Stock Return Volatility Research Articles

An Analysis of the Fama-French Three-Factor Models Capacity to Account for Cross-sectional Volatility in Stock Returns

The studys main focus is on the Fama-French Three-Factor Models capacity to account for cross-sectional volatility in stock returns. The Fama-French Three-Factor Model was used to assess a sample of 720 equity funds and determine each funds excess returns and three-factor risk exposures. The exposure of each element was then tested using linear regression to see if it could predict the excess returns. The studys focus is on the shortcomings of the traditional Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and the possibility that the 3-factor model could offer a more precise and thorough explanation of stock returns. The empirical results indicate that it may not be robust all the time, and there could be other factors functioning meanwhile, which are not captured by the model. Furthermore, the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) may not be effective and accurate in its strictest form. The studys empirical examination of the Three-Factor Model and its implications for the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) and other related ideas are what give it its value.

Corporate acquisitions and firm-level uncertainty: Domestic versus cross-border deals

This paper investigates how the announcement of acquisitions affect the uncertainty that financial markets perceive about acquiring firms. We use data for publicly-listed firms in the UK between 2004 and 2017 and employ a matching estimator combined with difference-in-differences to address the endogenous selection of firms into acquisitions. While acquisition announcements do not result in a significant change in the volatility of stock returns of acquiring firms across our whole sample, this result hides substantial heterogeneity. Our main finding is that the impact of acquisitions on uncertainty is crucially shaped by a deal's geographic scope—i.e. whether the takeover involves a target in the same country or abroad. Domestic deals reduce the volatility of acquirers' returns by 5% on average one quarter after the announcement, while acquiring a foreign firm increases volatility by a similar magnitude. The heightened volatility resulting from cross-border transactions is primarily driven by acquisitions in industries characterized by high investment irreversibility and foreign markets where barriers to investment are higher. Conversely, the volatility reduction following domestic acquisitions is more pronounced in industries with low irreversibility. Additionally, characteristics of the deal itself, such as the relative size of the acquisition, the payment method, and whether the deal achieves majority control of the target, also play an important role in mediating the effect of acquisitions on volatility.

Institutional ownership and stock return volatility during the COVID-19 crisis: An international evidence

Using a sample of 39 countries from 2010 through 2021, we find that while institutional holdings have the stabilizing effect during the normal (non-crisis) period, they appear to move stock prices away from fundamentals during the COVID-19 crisis. Furthermore, the impact of foreign and domestic institutions is not homogenous. We also find that institutional investors help reduce stock return volatility in countries more strongly affected by the COVID-19 crisis. Finally, our results indicate that investor protection moderates the impact of institutional holdings on stock return volatility in both pre- and crisis periods.

The effect of board of commissioners size on risk management trends

This study aims to obtain empirical evidence of the effect of board size on risk management tendencies. The data collection technique used was a purposive sampling method in order to obtain a sample of 531 manufacturing sector companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2014-2017. The data analysis used is Multiple Linear Regression Analysis. The results of this study are that a large number of boards has no impact on the volatility of company stock returns. However, it is positively related to cash flow volatility proxies.

Does CEO Power Affect the Relations between CEO Compensation and Risk-Taking?

Purpose - This study investigates the effect of incentive compensation and CEO power on a firm’s risk-taking behavior, leveraging stock return volatility and earnings volatility as the key indicators of risk-taking.
 Design/Methodology/Approach - A comprehensive analysis is conducted using data from 1,958 U.S. firms over a 28-year period (1992- 2019). The study employ both ordinary least square (OLS) regression and two-stage least square (2SLS) regression for analysis. Pay-volatility sensitivity (PVS) and CEO-pay slice (CPS) are used as proxies for incentive compensation and CEO power, respectively.
 Findings - The findings offer solid empirical proof that PVS and CPS have a negative influence on both earnings volatility and stock return volatility. Furthermore, the detrimental effect of PVS on managerial risk-taking is significantly more pronounced for CEOs with lower CPS compared with those with higher CPS. While incentive compensation appears to deter CEOs from embracing higher risks, CEOs with more power are less risk-averse when offered incentive compensation compared to their less powerful counterparts.
 Research Implications - This study significantly contributes to existing literature by revealing the interactive effects between CEO power and incentive compensation on a firm’s risk-taking behavior. Understanding these dynamics is pivotal as it offers a nuanced view of how CEO compensation structures and power hierarchies within a firm influence its risk-taking propensity, which is critical for both firm performance and broader financial stability considerations. The insights derived from this analysis can inform more balanced executive compensation structures and governance models that ensure an optimal level of risk-taking.

