03 Equity Investment Flashcards
Market
A market in general brings together buyers and sellers to transfer goods or services
- A market need not to have a physical location
- A good market should allow for cheap and smooth transfer
Asset Classes
- Risk/Return Level
- Liquidity Level
Equity Investments
- Medium to high risk/return
- Medium to high liquidity
Fixed income securities
- Low to medium risk/return
- High liquidity
Derivatives
- High risk/return
- Medium to high liquidity
Alternative investments (investment companies, real estate, low-liquidity investments)
- Medium to high risk/return
- Low to medium liquidity
Characteristics of well-functioning markets (4)
- Timely and accurate information on price and volume of past transactions and on the supply and demand for current goods will be provided
- Liquidity is the ability to buy and sell quickly
- Internal efficiency -> Lowest possible transaction cost is provided
- Informational (external) efficiency -> Prices will rapidly adjust to new information so the market price reflects all information available
Liquidity requires…
- Marketability: The ability to sell the security quickly
- Price continuity: Prices that don’t change much in the absence of new info
- Depth: Numerous buyers & sellers willing to trade at prices above & below the current price
Primary Market
- Securities are initially offered to the public in the primary market
- Most issues on primary markets are distributed with the aid of an underwriter
Primary Market - Services provided by an underwriter (3)
- Origination: Design, planning and registration of the issue
- Risk bearing: Insures or guarantees the price by purchasing the securities
- Distribution: Sells the issue
Primary Market: Corporate Bonds - Forms of selling
Corporate stocks or bonds are almost always sold with assistance of an investment bank. -> Three forms are common
- Competitive bids: Include less advice and are common for utilities
- Negotiation: Most common form
- Best efforts: The underwriter doesn’t take price risk nor guarantees
Primary Market: New Equity Issues
New equity issues involve either shares of firm’s already traded (seasoned issues) or first time issues called initial public offering (IPO)
- Seasoned issues should sell close to the current market price
- IPOs are typically underwritten by a lead underwriter and a group of investment banks
Secondary market (incl. Functions)
Trading of existing securities occurs in the secondary market including two main functions
- Liquidity enables investors to sell quickly. -> The greater the liquidity the more investors are willing to engage in these securities
- Providing continuous information for investors about the market price of their investment
Secondary Market: Different Structures of Security Markets
- Call Markets
- Continuous Markets
Secondary Market: Different Structures of Security Markets - Call Markets
- Stock is only traded at specific times, a market clearing price is set
- Used in smaller markets and to determine an opening price
Secondary Market: Different Structures of Security Markets - Continuous Markets
Price is set by either the auction process or by dealer bid-ask quotes
Over the Counter Markets (OTC)
Include the trading of all securities not listed on one of the registered (national or regional) exchanges
- Negotiated markets, where investors negotiate directly with dealers
- Bid and ask quote are listed over the National association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation (NASDAQ)
Third Market
Includes transactions in OTC markets including stocks listed at a registered exchange
Fourth Market
Fourth market transactions describe the direct exchange between investors without the use of brokers to save transaction costs
Trading Systems
- Pure Auction Market
- Dealer Market
Trading Systems - Pure Auction Market
Exchange system where buyers and sellers submit their bid and ask prices to a central location
- Transactions are made by brokers (computer) who do not have position in the stock (price-driven market)
Trading Systems - Dealer Market
Buyers and sellers submit their order to dealers who either buy or sell the stock for their own inventory (order-driven market)
- OTC markets are organized like this
Types of Orders (4)
- Market Orders
- Limit Orders
- Short Sales Orders
- Stop Loss Orders
Types of Orders - Market Orders
Buy or sale at the best price available
Types of Orders - Limit Orders
Orders to trade away from the current market price at a price defined in the order.
