Extreme Negative Returns Research Articles

Assessing stochastic dominance of downside and upside financial risk profiles using the block maxima method in extreme value theory

This paper aims to assess the stochastic dominance of the extreme downside (negative return) and upside (positive return) risk profiles of three US stock market indices, namely NASDAQ Composite, S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) based on the block maxima method in extreme value theory. The extreme downside and upside risk profiles were developed using two datasets of 360 monthly minimum and maximum daily log returns respectively (from January 1992 to December 2021). Extreme losses beyond the 80th percentile (corresponding to a tail probability of less than 0.2) of the theoretical extreme risk profiles were adopted to investigate stochastic dominance. Pairwise comparisons show that the DJIA stochastically dominates the other two indices in both extreme negative and positive returns. Moreover, the extreme upside risk profile of the DJIA stochastically dominates its extreme downside risk profile. The paper finds that investment in short positions (encountering upside risk) provides the least extreme risk compared with long positions (encountering downside risk) for the DJIA, as well as both short and long positions for the S&P 500 and NASDAQ Composite.

Impact of Sharia‐Based Screening on Equity Risk: International Evidence

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates the impact of mainstream Sharia‐based screening methodologies on equity risk. The study is based on the daily returns of 23 pairs of stock indices belonging to different index providers, namely Dow Jones, FTSE, and S&P. For risk measurement, the study uses five Value at Risk (VaR) methods. Moreover, the conditional VaR (CVaR) is used to analyze the tail behavior of return distributions. The results show that Sharia‐based screening is a source of significant differences in risk. There is strong evidence that Islamic stock indices (ISIs) tend to be less risky than their conventional peers. Also, the screening process allows for keeping extreme negative returns at a lower level relative to unscreened indices. The analysis during the Dotcom and Subprime crises shows that, globally, the results are time‐invariant. In sum, Islamic screening is tantamount to prudential rules that lead to low‐risk portfolios; it is, in its essence, a risk‐reduction strategy. Findings suggest that Sharia‐compliant stocks would be of great attractiveness to risk‐averse investors. They will find their claim in this asset class, as its riskiness is relatively low. For banks, a lower VaR of Islamic investing implies fewer capital requirements for market risk when holding portfolios that include Sharia‐compliant stocks. Fewer capital requirements will enhance the banks' ability to invest and make profits, which will, in turn, result in reducing the cost of capital.

COAALA: A Novel Approach to Understanding Extreme Stock–Bond Comovement

Abstract This article proposes a novel copula model to understand the dependence between extreme variations in stock and government bond returns. This model is used to introduce a tail-based extension of the safe haven concept, which we refer to as a tail risk dampener. Our findings reveal significant cross-country differences in stock–bond local tail dependence and tail risk dampening abilities. Some countries’ bond market can lessen the impact on portfolio returns of extreme negative stock returns, while for others no such negative tail comovement is found. This tail comovement is also not always aligned with global comovement between stocks and bonds. The article concludes that a comprehensive understanding of the comovement and the resulting diversification potential between stock and bond returns necessitates complementing global measures of dependence with local tail measures.

The fatter the tail, the shorter the sail

AbstractGuided by the extreme value theory, this study empirically investigates the impact of tail risk measures on financial distress of publicly traded bank holding companies (BHCs) in the United States. Our results show that tail risk measures namely, value‐at‐risk and expected shortfall, are significantly and positively related to banks distress risk. Implying that BHCs with more frequent extreme negative daily equity returns induce higher tail risks, thereby increasing their likelihood of experiencing financial distress. Our results also show that tail risk measures enhance the explanatory power of traditional models explaining banks distress risk based on accounting information. These results indicate that market discipline is generally beneficial in managing and regulating banks, bolstering claims of the importance of macro‐prudential supervision of financial institutions.

Gold's hedging and safe haven properties for European stock and bond markets

Most portfolio managers and risk managers strive to pick assets that lead to efficient financial risk mitigation; among them, gold stands out. This paper provides new insights into the role of gold as both a hedge and a safe haven towards European stock and sovereign bond markets. We base the analysis on evidence spanning the Euro's inception to the COVID-19 pandemic spread across Europe. To capture gold's hedge ability, we use the ADCC-GARCH and DCC-GARCH models, while for testing gold's safe haven property we use OLS regressions for different quantiles. Our results show that gold is a hedge for stocks, particularly after the Lehman Brothers collapse. Gold also shows strong safe haven properties for the most extreme negative returns (1% and 2.5% quantiles), and during specific events, such as the Lehman Brothers collapse, the Greek bailout and the Brexit Referendum. Still, for the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, the results do not confirm this property. Conversely, for bonds, both hedge and safe haven effects are not strongly evident, with gold characterised, at best, as a weak hedge and safe haven. These findings have portfolio allocation implications for investors in European markets, namely fund and risk managers, by pointing out gold hedging and safe haven attributes.