Pandemics and Stock Price Volatility: A Sectoral Analysis

In this paper, we assess the impacts of the five most recent pandemics on the volatility of stock prices across forty-nine sectors of the economy in the United States. These five most recent pandemics are the 1957–1958 Asian flu, the 1977 Russian flu, SARS-CoV-1, swine flu and COVID-19. Applying the GJR-GARCH model, we find that pandemics other than COVID-19 have heterogeneous impacts on the volatility of stock returns. The results of our analysis indicate that COVID-19 has increased the volatility of stock returns in all sectors. Similarly, stocks in more than seventy percent of sectors in our study declined during the ongoing pandemic, perhaps reflecting the severity of the pandemic. In addition, our results on sectors such as healthcare and natural gas diverge from other literature. The mixed results on SARS-CoV-1 are partially explained by the fact it emerged at a time when stock valuations were particularly pessimistic. In the case of Russian flu, it was relatively short-lived and limited in spread relative to other pandemics in our study.

Blockholdings, Dividend Policy, Stock Returns and Return Volatility: Evidence from the UAE

This paper examines the relationship between the presence of blockholdings and stock returns and return volatility in the United Arab Emirates. Earlier studies report mixed results for the direction of the relationships across both developed and emerging markets. This study focuses specifically on these relationships in a dividend policy framework. This study further investigates the role of blockholder type by distinguishing between government, individual and corporate blockholders. Our results indicate that blockholder ownership reduces stock return volatility for both non-dividend-paying and dividend-paying stocks, does not impact returns and is not perceived as expropriating the wealth of other investors. We also conclude that the blockholders do not exhibit rent-seeking behavior through the extraction of dividends and investors in UAE firms embrace the role of blockholders and the reinvestment of profits.

Stabilizing or destabilizing: the effect of institutional investors on stock return volatility in an emerging market

PurposeThis study aims to examine the impact of institutional investors and their classes on the stock return volatility of an emerging market. The paper also determines the moderating role of firm size, crisis and turnover on such relationships.Design/methodology/approachThe study covers nonfinancial companies of the Bombay Stock Exchange-100 index that are listed during the study period. The study uses fixed effects and systematic generalized method of moments estimators to look over the association between institutional investors and firms’ stock return volatility.FindingsThe study provides evidence that institutional investors destabilize the Indian stock market. It indicates that institutional investors do not engage in management activities; they earn short-term gains depending on information efficiency. Pressure-insensitive institutional investors have a significant positive relation with stock return volatility, while pressure-sensitive institutional investors do not. The study also reflects that pressure-sensitive institutional investors are underweighted in India, which jointly represents an insignificant nonlinear association between institutional ownership and stocks’ volatility. Furthermore, outcomes reveal that the intersection effect of the crisis, firm size and turnover is positively and significantly related to such relationships.Research limitations/implicationsThe outcomes encourage initiatives that keep track of institutional investors in the Indian stock market. To control the destabilizing effect of pressure-insensitive institutional investors, regulators should follow strict regulations on their trading patterns. Moreover, it guides the potential researchers that they should also take into account the impact of other classes of ownership structure or what type of ownership can help in stabilizing or destabilizing the Indian stock market.Originality/valueAbundant literature studies the relationship between institutional ownership and firm performance in the Indian context. From the standpoint of making management decisions, the return and volatility of stock returns are both different aspects. However, this study examines the effect of institutional ownership and its groups on the volatility of stock return using the panel data estimator, which was previously not discussed in the literature.

Why does option-implied volatility forecast realized volatility? Evidence from news events

This study examines the information content of stock option-implied volatility. We measure the arrival intensities and magnitudes of scheduled and unscheduled news as well as fundamental and non-fundamental news. Most of these news measures exhibit strong and positive associations with contemporaneous stock return volatility, and many of them can be predicted by implied volatility. Approximately one third of the predictive power of implied volatility on future realized volatility can be attributed to its ability to predict these news measures, with the majority of the predictive power arising from its capacity to predict the arrival intensities of both scheduled and unscheduled news. The predictive power is higher for fundamental news than for non-fundamental news.

Cost uniqueness and information uncertainty

AbstractPrior literature has studied firm uniqueness and its implications for capital market participants by investigating earnings uniqueness. We recognize that cost and revenue uniqueness provide separate insights about firm uniqueness because different forces drive firm‐specific revenues and costs. Cost uniqueness is of special interest because costs are opaque to investors and more complex than revenues. Therefore, we examine how cost uniqueness affects information uncertainty from the perspective of external participants. We find that idiosyncratic stock return volatility increases with cost uniqueness independently and incrementally from revenue uniqueness. We validate these results with several cross‐sectional tests that provide insights into the forces that drive the association between information uncertainty and cost uniqueness. In addition, we find that higher cost uniqueness is associated with finer cost disclosure. Overall, we show that cost uniqueness is an important dimension of cost behavior that is linked to strategic decision‐making and affects uncertainty surrounding firm valuation.

