Euro Stoxx Research Articles

The MiFIR Trading Obligation: Impact on Trading Volume and Liquidity

The new financial market regulation MiFID II/MiFIR will fundamentally change the trading and market infrastructure landscape in Europe. One key aspect is the trading obligation for shares that intends to restrict over-the-counter (OTC) trading to ensure that more trading takes place on regulated trading venues and on platforms of Systematic Internalisers (SIs). In this context, market observers often argue that SIs might have a competitive advantage due to the best execution concept in combination with the possible exemption of SIs from the tick size regime. Applying scenario analysis, we determine the likely migration of OTC trading volume to regulated trading venues and SIs. Based on our data set, covering intraday data including OTC trades as well as order book snapshots of EURO STOXX 50 constituents on major European venues, we investigate how changes in trading volume influence liquidity on lit markets. The results of our scenario analysis indicate that liquidity on lit markets might increase due to additional turnover formerly traded OTC. However, also a negative liquidity effect for lit markets and for the price discovery process is possible because of increased trading via SIs. According to this scenario, spreads might increase by 0.25%, round trip transaction costs of 50,000 € might increase by 0.92% and market depth 10 bps around the midpoint might decrease by 1.95% on lit venues. This effect on liquidity not only increases trading costs for investors in European equities trading, but also has a negative impact on issuers due to higher cost of capital and thereby on the real economy in Europe.

Network topology and systemic risk: Evidence from the Euro Stoxx market

This study investigates the network topology of equity volatilities. We propose a novel approach to model the interdependencies of the Euro Stoxx companies by constructing the minimum spanning tree with the upper tail dependence coefficient of the equity volatility. The empirical results demonstrate the usefulness of the network topology for the detection of systemic risk in high-volatility environments. More specifically, during crisis periods, the topology of the minimum spanning tree becomes more star-like and compact, accompanied by stronger rich-club effects. Such a network configuration is known to be less resilient to shock and more prone to systemic risk.

Risk management of time varying floors for dynamic portfolio insurance

We propose several important extensions of the standard Constant Proportion Portfolio Insurance (CPPI), which are based on the introduction of various conditional floors. In this framework, we examine in particular both the margin and the ratchet based strategies. The first method prevents the portfolio from being monetized, known as the cash-lock risk; the second one allows to keep part of the past gains whatever the future significant drawdowns of the financial market, which corresponds to ratchet effects. However, as for the standard CPPI method, the investor can benefit from potential market rises. To control the risk of such strategies, we introduce risk measures based both on quantile conditions and on the Expected Shortfall (ES). For each of these criteria, we prove that the conditional floor must be higher than a lower bound. We illustrate the advantages provided by such strategies, using a quite general ARCH type model. Our empirical analysis is mainly conducted on S&P 500 and Euro Stoxx 50. Using parameter estimation, we provide portfolio simulations and measure their respective performances using both the Sharpe and the Omega ratios. We also backtest the strategies, using a sliding window method to dynamically estimate the parameters of the models based on the last two years of weekly returns. Our results emphazise the advantages of introducing time varying floors from both the theoretical and operational points of view.

Retweet if you please! Do news factors explain engagement?

Stakeholders’ engagement with corporate messages is crucial for companies that want to increase their social media coverage. However, our understanding of the content-related factors that drive stakeholders’ engagement is still poor. Drawing from the literature on news selection and distribution, this paper explores whether the relevant news values that are already found in corporate messages could also explain greater engagement in social media. In particular, six news factors were examined in a sample of 2331 tweets that were posted by the Euro Stoxx 50 companies. The results show that four news factors (in particular, Prominence, Entertainment, Immediacy, and to a lesser extent Human interest) play a role in the drive of content sharing through retweets and favorites. Additionally, the inclusion of hashtags and media content helps increase retweets and favorites. Finally, we observe differences among industries. In particular, firms operating in business-to-business industries obtain less reach through sharing. The implications of these results are relevant for social media strategists as they suggest avenues to increase followers’ engagement with company-produced content.