Forecasting extreme negative returns in gold and silver: A discrete‐duration approach to POT models

AbstractSudden and massive drops in precious metal prices severely impact the investment risk on these commodity markets. In this study, we examine the dynamics of extreme negative returns on gold and silver, as well as propose the discrete‐duration version of the autoregressive conditional duration peaks‐over‐threshold (ACD‐POT) model for measuring market risk. The model is tailored for the dynamics of extreme events in precious metal markets; this is because it can exhibit both the strong clustering of extreme‐event days, and the serial correlation in the magnitudes of extreme losses. From an econometric perspective, our approach complements the existing dynamic versions of POT models; this is so that the time interval (i.e., duration) between the extreme negative returns is treated not as a continuous variable, but as a discrete one. The discrete hazard function in our model represents the daily extreme loss event probability and it can be used to derive one‐day‐ahead forecasts of both the value at risk and expected shortfall for investments in gold and silver. Formal backtesting methods show that the discretized version of the POT model has a superior in‐sample fit and forecasting performance than the continuous‐duration POT models.

Identifying diversifiers, hedges, and safe havens among Asia Pacific equity markets during COVID-19: New results for ongoing portfolio allocation

We identify diversification benefits among Asian equity markets in the COVID-19 era. We find that such benefits among Asia-Pacific markets changed considerably during the pandemic, and most changes were persistent. In most cases, any of the sample equities had at least one safe-haven protection. The exceptions are Pakistan, Thailand, and Singapore, where diversification benefits are limited and vary across subperiods. The Hong Kong equity market provides safe-haven protection to most markets during periods of extreme negative returns. Further, we find that greater (lower) weightings on the Bangladeshi, Taiwanese, and Malaysian (Thai) markets provide important diversification in terms of maximizing Sharpe ratio and minimizing variance during the pandemic.

Hot potatoes: Underpricing of stocks following extreme negative returns

Although investors accept a negative premium for lottery-like stocks, it is puzzling that the opposite effect is not observed among stocks experiencing large daily losses. We find that many stocks that experience large negative daily returns (MIN) also display large positive daily returns (MAX); therefore the MIN effect is subdued. Once stocks ranked as high-MAX within MIN deciles are removed, we find that the MIN effect produces significantly higher next-month returns. The subsequent-month returns following MIN are particularly higher when stocks experience negative cumulative monthly returns, when firm-specific investor sentiment is low, and when stocks are near their 52-week lows.

Extreme connectedness between renewable energy tokens and fossil fuel markets

This paper examines the aspect pertaining to the returns connectedness between renewable energy tokens, namely, Powerledger-POWR and WePower-WPR, and the fossil fuel markets, namely, WTI oil, Brent oil, and Natural gas. For this purpose, we employed a quantile-based regression approach, in order to explore the dependence structures that exist under diverse market conditions. The results of the analysis show that the element of connectedness in the renewable energy tokens-fossil fuel market nexus is characterized by asymmetry and heterogeneity in the tails that are compared to the respective mean and the median. Under normal market conditions, the WTI oil market emerges as the main net transmitter of return spillover to the renewable energy tokens. Whereas, Brent oil and natural gas markets are the net receivers of the return spillover from the digital assets. However, under periods of extreme negative returns, the Brent oil market behaves as the main net transmitter of return spillover to the renewable energy digital markets. Whereas, under period of extreme positive returns, the natural gas market appears to be the main net transmitter of return spillover to the renewable energy digital markets. Therefore, it can be fathomed that on aggregate, renewable energy digital tokens are weakly connected with fossil fuel markets, thus suggesting the addition of renewable energy tokens in the portfolio of fossil fuel markets.

Short-Sale Constraints and Stock Prices: Evidence from Implementation of Securities Refinancing Mechanism in Chinese Stock Markets

Qualified Securities for Short-sale Refinancing (QSSR) is a unique trading mechanism that has exogenously increased the supply of loanable securities in Chinese stock markets. Using difference-in-differences (DID) methodology, this paper is the first to investigate whether and to what extent additions to the QSSR eligibility list affect short selling activities and stock price behaviors. The paper finds that stocks added to the QSSR list exhibit better liquidity and less negative skewness in returns than non-QSSR stocks. However, QSSR stocks are more volatile and display a higher frequency of extreme negative returns. In addition, on average, QSSR stocks experience larger negative abnormal returns (ARs) and cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) relative to non-QSSR stocks, and the difference in CARs is positively related to investor heterogeneity. The results indicate that short selling has mixed effects on stock prices. Removing short-sale constraints can improve liquidity and reduce price bubbles, but can also increase return volatility and amplify market crashes.