Investor Sentiments, the COVID-19 Pandemic and Islamic Stock Return Volatility in Indonesia

Purpose — This study aims to investigate the effect of investor sentiments, as measured by the Consumer Confidence Index (CCI), and the impact of COVID-19 on Islamic stock return volatility proxied by the Indonesia Sharia Stock Index (ISSI). Design/Methodology/Approach — This study employs the GARCH (1,1) model to test the impact of investor sentiments and COVID-19 on the volatility of Islamic stock returns using monthly data from July 2011 to December 2021. Findings — The findings of this study indicate that investor sentiments negatively impact the volatility of Islamic stock returns; while COVID-19 caused a high and persistent effect on Islamic stock return volatility. Originality/Value — Research on investor behaviour and volatility in the Islamic capital market (ICM) is limited. Investor sentiment is an essential variable in predicting the volatility level of stock returns. Investors must be aware of major events that are happening globally, such as COVID-19. This research specifically focuses on the sentiments of Islamic stock investors in Indonesia. Research Limitations/Implications — This study uses a traditional GARCH model for variance and is limited to the Islamic stock market in Indonesia. Only a few variables were assessed, notably investor sentiments and COVID-19 on the impact of stock return volatility, using monthly data. Practical Implications — Research on market volatility will significantly help investors, companies and regulators determine strategies to overcome risks. This research illustrates how investor behaviour can influence the movement of stock returns. A global event, notably the COVID-19 pandemic, proved to have significantly impacted the conditions of ICMs.

The extra value of online investor sentiment measures on forecasting stock return volatility: A large-scale longitudinal evaluation based on Chinese stock market

Numerous studies have purported to show that using online investor sentiment measures can enhance the accuracy of forecasting stock return volatility. However, many of these studies did not validate their findings with out-of-sample data, had insufficient validation samples, or failed to incorporate appropriate controls in their predictive models. None of these studies compared the predictive power of online sentiment measures with commonly used technical sentiment measures, nor did they investigate whether online sentiment measures offer any additional predictive value for volatility forecasting when controlling for technical measures. Using a large stock sample in China A-shares, we contribute to examining the additional predictive power of online sentiment measures for predicting stock volatility for different forecast horizons and different time windows, while controlling for technical measures. Methodologically, through using rolling origins and moving windows evaluation framework, we consider the benefits of using global forecasting models compared to local stock-specific models, and the robustness of our appraisal of the use of sentiment measures. We found that technical sentiment measures generally perform better than online sentiments. When controlling for technical measures, online sentiment measures have extra predictive value only when the forecasting horizon is long (e.g., one week or month), but the magnitudes of the improvement are relatively limited.

Military CEOs and firm dividends and cash holdings

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between chief executive officers (CEOs) with military service and firm dividend and cash holding decisions.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use a sample of Standard and Poor's (S&P) 1500 firms in the USA over a sample period from 1999 to 2017 and a panel data approach, as well as instrumental variable (IV)analysis. The models control for firm characteristics as well as industry and year-fixed effects.FindingsThe results show CEOs with military service are associated with higher total payout and less cash. Higher dividends appear to drive the total payout result. When cash holdings are split into pure cash and short-term investments, the reduction in cash holdings is driven by a reduction in pure cash. The findings are more pronounced for powerful CEOs and CEOs with low labor mobility. Military CEOs are also associated with less risk, measured by stock return volatility and return on assets (ROA) volatility.Originality/valueOverall, the results are consistent with military CEOs implementing conservative policies that reduce firm risk, curtailing the demand for precautionary cash and reducing the necessity to forego dividend payouts.

Outward foreign direct greenfield investments and firms predicted long-term stock volatility levels and connectedness. Evidence from China

The paper offers an initial effort to unfold the effect of outward foreign direct greenfield investments (OFDGIs) on firms' long-term stock return volatility levels and connectedness. Within a sample of Chinese firms, in a GARCH-MIDAS model, we offer evidence that OFDGIs investments will reduce firms' long-term stock return volatility. We also introduced a measure of firms' stock return volatility connectedness and studied OFDGIs' effect on firms' dependence on other firms' risks. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