Arbitrage Risk and Investor Sentiment as Causes of Persistent Mispricing: The European Evidence

We investigate the relationship between risk-adjusted returns, arbitrage risk and arbitrage asymmetry, and investor sentiment in the European stock market. Under the assumption that idiosyncratic volatility (IVOL) causes arbitrage risk, we analyze the effects of IVOL on the-abnormal returns of the Euro Stoxx 50 large cap constituents. After classifying the stocks in two mispricing categories, we uncover evidence of arbitrage risk especially in the overpriced group: the highest IVOL overpriced portfolio is the most overpriced, which implies persistent subsequent risk-adjusted returns that slowly revert to zero. When the estimation is performed afresh separating the high- from the low-sentiment periods and controlling for macroeconomic conditions, we find evidence of a negative relation between investor sentiment and IVOL effects, which is yet more pronounced for the highest arbitrage-risk stocks, which is consistent with pure, psychological biases strongly affecting the impact of arbitrage risk on the speed of correction of mispricing.

Holding Bitcoin Longer: The Dynamic Hedging Abilities of Bitcoin

This paper investigates whether Bitcoin can hedge and diversify risk against the Euro STOXX, Nikkei, Shanghai A-Share, S&P 500, and the TSX Index, and examines the dynamics of these abilities over different data frequencies. Pairwise GARCH models and constant conditional correlation models are used for daily, weekly, and monthly returns from October 2010 to October 2017. We find that Bitcoin is an effective strong hedge for all these indices under monthly data frequency. However, daily and weekly returns do not demonstrate strong hedge properties. Further frequency dependence model tests reveal that Bitcoin returns are strong hedgings against S&P and Euro indices over medium data frequency, and also against the Shanghai A-Share over low data frequency.

The Dynamics of Price Jumps in the Stock Market: An Empirical Study on Europe and U.S.

We study the bivariate jump process involving the S&P 500 and the Euro Stoxx 50 with jumps extracted from high frequency data using non-parametric methods. Our analysis, based on a generalized Hawkes process, reveals the presence of self-excitation in the jump activity which is responsible for jump clustering but has a very small persistence in time. Concerning cross-market effects, we find statistically significant co-jumps occurring when both markets are simultaneously operating but no evidence of contagion in the jump activity, suggesting that the role of jumps in volatility transmission is negligible. Moreover, we find a negative relationship between the jump activity and the continuous volatility indicating that jumps are mostly detected during tranquil market conditions rather than in periods of stress. Importantly, our empirical results are robust under different jump detection methods.

Enhanced Corporate Bond Yield Modelling Incorporating Macroeconomic News Sentiment

In this study, we introduce a new method of assessing the credit risk of corporate bonds; where in addition to the historical market data news sentiment data is used. Typically, a higher yield spread is usually associated with higher credit risk. By predicting the upward/downward movement of yield and yield spread accurately, the credit risk associated to the bonds can be detected precisely. The corporate bonds studied are issued after 1 January 2007 by seven chosen companies listed in Euro Stoxx 50 index. The time series of bond yields and news sentiment cover the period from 1 January 2007 to 15 May 2017. The modelling of the dynamics of corporate bond yields and credit spreads are based on ARIMA and ARIMAX models. In the ARIMAX model, macroeconomic and firm-specific news sentiment are used as the external explanatory variable. We examine the effect of several categories of macroeconomics news sentiment and firm-specific news sentiment on corporate bond yield spreads. Furthermore, we separate the positive and negative sentiment and investigate their impact on the forecast of corporate bond yields. It is found that negative country news sentiment and central bank news sentiment are effective during a recession period and positive country news sentiment is effective in the recovery period. Negative government and firm-specific news sentiment, in general, affect corporate bond yield spreads more than positive government and company news sentiment.