Volatility impacts on the European banking sector: GFC and COVID-19

This paper analyses the volatility transmission between European Global Systemically Important Banks (GSIBs) and implied stock market volatility. A Dynamic Conditional Correlation Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity model is applied to determine the dynamic correlation between returns of Europe’s GSIBs and the world’s most prominent measure of market “fear”, the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX). The results identify a higher negative co-relationship between the VIX and GSIB returns during the COVID-19 period compared with the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), with one-day lagged changes in the VIX negatively Granger-causing bank returns. The asymmetric impact of changes in implied volatility is examined by quantile regressions, with the findings showing that in the lower quartile–where extreme negative bank returns are present–jumps in the VIX are highly significant. This effect is more pronounced during COVID-19 than during the GFC. Additional robustness analysis shows that these findings are consistent during the periods of the Swine Flu and Zika virus epidemics.

Global crude oil and the Chinese oil-intensive sectors: A comprehensive causality study

We study causal relations between the return of Brent crude and the oil-intensive equity indices (agricultural, construction, industrial and transportation) in China using daily data from 2005 to 2019. We unite the extensive Granger causality tests proposed over the past two decades that are based on the cross-correlation function approach to uncover causality in mean, variance, risky quantiles and distribution. We use subsample analysis to study changes of causal links after the US subprime financial crisis in 2008 and the Chinese domestic refined oil pricing reformation in 2013. We find bidirectional causality in variance and distribution between the Chinese industries and global oil in each subperiod. Before the oil reform, most of the sectors cause crude oil in mean, which coincides with the rapid economic growth in China. As the Chinese markets become more exposed to international oil after the reformation, extreme negative returns of global oil benefit most oil-intensive industries while positive outlook in Brent adversely affects most sectors.

Short-term stock price reversals after extreme downward price movements

We studied the intraday effects of return overreactions around extreme negative one-minute interval returns of Nasdaq100 constituents based on nanosecond data. An extreme negative one-minute interval return is defined as the lowest return that occurs once in 1,000 one-minute intervals. We document that 31% of such an extreme one-minute interval's return is reversed in the subsequent trading minute. The relative magnitude of the reversal after extreme negative one-minute interval returns is particularly high for the 20% most liquid and the 20% largest firms of our sample.

What is Behind Extreme Negative Returns co-movement in the South Eastern European Stock Markets?

This paper examines co-movement of extreme returns in eight South Eastern European (SEE) stock markets during the period covering both the financial crisis from 2007-2009 and the COVID-19 health crisis. The analysis is based on coexceedances which represent the number of joint occurrences of extreme returns in a group of stock market indexes. To provide a valuable insight on how persistence, asset class, and volatility effects are related with the coexceedances, we utilize a multinomial logistic regression procedure. We find evidence in favour of the continuation hypothesis. However, the factors associated with the coexceedances differ between the SEE European Union (EU) members and the SEE EU accession countries. The EU members are more dependent on signals from major EU economies, while the accession countries are mainly impacted by regional signals. The implications of our analysis may help policy makers in understanding the nature of shock transmission in SEE stock markets.JEL Codes - C25; F36; G15

Stock Crash and Jump: The Role of Accounting Information

Stock crashes (jumps) capture extreme negative (positive) returns ) (Hutton et al., 2008; DeFond et al., 2015) and therefore have important implications for investors regarding their investment decisions they make. Investors make decisions based on the information they receive. Based on the value relevance literature, earnings are important information to determine the fundamental value of a firm (Beaver, 1968; Ball and Brown, 1968). The determination of accounting earnings is influenced by management policies. If management's policy in determining the amount of earnings is not appropriate, the quality of earnings as a representation of accounting information will decrease. Management's policy in determining earnings can be in the form of conservative or aggressive policies. Conservatism is divided into two types, namely conditional conservatism and unconditional conservatism (Beaver and Ryan, 2005; Basu, 2005). Conditional conservatism admits loss depending on the economic news, or ex-post conservatism. Conditional conservatism recognizes losses more timely than gains recognition (Basu, 1997), thus preventing managers from accumulating bad news (Kim and Zhang, 2016). The application of conditional conservatism causes undervaluation of the firm's stock price. Therefore, it is predicted that conditional conservatism will reduce the risk of future stock crashes. Unconditional conservatism records net assets at the lowest value since initial recognition or is said to be ex-ante conservatism (Beaver and Ryan, 2005). Unconditional conservatism prevents managers from admitting excessive net asset values (Kousenidis et al., 2014). However, unconditional conservatism is considered to create a hidden reserve ready to use when management is trying to pursue profit targets (Penman and Zhang, 2002; Ruch and Taylor, 2005). Therefore, unconditional conservatism is considered to increase the risk of future stock crashes. Accounting aggressiveness means recognizing gains more quickly and delaying recognition of losses (Battacharya et al., 2003) because of various personal motivations (Kothari, 2005). This accumulated bad news will at some point reverse and at that time, some bad news will flood the market immediately and make stock prices crash (Kim and Zhang, 2014). Therefore, accounting aggressiveness is predicted to increase the risk of future stock crashes. The conditions resulting from applying those accounting policies, affect the opposite in terms of stock jump. Studies contribute to the development of capital market researches. Keywords: conditional conservatism, unconditional conservatism, aggressive accounting, stock crash, stock jump