A Study of the Abnormal Dividend Decisions of New Zealand Firms during COVID-19

We investigated the stock return risk associated with the various types of dividend decisions announced by New Zealand firms during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The sample includes a group of firms that initially announced cash dividends but a number of days later made announcements cancelling their payments. Using multinomial logistic regression analysis, we found that higher pre-pandemic payout policy significantly increased the likelihood of a cancellation, an omission or an increase decision. Higher growth and higher profitability reduced the probability of an omission and a reduction decision, respectively. Moreover, higher stock return volatility increased the likelihood of an omission, a reduction or an increase decision. Further event study analysis revealed that investors reacted more feverishly to the announcements of cancellation decisions than any other types of dividend decisions. Moreover, we report strong evidence of negative abnormal returns around the cancellation announcements followed by positive post-announcement price reversals, a pattern that is not observed for the omission announcements. This paper contributes to the literature by studying a cancellation sample and reveals, for the first time, significant shareholder risk associated with cancellation decisions, which was not observed for omission decisions. We alert managers to carefully weigh the costs and benefits of breaking a promise of dividend payout.

Text-Based Measure of Supply Chain Risk Exposure

Using textual analysis techniques, including seeded word embedding and bag-of-words-based content analysis, I develop a firm-level measure of supply chain risk exposure from a novel source of unstructured data—the discussion between managers and equity analysts on supply chain-related topics during firms’ quarterly earnings conference calls. I validate the measure by showing that (1) the measure exhibits intuitive variations over time and across firms, successfully capturing both routine and systematic supply chain risk events; and (2) the measure is about risk exposure, as it significantly correlates with realized and options-implied stock return volatility, even after controlling for well-known aggregate risk measures. I then demonstrate that the measure is specifically indicative of the supply chain component of risk exposure. (3) Consistent with theoretical predictions, firms facing higher supply chain risks have higher inventory buffers, particularly in raw materials and intermediate inputs, increased cash holdings in lieu of investments, and significantly lower trade credit received from suppliers. Moreover, (4) during unexpected risk episodes, such as the Tohoku earthquake, firms with higher ex ante risk exposure have worse operating and financial performance. These results indicate that the text-based measure provides a credible quantification of firm-level exposure to supply chain risks and can thus be reliably utilized as outcome or explanatory variables in empirical supply chain research. This paper was accepted by Jeannette Song, operations management. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4927 .

Effect of Capital Expenditure on Idiosyncratic Volatility of Stock Returns at the NSE in Kenya

Effect of Capital Expenditure on Idiosyncratic Volatility of Stock Returns at the NSE in Kenya

Spatial GARCH models for unknown spatial locations – an application to financial stock returns

ABSTRACT Spatial GARCH models, like all other spatial econometric models, require the definition of a suitable weight matrix. This matrix implies a certain structure for spatial interactions. GARCH-type models are often applied to financial data because the conditional variance, which can be translated as financial risks, is easy to interpret. However, when it comes to instantaneous/spatial interactions, the proximity between observations has to be determined. Thus, we introduce an estimation procedure for spatial GARCH models under unknown locations employing the proximity in a covariate space. We use one-year stock returns of companies listed in the Dow Jones Global Titans 50 index as an empirical illustration. Financial stability is most relevant for determining similar firms concerning stock return volatility.

Foreign investors and stocks' volatility: evidence from COVID-19

PurposeThe purpose of this study is twofold: first, to examine the relationship between foreign ownership and stock return volatility and second, to explore how COVID-19 impacts such a relationship.Design/methodology/approachThis empirical research is based on the non-financial firms of the BSE-100 index over the 2013–2022 period. The ordinary least squares, fixed effects and system GMM (Generalized method of moment) techniques are used to analyze the effect of oversea investors on stock return volatility.FindingsResults indicate an inverse association between foreign ownership and stock return volatility. The outcomes of the pre-and during-COVID-19 period show a negative but insignificant relationship between foreign ownership and stock return volatility. These results reflect foreign investors sold their stocks pessimistically, which badly affected the Indian stock market.Originality/valueThis study enriches the previous literature by exploring the impact of foreign investors on the stock return volatility of Indian firms. To date, no study has captured the impact of foreign ownership on stock return volatility during the COVID-19 pandemic.Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-03-2023-0179

The effect of Hungry Ghost Festival (HGF) on stock market returns and volatility: An empirical analysis of Asian stock markets

This study examines the effect of the Hungry Ghost Festival (HGF) on stock returns and volatility in five Asian stock indices. Shanghai demonstrated the highest average return and dispersion, while Singapore had the lowest. During the HGF, all countries’ kurtosis spiked, except for Philippines and Shanghai, signalling a high-risk investment with high returns. Finally, the current volatility of daily stock returns persists across countries and is influenced by previous shocks. Investment during the HGF may appear riskier and more volatile in some countries, but there is inconclusive evidence to conclude that the HGF had a significant effect on all markets.