Gender Quota and Firm’s Performance: A Focus on Italian and Spanish Companies from EURO STOXX 50

Gender diversity of management boards is a highly-debated issue worldwide. Aside from its ethical aspect, promoting equality and a greater inclusion is believed to have also positive effects on the financial performance of a company. National campaigns such as the “2020 Women on Boards” in the USA, or the “Women on the Board Pledge for Europe” at European level are just two examples of initiatives which aim at increasing the female percentage in management boards. In addition, some countries also adopted legal quotas to enhance the existence of diverse management boards. In this context, the present study focuses on the EURO STOXX 50 companies and the relationship between the gender composition of their boards and financial performance as measured by Earnings before Taxes (EBT). A special focus is laid on Italy and Spain, as both countries adopted legislative actions for increasing the proportion of women on boards.

Why are there time-varying comovements in the European stock market?

ABSTRACTThis paper analyzes the dynamics of pair comovements between different domestic European stock market returns (Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) seeking to check whether there is a unique source of risk driving those dynamics. Once it is shown that the comovements are time-varying, the question is to find whether a global index such as the Euro Stoxx can be considered the main source of risk. To that end we estimate and test for time-varying global pair covariances and for time-varying remaining pair covariances once the effect of the Euro Stoxx is removed. The empirical results are obtained considering locally stationary variables, a family that includes variables with first and second time-varying moments. Under that framework time-varying means and covariances can be estimated using a spline-based procedure and Wald-type statistics can be computed to test for time-variations. A simulation study shows that the role of the mean estimation part is crucial to the good performance of the tests for second moments. The empirical results evidence that all global pair covariances for the European countries analyzed are time-varying, but also that the Euro Stoxx can be considered as the driving source of risk for these time-varying dynamics. This conclusion is very useful for modeling purpose and financial strategies. Finally, we repeat the analysis considering the Nasdaq as an alternative global index and find that it explains only a small part of the dynamics in the European pair comovements.

The Beta Neutral Model with Leverage Effect

We present a beta neutral model that includes the leverage effect to allow hedge fund managers to target a near-zero beta for market neutral strategies. For this purpose, we derive a metric of correlation with leverage effect to identify the fine relation between the market beta and volatility changes. An empirical test based on the most popular market neutral strategies is run from 2000 to 2015 with exhaustive data sets including 600 American stocks and 600 European stocks from the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Euro Stoxx 600. Our findings confirm the ability of the beta neutral model to withdraw an important part of the bias from the market neutral strategies.

The Euro Crisis and the 24h Pre-ECB Announcement Return

We document economically and statistically large 24h pre-ECB announcement re- turns in European equity. For the overall market the respective annual premium (2010 – 2015) was over 6% (Sharpe ratio of 1.5). We show that the pre-ECB return is mainly driven by periods of high uncertainty during the European sovereign debt crisis which can be characterized as times of severe eurozone break-up fear. For these periods the premium for the Euro Stoxx 50 index is 2.5 times higher than in non-stressed periods; for the Euro Stoxx Banks index it reaches on average almost 3% (per announcement). Current theories and explanations that relate the positive premium to the uncertainty around an announcement or to a positively anticipated event are able to explain several of the stylized facts but cannot rationalize all characteristics of the ECB announcement returns.

Efficiency of the minmax portfolio on the european capital market - can we beat the market

Purpose- This paper presents game theory approach for solving problem of the optimal investment portfolio selection. Methodology- Model was formed on the basis of historical returns on stocks presented as a matrix of payments. The goal is seeking the minimum between the largest potential losses, and therefore it is called minmax model. The main objective is to answer whether the minimax model tool performs better than the stock market index, and to verify the relationship between the established Markowitz meanvariance (MV) efficient portfolios and minmax optimum portfolio. We use data from the European capital market and Euro Stoxx 50 index as a reference index in the period 2004-2015, which we divided into two parts. We compared and analyzed the performance of the portfolios created through minimax model with the performance of market index and MV model in the actual investment period and it proved to be dominant and more successful. Findings- Results speak in favor of minmax portfolio model as effective passive investment strategy. It is possible to maximize returns over even longer periods of up to year without changing portfolio investments, i.e. without frequent trading and not just to gain market return, but to beat the market by this technical investing. Conclusion- Minmax model could be used for asset allocation in portfolio investments and that there is a real possibility to beat the market using minimax model.