Extreme return connectedness and its determinants between clean/green and dirty energy investments

Previous studies point to the time-variation and asymmetry in the relationship between clean energy stocks and crude oil markets, but there is a lack of evidence on the return spillovers between clean/green assets and dirty energy assets (crude oil and energy ETF) in lower and upper quantiles, and their potential drivers. To address these gaps, we apply quantile-based estimators to measure return connectedness at left and right tails of the conditional distribution of return shocks. We find that the average level of return connectedness estimated at the mean/median is 29%, whereas it reaches 65% when estimated at the left and right tails. Thus, return connectedness across clean energy stocks, green bonds, crude oil, and energy ETF is larger at both left and right tails, implying that the unsuitability of applying mean-based connectedness measures. Furthermore, we show that return connectedness measures vary with time, but they are less volatile in the tails. Notably, return connectedness differs between periods of extreme negative returns and periods of extreme negative returns, suggesting an asymmetric behaviour. An analysis of the drivers of the return connectedness shows the importance of macroeconomic conditions, especially at middle and lower quantiles. US dollar has a positive impact in all cases, whereas the crude oil market uncertainty intensifies the return spillovers at the lower quantile. • Study extreme spillovers and their drivers between clean/green and dirty energy. • Return connectedness is higher at the left and right tails than at the mean. • Connectedness between upper tails and lower tails is asymmetric. • Macroeconomic conditions drive return spillovers, especially at left/right tails. • US dollar and oil volatility have a positive impact on spillovers at the left tail.

The effects of short selling on price discovery: A study for Borsa Istanbul

This paper investigates the effects of short selling on the price discovery process in Borsa Istanbul (BIST). First, we form a proxy of informational efficiency in the BIST and regress this on the short selling ratio and other control variables. Our results confirm the short selling improves information efficiency. Second, we investigate the behavior of short sellers around extreme negative return days. Our findings are as follows: i) short selling increases before extreme negative returns, ii) short sellers don't exacerbate the price declines in that short selling declines on extreme negative return days, and iii) short selling volume increases in line with the size of the reversal after an extreme negative return.

All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Asymmetric Investor Attention in the Stock Market

It has been shown that individual investors are more likely to buy rather than sell stocks that catch their attention. This can lead to suboptimal choices when attention-attracting qualities of a stock may indirectly detract from its utility. This paper tests the causal effect of extreme stock returns on investors' purchase behavior at the individual level by means of a controlled laboratory experiment. We find a strong asymmetry, as shares of stocks with recent extreme negative returns are more likely to be purchased than shares of stocks with recent less extreme negative returns. Yet, comparable patterns are not observed for stocks with positive returns. We further track subjects' eye movements and show that individual visual attention mediates our treatment effect. Interestingly, the results show that attention-driven purchase behavior occurs even in situations in which it reduces subjects’ expected return.

Corporate governance and stock price crash risk: Evidence from Taiwan

Managers are likely to withhold negative news to protect their own interests. When they can no longer withhold such news, extreme negative returns and a stock price crash (SPC) follow. This study explores whether a favorable corporate governance (CG) mechanism helps reduce SPC risk. The findings reveal that CG affects SPC risk. Moreover, the effects of institutional ownership, board size, and disclosure violation frequency are particularly significant in family‐owned businesses. We also examine the effectiveness of CG evaluation (CGE) in Taiwan and discover that companies with high rankings are substantially less likely to encounter an SPC. This study verifies that CGE can be considered an indicator of SPC risk.

Higher moments, extreme returns, and cross–section of cryptocurrency returns

This study examines the cross–sectional return predictability of the higher moments of 84 cryptocurrencies computed using intraday data. We document strong evidence that volatility and kurtosis are positively related to future returns while the return predictability of skewness is negative. Further analysis indicates that the extreme positive returns but not the extreme negative returns significantly impact the return predictability of higher moments. The evidence implies that cryptocurrency investors have lottery–type preferences and are not concerned much about crash risk.