Standard asset pricing models ignore the costs of liquidity. In this study we advance the ongoing debate on empirical asset pricing and test if liquidity costs (as proxied by turnover rate, turnover ratio and bid-ask spread) affect stock returns for Australian stocks. Our tests use the factor...

In this article, a multifactor asset pricing model incorporating a price limit factor is developed to explain the cross section of asset returns following closely the mimicking portfolio methodology of Fama and French (1996). Differing regulatory environments in the Asian region suggest that...

We investigate the prevalence of informed options trading prior to takeover announcements, when the legal prohibition against insider trading is strictest. Although insider trading laws apply equally to the options and stock markets, the options market is considerably more transparent than the...

This study examines the profitability of trading on earnings surprises in the post-earnings announcement period for Canadian equities spanning the period 1994–2009. There is clear evidence that stock prices drift in the direction of earnings surprise for several months following an earnings...

This paper examines the relationship between difference of opinion among investors and the return on Australian equities. The paper is the first to employ dispersion in analysts' earnings forecasts, abnormal turnover and idiosyncratic volatility as proxies for difference of opinion. We document...

This study investigates whether firm-level accrual mispricing exists and if such mispricing is persistent. Our results show both under and overpricing of accruals that persevere. Specifically, we show that a trading strategy going a dollar long (short) in underpriced (overpriced) accrual firms...

This study employs text-analysis software to analyze the contents of the Federal Reserve Beige Book summary of national economic and business conditions, with a particular focus on the predictive content of the text. We show that the Beige Book language is a good predictor of economic turning...

We investigate whether the two 2 zero cost portfolios, SMB and HML, have the ability to predict economic growth for markets investigated in this paper. Our findings show that there are only a limited number of cases when the coefficients are positive and significance is achieved in an even more...

Standard asset pricing models ignore idiosyncratic risk. In this study, we examine if idiosyncratic or unique risk affects returns for New Zealand stocks using the factor portfolio mimicking approach of Fama and French (1993, 1996). We find evidence of a negative relationship between firm size...

Purpose – Malkiel and Xu state that idiosyncratic volatility is highly correlated with size and that it plays a powerful role in explaining expected returns. The purpose of this paper is to ask whether idiosyncratic volatility is useful in explaining the variation in expected returns; and...