This paper investigates the extent to which voluntary disclosure quality (VDQ) of firms is reflected in equity prices. As a novel contribution, we explore the idea that the speed with which equity prices reflect any benefits or costs of VDQ varies across firms. We find that in environments where...

Risk parity is an asset allocation strategy designed so each asset class contributes equally to overall portfolio risk (as measured by volatility). While risk parity offers potential advantages, its success hinges on key assumptions and a favorable environment for bonds. Like the traditional...

We provide some new tools to evaluate trading strategies. When it is known that many strategies and combinations of strategies have been tried, we need to adjust our evaluation method for these multiple tests. Sharpe Ratios and other statistics will be overstated. Our methods are simple to...

InvestorLit is a subscription service providing reviews of institutional investment literature. The reviews cover a wide range of investment topics and are published online. Bruce Grantier, founder of InvestorLit, is a member of the Brandes Institute Advisory Board. Members of the InvestorLit...

Passive investing, particularly in emerging markets, has become an increasingly popular means of quick, “diversified” exposure to a particular segment of the markets. Flows into passive emerging market products have been so strong that assets in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) designed to...

I explore the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in mitigating managers' opportunistic behavior related to defined benefit (DB) pension plan management. Strong CSR firms tend to engage less in earnings manipulation associated with executive option granting and CFO's pay sensitivity to...

Textual analysis, implemented at scale, has become an important addition to the methodological toolbox of finance. In this paper, given the proliferation of papers now using this method, we first provide an updated review of the literature while focusing on a few broad topics—social media,...

Spillover effects from equity momentum to credit markets have been shown to lead to excessive premia and, simultaneously, reduced risk measures in credit securities. Here, we present an intuitive theory for this anomaly based on the premise that equity momentum drives leverage to invoke rating...

The impact of sentiment on asset prices varies during periods of low and high ambiguity and risk and across countries. Examining stock market returns across twenty-nine countries, we show that the predictability of sentiment is more pronounced when ambiguity is low in Australia, Canada, Czech...

There have been a renewed focus on portfolio management of deposit money banks since the global financial crisis of 2007-09. This renewed focus is based on the understanding that an efficient portfolio management reduces risks and loss associated with uncertainty of investment returns which may...