Knowledge that Transforms

Journal Article Subscription Page Get access The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Volume 4, Issue 1, June 2014, Page i3, https://doi.org/10.1093/rapstu/rat013 Published: 06 May 2014

We introduce a new hybrid measure of stock return tail covariance risk, motivated by the underdiversified portfolio holdings of individual investors, and investigate its cross-sectional predictive power. Our key innovation is that this covariance is measured across the left tail states of the individual stock return distribution, and not across those of the market return as in standard systematic risk measures. We document a positive and significant relation between hybrid tail covariance risk (H-TCR) and expected stock returns, with an annualized premium of 9%, in contrast to the insignificant or negative results for purely stock-specific or systematic tail risk measures.

We investigate an asset pricing model with preferences cycling between high risk aversion and low EIS in fall/winter and the reverse in spring/summer. Calibrating to consumption data and allowing plausible preference parameter values, we produce returns that match observed equity and Treasury returns across the seasons: risky returns are higher and risk-free returns are lower or stable in fall/winter, and they reverse in spring/summer. Further, risky returns vary more than risk-free returns. A novel finding is that both EIS and risk aversion must vary seasonally to match observed returns. Further, the degree of necessary seasonal change in EIS is small.

We examine the ex ante ability of investors to identify superior mutual fund managers among the investor set likely most able, and with the greatest incentive to do so, their rivals. Identifying actual copycat funds via comparisons of trading in consecutive periods, we find little evidence to suggest that managers are able to detect superior funds. Copycats select funds with high prior performance and investment inflows, and the performance of the target fund reverses following copying initiation. If superior managers exist, our results suggest that the source of skill lies in private information obtained by these managers. These results are consistent with information models indicating that private, but not public, information can be profitable.

We examine the empirical implications of learning under ambiguity for the cross-section of stock returns. We introduce a theoretically-motivated ambiguity measure and find that ambiguity is priced in the cross-section of average stock returns. Ambiguity is not subsumed by state variables known to predict stock returns, nor by value, size, and momentum factors. In R-squared comparative tests, a model that takes ambiguity into account performs better than empirical implementations of the Bayesian learning model, the intertemporal CAPM, and the four-factor model of Fama and French (1993) and Carhart (1997).

A stock’s market exposure, beta, varies across return frequencies. Sorting stocks on the difference between low- and high-frequency betas (Δβ) yields large systematic mispricings relative to the CAPM at high frequencies, but significantly smaller mispricings at low frequencies. We provide a risk-based explanation for this frequency dependence by introducing uncertainty about the effect of systematic news on firm value (opacity) into a frictionless model. We document a robust relationship between the frequency dependence of betas and proxies for opacity. Our findings suggest that opacity poses significant challenges to using betas estimated from high-frequency returns. While the CAPM may be an appropriate asset pricing model at low frequencies, additional factors, e.g., based on opacity, are necessary at high frequencies.

In an incomplete continuous-time securities market with uncertainty generated by Brownian motions, we derive closed-form solutions for the equilibrium interest rate and market price of risk processes. The economy has a finite number of heterogeneous exponential utility investors, who receive partially unspanned income and can trade continuously on a finite time-interval in a money market account and a single risky security. Besides establishing the existence of an equilibrium, our main result shows that if the investors' unspanned income has stochastic countercyclical volatility, the resulting equilibrium can display both lower interest rates and higher risk premia compared to the Pareto efficient equilibrium in an otherwise identical complete market.

Much financial activity is zero-sum. While providing transactional and diversification services to others, participants also prey upon each other. High-ability predators trade opportunistically with less-able prey. In our dynamic model these features amplify real shocks. The presence of more low-ability traders reduces expected losses to high-ability traders, leading to equilibria with high levels of financial activity and employment. Shocks to profits can motivate exit by low-ability traders, rendering those of intermediate skill more vulnerable. Thus, our relatively simple model generates boom-bust dynamics suggestive of Wall Street.

This paper documents a new channel for rating-based bond market segmentation, which, in contrast to prior research, is based on nonregulatory investment management practices. A 2005 Lehman Brothers index redefinition provides a quasinatural experiment in which a number of previously high-yield split-rated bonds were mechanically relabeled as investment grade. Although their regulatory standing was unaffected, these bonds had abnormal yield declines of 21 basis points. These valuation changes can be traced to buying by asset-class-sensitive institutional investors for whom these bonds became investable. Reputation, regulation, indexation, and liquidity cannot explain the observed price and trading patterns.

Journal Article Announcements Get access The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Volume 3, Issue 2, December 2013, Page 179, https://doi.org/10.1093/rapstu/rat001 Published: 11 November 2013