulus to the economy through the bank lending channel.

Investor preferences for holding speculative assets are likely to be more pronounced ahead of firms’ earnings announcements, probably because of lower inventory costs and immediate payoffs or because of enhanced investor attention. We show that the demand for lottery-like stocks is stronger ahead of earnings announcements, leading to a price run-up for these stocks. In sharp contrast to the standard underperformance of lottery-like stocks, lottery-like stocks outperform non-lottery stocks by about 52 basis points in the 5-day window ahead of earnings announcements. However, this return spread is reversed by 80 basis points in the 5-day window after the announcements. Moreover, this inverted-V-shaped pattern on cumulative return spreads is more pronounced among firms with a greater retail order imbalance, among firms with low institutional ownership, and in regions with a stronger gambling propensity, and it is also robust after controlling for past 12-month returns and various proxies for investor attention.

We create a parsimonious monetary policy exposure (MPE) index based on observable firm characteristics that previous studies link to how stocks react to monetary policy. Our index successfully captures stocks’ responses to both conventional and unconventional monetary policy. Stocks whose prices react more positively to expansionary monetary policy (high-MPE stocks) earn lower average returns. This result is consistent with the notion that high-MPE stocks provide a hedge against bad economic shocks, to which the Federal Reserve responds with expansionary monetary policy. A long-short trading strategy designed to exploit this effect achieves an annualized Sharpe Ratio of 0.77.

We investigate the dynamics of heterogeneous beliefs and link them to the volatility pattern throughout the seasoned equity offering (SEO) event window. In sync with a reduction in information asymmetry related to management information releases around the SEO event, belief heterogeneity declines. Moreover, heterogeneity in beliefs, proxied by either analyst- or institutional-trade-based measures, is a robust and salient determinant of SEO firm volatility, which provides an explanation for the volatility timing “puzzle” identified in the SEO market. Furthermore, the relation between heterogeneous beliefs and return volatility weakens as short sale constraints tighten, suggesting a potential causal link.

We challenge the view that short-term debt curbs moral hazard and demonstrate that, in a world with financing frictions and fair debt pricing, short-term debt generates incentives for risk-taking. To do so, we develop a model in which firms are financed with equity and short-term debt and cannot freely optimize their default decision because of financing frictions. We show that when firms are close to distress, the dynamic interaction of operating and rollover losses fuels default risk. In such instances, shareholders find it optimal to increase asset risk to improve interim debt repricing and prevent inefficient liquidation. These risk-taking incentives do not arise when debt maturity is sufficiently long.

We find evidence consistent with previously unrecognized market manipulation by broker-dealers. Specifically, we show that pre-trade hedging, which is distinct from front-running, alters prices at which derivative trades occur. We show this behavior is intentional by exploiting variation in the design of structured equity products (SEPs). We find positive abnormal returns on SEP pricing dates for which issuers benefit from altering closing stock prices but no such returns on pricing dates of otherwise similar SEPs. We also show that large buy trades near the close of trading are more frequent when SEP issuers have incentives to alter closing stock prices.

How do changes in a rating agency's reputation affect the ratings market? We study the dynamics of credit ratings after Standard & Poor's (S&P) was shut out of a large segment of the commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) ratings market following a procedural mistake. Exploiting the fact that most CMBS have ratings from multiple agencies, we show that S&P subsequently eased its standards compared to other raters. This coincided with a partial recovery in the number of deals S&P was hired to rate. Our findings suggest that an agency can regain market share after suffering reputational damage by issuing optimistic ratings.

We investigate the effect of exchange-traded fund (ETF) liquidity on ETF tracking errors, returns, and volatility in the US. We find that illiquid ETFs have large tracking errors. The effect is more pronounced when underlying assets are less liquid. Returns and liquidity of illiquid ETFs are more sensitive to underlying index returns or ETF market liquidity, or both. Thus, a positive liquidity premium exists in US ETF markets. The ETF variance could be larger than its net asst value variance owing to infrequent trading. In summary, illiquid ETFs are more likely to deviate from their underlying indexes and could be riskier than underlying portfolios.

I study a protectionist anti-takeover law introduced in 2014 that covers a subset of all firms in the economy. The law decreased affected firms’ likelihood of becoming the target of a merger or acquisition and had a negative impact on shareholder value. There is no evidence that management of those firms subsequently altered firm policies in its interest. Investment, employment, wages, profitability, and capital structure remain unchanged. The share of annual CEO compensation consisting of equity instruments increased by 8.4 percentage points, suggesting that boards reacted to the loss in monitoring by the takeover market by increasing the pay-for-performance sensitivity.