Frequency aspects of information transmission in a network of three western equity markets

Cycles in the behavior of stock markets have been widely documented. There is an increasing body of literature on whether stock markets anticipate business cycles or its turning points. Several recent studies assert that financial integration impacts positively on business cycle comovements of economies.We consider three western equity markets, represented by their respective stock indices: DJIA (USA), FTSE 100 (UK), and Euro Stoxx 50 (euro area). Connecting these three markets together via vector autoregressive processes in index returns, we construct “propagation values” to measure and trace, on a daily basis, the relative importance of a market as a volatility creator within the network, where volatility is due to a return shock in a market.A cross-wavelet analysis reveals the joint frequency structure of pairs of the propagation value series, in particular whether or not two series tend to move in the same direction at a given frequency. Our main findings are: (i) From 2001 onwards, the daily propagation values of markets have been fluctuating much less than before, and high frequencies have become less pronounced; (ii) the European markets are in phase at business cycle frequency, while the US market is not in phase with either European market; (iii) in 2008, the euro area has taken over the leading role. This approach not only provides new insight into the time-dependent interplay of equity markets, but it can also replicate certain findings of traditional business cycle research, and it has the advantage of using only readily available stock market data.

Resolution of Optimization Problems and Construction of Efficient Portfolios: An Application to the Euro Stoxx 50 Index

We assess the effectiveness of various portfolio optimization strategies (only long allocations) applied to the components of the Euro Stoxx 50 index during the period 2002-2015. The sample under study contemplates episodes of high volatility and instability in financial markets, such as the Global Financial Crisis and the European Debt Crisis. This implies a real challenge in portfolio optimization strategies, since all the methodologies used are restricted to the assignment of positive weights. We use the daily returns for the asset allocation with a three year estimation window, keeping the assets in portfolio for one year. In the context of strategies with short-selling constraints, we contribute to the debate on whether naive diversification proves to be an effective alternative for the construction of the portfolio, as opposed to the portfolio optimization models. To that end, we analyse the out-of-sample performance of 16 strategies for the selection of assets and weights in the main stock index of the euro area. Our results suggest that a large number of strategies outperform both the naive strategy and the Euro Stoxx 50 index in terms of the profitability and Sharpe's ratio. Furthermore, the portfolio strategy based on the maximization of the diversification ratio provides the highest return and the classical strategy of mean-variance renders the highest Sharpe ratio, which is statistically different from the Euro Stoxx 50 index in the period under study.

A Dynamic Analysis of S&P 500, FTSE 100 and EURO STOXX 50 Indices Under Different Exchange Rates

The persistence analysis of short- and long-term interaction and causality in the international financial markets is a key issue for policy makers and portfolio investors. This paper assesses the dynamic evolution of short-term correlation, long-term cointegration and Error Correction Model (hereafter referred to as ECM)-based long-term Granger causality between each pair of US, UK, and Eurozone stock markets over the period of 1980--2015 using the rolling-window technique. A comparative analysis of pairwise dynamic integration and causality of stock markets, measured in common and domestic currency terms, is conducted to evaluate comprehensively how exchange rate fluctuations affect the time-varying integration among the S&P 500, FTSE 100 and EURO STOXX 50 indices. The results obtained show that the dynamic correlation, cointegration and ECM-based Granger causality vary significantly over the whole sample period. The degree of dynamic cointegration and correlation between pairs of stock markets rises in periods of high volatility and uncertainty, especially under the influence of external and internal economic, financial and political shocks. Meanwhile, weaker and decreasing cointegration and correlation among the three developed stock markets are observed during the recovery periods. Interestingly, the most persistent and significant cointegration among the three developed stock markets exists during the 2007--09 global financial crisis. Finally, the exchange rate fluctuations, also influence the dynamic correlation, cointegration and ECM-based Granger casual relations between all pairs of stock indices, with that influence increasing as the local currency terms are used.

