The goal of this paper is to present an original and simple analysis aimed to understand why investing in capital markets can be very dangerous for "naive investors". Stock markets display often exploding volatility. They are characterized by instability and subject to external shocks. If...

Anonymous trading is the norm in today's financial markets but there are a few exceptions. We study one such case, the OMX Nordic Exchanges (Stockholm, Helsinki, Copenhagen, and Reykjavik) that have traditionally been more transparent than most other markets. On June 2, 2008 OMX Nordic switched...

While conventional academic finance emphasizes theories such as Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) and the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), the emerging field of behavioral finance investigates the cognitive factors and emotional issues that impact the decision-making process of individuals,...

Short sellers are routinely blamed for destabilizing stock markets by exacerbating deviations from fundamental values. In response, regulators periodically impose short sale constraints aimed at preventing excessive stock market declines. One explanation is that policy makers regard short...

In this study, we test a set of country macro sentiment indexes that measure the trailing sentiment on both scheduled and unscheduled economic and geopolitical news events. We develop a cross-over strategy in the FX market based on short to long-term news sentiment inflection points covering the...

Quite a heated debate has been raging in Finance Theory since the early 1990's regarding the relevance of Modern Portfolio Theory. Yet both adversaries are overlooking something very fundamental that could in fact bring them much closer. My working paper on the Market Indifference Curve provides...

The local bias puzzle was originally proposed from the analysis of investors' investment portfolios. We test and confirm the hypothesis that local bias has already existed in investor attention subconsciously regardless of their investment. In contrast to literature which focuses on investment...

A core premise of Modern Portfolio Theory is that investors utilize two parameters for their decision making process only: expected value and standard deviation. Ergo - if only to determine the fair expected return for the Market Portfolio itself - a fair price of total risk exists. Assuming...

In the late 1990s, the Japanese government initiated a number of reforms that resulted in lower transaction costs and made the Japanese equity market more attractive for foreign institutions. Following these changes, foreign institutional holdings more than doubled, providing an opportunity to...