Sentiment indices based on investor sentiment surveys attempt to measure the stock market sentiment. The literature on these indices focusses mainly on whether investor sentiment influences the financial markets or not. But the term 'sentiment' has never been defined in the literature. Therefore...

Does trade improve the income levels of the poor and less developed nations? Focusing on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) designated by the United Nations, we construct a new measure of trade cost, based on the Baltic Dry Index (BDI), as an instrument for trade. The BDI reflects the cost of...

The cyclical properties of the annual growth of the Baltic Dry Index (BDI) and their implications for short-to-medium term forecasting performance are investigated. We show that the BDI has a cyclical pattern which has been stable except for a period after the 2007 crisis. This pattern has...

In their seminal paper, Brückner and Ciccone (2011) document that a significant effect of democratic change may be triggered by negative transitory economic shocks, and that rainfall can open a democratic window of opportunity in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). As a complement, this paper uses...

We estimate the effect of exports on HIV incidence for sub-Saharan African countries, using an instrument related to the Baltic Dry Index. We find that a doubling of exports per capita could increase HIV incidence by about 55% on average.

This empirical study analyzes the information and predictive content of the Baltic Dry Index (BDI) with respect to a range of financial assets and the macroeconomy. By using panel methodological approaches and daily data spanning the period 1985–2012, the empirical analysis documents the joint...

The purpose of this article is to investigate whether, how and when, from a statistical standpoint, Technical Analysis strategies tools hold true for the futures contract of Ibovespa Index, negotiated at the Brazilian Futures Exchange (“Bolsa Brasileira de Mercadorias e Futuros – BM&F”),...

We find that turnover rises on n-day highs and lows and is an increasing function of n. We offer several explanations from the technical and behavioral finance literature for why traders might use these signals. Turnover is persistent following these events, and new lows provide abnormal returns...

Using a trading system based on various simple moving average crossings, the paper examines the weak-form market efficiency of the wheat traded at the Euronext exchange. After optimizing over the sample period, the best strategy is selected and then applied over the out-of-sample period. The...

This book is the first of its kind to treat high-frequency trading and technical analysis as accurate sciences. The authors reveal how to build trading algorithms of high-frequency trading and obtain stable statistical arbitrage from the financial market in detail. The authors' arguments are...