Dividend Swaps and Dividend Futures: State of Play

The authors of this article use derivatives regulatory data to quantify the over the counter (OTC) index dividend swap market and contrast it with the listed index dividend futures market. They find US$2.5 billion in notional outstanding of market-facing OTC dividend swaps between dealers and end users, with another US$4 billion outstanding between dealers. The majority of the dealer–dealer swaps are in the S&P 500 (which has no listed futures contract), whereas the majority of transactions for non-U.S. underlyings are between dealers and end users. Although very standardized OTC swaps and listed futures coexist for several major indexes, only the listed EURO STOXX 50 future clearly dominates the OTC market, with nearly five times the notional outstanding of the OTC swaps. The authors observe an average of around one end user transaction per week for the OTC EURO STOXX market, with less activity in other indexes. Risk transfer appears to be largest for the EURO STOXX 50, with dealers net short nearly US$1 billion notional to end users.

The Duties of Significant Shareholders in Transactions with the Company

According to accounting rules, companies must provide a (financial) summarized overview of related party transactions, among which are transactions with shareholders. This study of the Euro STOXX small 200 shows that transactions with large shareholders are common and a significant number of these transactions are material compared to the size of the company. Unfortunately, the reporting standards are not in accordance with the information that is necessary to assess whether the potential conflicts of interests are mitigated. In its proposal to revise the shareholder rights directive, the European Commission provides – in its current 2015 version - in a process of disclosure of the transaction, the assessment of the fairness of the transaction for the company and its minority shareholders by an independent body and an approval by the (supervisory) board and/or the shareholders. However, the proposal will more than likely not overcome the major concerns of the capital market regarding conflicts of interest within companies. I suggest involving the external auditor and the audit committee. The external auditor’s duties already include the control over the related party transactions. Consequently, these duties can be broadened as to include the reasonable assurance that the envisaged related party transactions are economic fair transactions. Further the audit committee must be established in public interest entities with a duty to monitor i.a. the performance of the work of the auditor. Consequently it can include the work of the auditor regarding related party transactions. The audit committee can serve as the body that approves the related party transaction. This procedure can help to mitigate the conflicts of interests in related party transactions.

24-Hour realized volatilities and transatlantic volatility interdependence

This paper proposes an innovative econometric approach for the computation of 24-h realized volatilities across stock markets in Europe and the US. In particular, we deal with the problem of non-synchronous trading hours and intermittent high-frequency data during overnight non-trading periods. Using high-frequency data for the Euro Stoxx 50 and the S&P 500 Index between 2003 and 2011, we combine squared overnight returns and realized daytime variances to obtain synchronous 24-h realized volatilities for both markets. Specifically, we use a piece-wise weighting procedure for daytime and overnight information to take into account structural breaks in the relation between the two. To demonstrate the new possibilities that our approach opens up, we use the new 24-h volatilities to estimate a bivariate extension of Corsi et al.’s [Econom. Rev., 2008, 27(1–3), 46–78] HAR-GARCH model. The results suggest that the contemporaneous transatlantic volatility interdependence is remarkably stable over the sample period.

Ryzyko rynkowe akcji spółek notowanych na giełdach w strefie euro

Artykuł opisuje zagadnienie ryzyka rynkowego akcji spółek notowanych na giełdach w strefie euro. Głównym celem artykułu jest prezentacja badań pokazujących zmiany w procesie inwestowania po wprowadzeniu waluty euro oraz wskazanie poziomu ryzyka systematycznego, rynkowego, niepodlegającego dywersyfikacji dla głównych spółek notowanych na giełdach strefy euro w okresie 2010–2013 z wykorzystaniem narzędzi nowoczesnej teorii portfelowej.Przeprowadzone badanie polegało na podzieleniu akcji europejskich blue chipów z indeksu EURO STOXX 50, na agresywne i defensywne w oparciu o oszacowanie parametru beta na podstawie modelu jednoindeksowego Sharpe’a. Wyniki badania wskazały, że 12 analizowanych akcji to akcje spółek defensywnych, czyli uznawanych za bezpieczne, zaś akcje 10 spółek można uznać za agresywne, czyli wybierane przez inwestorów ze skłonnością do ryzyka.