This paper examines the ability of balanced pension plan managers to successfully time the equity and bond market and select the appropriate assets within these markets. In order to evaluate both market timing abilities in these balanced pension plans, we extend the traditional equity market...

This Paper assesses the ability of international asset pricing models to explain the cross-sectional variation in expected returns. All the models considered seem to capture national market returns fairly well. Global portfolios sorted on earnings-price ratio and market value, however, pose a...

This paper investigates the investment performance of Malaysian Islamic equity funds and a matching sample of conventional equity funds relative to their market benchmark. An integrated model is used to simultaneously capture the market timing and selectivity skills of fund managers. Our...

This statistical study refines and updates Sharpe's empirical paper (1975, Financial Analysts Journal) on switching between US common stocks and cash equivalents. According to the original conclusion, profitable market timing relies on a representative portfolio manager who can correctly...

It is an open secret that most investment funds actually underperform the market. Yet, millions of individual investors fare even worse, barely treading water. Algorithmic trading is now so common, it accounts for over 80% of all trades and is the domain of professionals. Can it also help the...

Unbeknownst to the public, most investment funds actually underperform the broader market. Yet, millions of individual investors fare even worse, barely treading water. Algorithmic trading now accounts for over 80% of all trades and is the domain of professionals. Can it also help the small...

We decompose the conditional expected mutual fund return in five parts. Two parts, selectivity and expert market timing, can be attributed to manager skill, and three to variation in market exposure that can be achieved by private investors as well. The dynamic model that we use to estimate the...

In this paper, we analyze the economic value of predicting stock index returns as well as volatility. On the basis of simple linear models, estimated recursively, we produce genuine out-of-sample forecasts for the return on the S&P 500 index and its volatility. Using monthly data from 1954 to...

The 2008 financial crisis exemplifies significant uncertainties in corporate financing conditions. We develop a unified dynamic q-theoretic framework where firms have both a precautionary-savings motive and a market-timing motive for external financing and payout decisions, induced by stochastic...

We examine market timing in the equity issuance of firms controlled by large shareholders using a hand-collected data set of controlling shareholders' ownership stakes in Chile between 1990 and 2009. When a firm issues shares, the controlling shareholder can either maintain or change his...