Trillions of dollars are invested through index funds, exchange-traded funds, and other index derivatives. The benefits of index-linked investing are well-known, but the possible broader economic consequences are unstudied. I review research which suggests that index-linked investing is...

It is a commonly held view that gold protects investors’ wealth in the event of negative economic conditions. In this study, we test whether other metals offer similar or better investment opportunities in periods of market turmoil. Using a sample of 13 sovereign bonds, we show that other...

I provide evidence that investors overweight analyst forecasts by demonstrating that prices do not fully reflect predictable components of analyst errors, which conflicts with conclusions in prior research. I highlight estimation bias in traditional approaches and develop a new approach that...

This paper focuses on the underpricing and the short- and long-run performance of Finnish initial public offerings (IPOs). More specifically, we examine whether there are differences between the performance of value and growth stock IPOs in the Finnish stock market. Our results indicate that...

This paper studies recurring annual events potentially introducing seasonality into gold prices. We analyze gold returns for each month from 1980 to 2010 and find that September and November are the only months with positive and statistically significant gold price changes. This “autumn...

Although the behavior of the Spanish stock market has been studied from many different points of view, none of the previous research has ever analyzed the influence of previous daytime, overnight and daily returns from the DOW and IBEX upon 5-min intraday returns of the IBEX throughout the...

Using an international database featuring 1624 mutual funds over 15years, this paper analyses the joint abilities of performance measures to predict subsequent fund failure. We examine the probability of disappearance over a time window, and expected fund survival time, and study the...

This paper examines the extent to which individual investors provide liquidity to the stock market, and whether they are compensated for doing so.We show that the ability of aggregate retail order imbalances, contrarian in nature, to predict short-term future returns is significantly enhanced...

Does the retail clientele matter for option returns? By delta-hedging options and trading straddles, thus allowing a focus on volatility, this paper empirically shows that a higher retail trading proportion (RTP) is related to lower option returns. Long-short portfolios involving options on low...

We propose a measure of dispersion in fund managers׳ beliefs about future stock returns based on their active holdings, i.e., deviations from benchmarks. We find that both the level of and the change in dispersion positively predict subsequent stock returns on a risk-adjusted basis. This effect...