We investigate the effect of credit analyst rotation in the context of long-term ratings of S&P 500 issuers between 2002 and 2015. We find that analyst rotation in the coverage of issuers is associated with higher rating activity and a lower credit risk assessment (e.g., rating downgrades)...

Funds of Hedge Funds (FHF) are perceived to be the premier choice of institutional investors for first-time allocations into the alternative investment asset class. While many papers cover the bright side of FHF investing, we in this paper empirically investigate the maximum drawdowns of FHF....

"Arbitrage CDOs" have recorded an explosive growth during the years before the outbreak of the financial crisis. In the present paper we discuss potential sources of such arbitrage opportunities, in particular arbitrage gains due to mispricing. For this purpose we examine the risk profiles of...

We document that investors can actually profit from the contemporaneous link between earnings accuracy and recommendation profitability (Loh and Mian (2006)). Differentiating between "able" and "lucky" analysts we suggest an implementable, i.e. look-ahead bias free, trading strategy that yields...

Das Geschäft mit Derivaten und strukturierten Finanzprodukten ist verstärkter Kritik ausgesetzt. Ziel des Aufsatzes ist die kritische Auseinandersetzung mit den Thesen der Kritiker und der Rolle der Bank bei den genannten Geschäften. -- Derivate ; strukturierte Produkte ; Bewertung ;...

Rationality would suggest that advice-seeking investors receive benefits from costly financial advice. However, evidence documenting these benefits for U.S. investors has so far been lacking. This paper is the first to document that U.S. mutual fund investors indeed receive one of the many...

Equity research analysts tend to cover firms about which they have favorable views. We exploit this tendency to infer analysts' preferences for corporate policies from their coverage decisions. We then use exogenous analyst disappearances to examine the effect of these preferences on corporate...

This study shows that financial advisors provide useful tax advice to their clients, being the first to provide evidence of tangible benefits delivered by financial advisors in the U.S. We find that investors who purchase mutual fund shares through financial advisors exhibit a stronger tendency...

Analysts providing more accurate earnings forecasts also issue more profitable recommendations. We demonstrate how investors can profit from this contemporaneous link by differentiating between "able" and "lucky" analysts. In line with previous studies, we find that past track records alone are...