Journal Article Time-Varying Expected Small Firm Returns and Closed-End Fund Discounts Get access Bhaskaran Swaminathan Bhaskaran Swaminathan Cornell University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Financial Studies, Volume 9, Issue 3, July 1996, Pages 845–887, https://doi.org/10.1093/rfs/9.3.845 Published: 03 June 2015

This paper examines the interaction between momentum in the returns of equities and corporate bonds. We find that investment grade corporate bonds do not exhibit momentum at the three- to 12-month horizons. Instead, the evidence suggests that they exhibit reversals. However, significant evidence exists of a momentum spillover from equities to investment grade corporate bonds of the same firm. Firms earning high (low) equity returns over the previous year earn high (low) bond returns the following year. The spillover results are stronger among firms with lower-grade debt and higher equity trading volume, seem robust to various risk and liquidity controls, and hold even after controlling for past earnings surprises. In examining the source of the spillover, we find that the bond ratings of firms with positive (negative) equity momentum continue to improve (deteriorate) in the future, suggesting underreaction to the information in past equity prices about changing default risk is a likely source of the spillover effect. Overall, our results suggest that both equity and debt underreact to firm fundamentals, but past equity returns is a better proxy of firm fundamentals than past bond returns.

This paper finds that default betas are significantly related to the cross-section of average bond returns even after controlling for characteristics such as duration, ratings, and yield-to-maturity. Among characteristics, only yield-to-maturity is significantly related to average bond returns after controlling for default and term betas. The default and term factors are able to price the returns of beta-sorted portfolios better than they do the returns of yield-sorted portfolios. The magnitude of the ex ante Sharpe ratio generated by yield-sorted portfolios suggests non-risk-based explanations. Overall, given the elusive nature of systematic risk in empirical asset pricing, the central finding of our paper is that systematic risk matters for corporate bonds.

While IPOs have been underpriced by more than 10% during the past two decades, we find that in a sample of more than 2, 000 IPOs from 1980 to 1997, the median IPO was significantly overvalued at the offer price relative to valuations based on industry peer price multiples. This overvaluation ranges from 14% to 50% depending on the peer matching criteria. Cross-sectional regressions show that "overvalued" IPOs provide high first-day returns, but low long-run risk-adjusted returns. These overvalued IPOs have lower profitability, higher accruals, and higher analyst growth forecasts than "undervalued" IPOs. Ex post, the projected high growth of overvalued IPOs fails to materialize, while their profitability declines from pre-IPO levels. These results suggest IPO investors are deceived by optimistic growth forecasts and pay insufficient attention to profitability in valuing IPOs.

This paper finds that trading volume is a significant determinant of the lead‐lag patterns observed in stock returns. Daily and weekly returns on high volume portfolios lead returns on low volume portfolios, controlling for firm size. Nonsynchronous trading or low volume portfolio autocorrelations cannot explain these findings. These patterns arise because returns on low volume portfolios respond more slowly to information in market returns. The speed of adjustment of individual stocks confirms these findings. Overall, the results indicate that differential speed of adjustment to information is a significant source of the cross‐autocorrelation patterns in short‐horizon stock returns.

In this article we are concerned with the effect of the number of investment analysts following a firm on the speed of adjustment of the firm’s stock price to new information that has common effects across firms. It is found that returns on portfolios of firms that are followed by many analysts tend to lead those of firms that are followed by fewer analysts, even when the firms are of approximately the same size. Many analyst firms also tend to respond more rapidly to market returns than do few analyst firms, adjusting for firm size. This relation, however, is nonlinear, and the marginal effect of the number of analysts on the speed of price adjustment increases with the number of analysts.

We argue that the implied cost of capital (ICC), computed using earnings forecasts, is useful in capturing time variation in expected stock returns. First, we show theoretically that ICC is perfectly correlated with the conditional expected stock return under plausible conditions. Second, our simulations show that ICC is helpful in detecting an intertemporal risk–return relation, even when earnings forecasts are poor. Finally, in empirical analysis, we construct the time series of ICC for the G–7 countries. We find a positive relation between the conditional mean and variance of stock returns, at both the country level and the world market level.

This study shows that past trading volume provides an important link between “momentum” and “value” strategies. Specifically, we find that firms with high (low) past turnover ratios exhibit many glamour (value) characteristics, earn lower (higher) future returns, and have consistently more negative (positive) earnings surprises over the next eight quarters. Past trading volume also predicts both the magnitude and persistence of price momentum. Specifically, price momentum effects reverse over the next five years, and high (low) volume winners (losers) experience faster reversals. Collectively, our findings show that past volume helps to reconcile intermediate‐horizon “underreaction” and long‐horizon “overreaction” effects.

In this study, we propose an alternative technique for estimating the cost of equity capital. Specifically, we use a discounted residual income model to generate a market implied cost‐of‐capital. We then examine firm characteristics that are systematically related to this estimate of cost‐of‐capital. We show that a firm's implied cost‐of‐capital is a function of its industry membership, B/M ratio, forecasted long‐term growth rate, and the dispersion in analyst earnings forecasts. Together, these variables explain around 60% of the cross‐sectional variation in future (two‐year‐ahead) implied costs‐of‐capital. The stability of these long‐term relations suggests they can be exploited to estimate future costs‐of‐capital. We discuss the implications of these findings for capital budgeting, investment decisions, and valuation research.