- Usually have a limit (instantaneous, day, week, month, GTC)
Types of Orders - Short Sale Orders
Orders where a trader borrows the stock, sells it, repurchases it later and returns a loan
Types of Orders - Stop Loss Orders
Used to prevent losses or protect profits
Market Making on Stock Markets - Basic functions of Market Makers
Market makers provide two basic functions to the exchange
- They act like brokers handling the limit order book where limit and stop orders are maintained
- They act as dealers buying and selling for their own accounts to maintain an orderly market and provide bridge liquidity if there is an inadequate order flow
Margin Purchases
Margin purchases involve buying securities with borrowed money
- Lending rate is about 1.5% above the bank call money rate
- Federal Reserve Board Regulations T demand an initial margin of 50% -> equity provided by the borrower
- Maintenance margin is the minimum equity portion of an account, currently at 25%
o If the customer’s balance falls below this value he will get a margin call -> Trigger price
Maintenance Margin
Maintenance margin is the minimum equity portion of an account, currently at 25%
- If the customer’s balance falls below this value he will get a margin call -> Trigger price
Function of Security-Market Indices
Intended to represent the behavior of the market
Areas that Security-Market Indices are used in (4)
- Measuring portfolio performance -> Since it takes no effort to earn the market return the portfolio performance is measured compared to the market
- Evaluate the financial variables that influence overall security price movements
- Investment decision in technical analysis
- Calculate a firm’s beta indices used as proxy for the market portfolio
Indices (incl. factors to be considered)
Indices track performance of a predefined market segment.
Factors that must be considered:
- The sample must be representative of the population to avoid bias -> Source, size and breadth must be defined
- The individual items must be weighted either by price, value, or equal weighting system
- The mathematical or computational procedure to combine the individual items into a whole index must be defined. Generally, arithmetic average or geometric average, or base period weighting of the average are used
Price-Weighted Indices
Price-weighted series adds together the market price of each stock in the index and then divides the total by the numbers of stock
- Such an index assumes the purchase of an equal number of shares of each stock represented in the index
- High price stocks will have relatively greater effect on the index
- The index divisor (denumerator) must be adjusted for stock splits and other changes (e.g. exit entry of new stocks)
-> This results in a downward bias as predominantly successful companies tend to split their stock and thus will lose weight within the index
Market Value-Weighted Indices
Market value-weighted series are calculated by summing the total value of all stocks in the index. The sum will then be divided by the sum of the base period and multiplied with the index’s base beginning value
- Assumes an investment proportionate to the market value in each company
- Firms with greater market capitalization have greater impact on the index
Unweighted Indices
Unweighted price indicator series place an equal weight on all stocks regardless of their price and market value.
- These indices are working with percentage price changes
- The value can be calculated using arithmetic or geometric average
- The geometric mean causes downward bias in the index as it will always be lower than respectively maximal equal to the arithmetic mean
- Assumes that the index portfolio makes and maintains an equal dollar investment in each stock
Style Indices
- The major indices are supplemented by small- and mid-cap indices, mainly to evaluate the performance of money managers who concentrate on those size sectors
- Further distinction includes type of stock, i.e. growth or value stocks
- Latest index “innovation” created Indices to track socially responsible investments (SRI)
Style Indices - Value Stock
Value stocks usually have a low price-earnings or price-book value ratio
Style Indices - Growth Stock
A growth stock is specified as a stock of a company experiencing rapid growth of sales and earnings
Bond-Market Indices - Difficulties
- Bond universe is much broader than the universe of stocks
- Bond universe is changing constantly due to new issues, maturities, call terms and bond sinking funds
- Significant pricing problems as many bonds lack of continuous trade data like that found for exchange listed stocks
Basic Categories of Bond Indices (3)
- Investment grade bond indices
- High-yield bond indices
- Global bond indices
Composite Stock-Bond Indices
Developed to measure the performance of all securities in a given country
Efficient Market - Definition
In an efficient market the current price of a security fully reflects all available information including risk
Information Efficient Market - Definition
In an information efficient market prices adjust rapidly to new information
Assumptions of Market Efficiency (4)
- A large number of profit maximizing participants are analyzing and valuing securities independent of each other
- New information occurs randomly and independent of each other
- Investors adjust their estimate of security prices rapidly
- Expected returns implicitly include risk in the price of the security
-> Should these assumptions not hold (like in emerging markets) excess returns may be possible
Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH): Weak-form EMH
Assumes that stock prices fully reflect all currently available (historical) security market information
- Past price and volume information will not influence future prices
- Technical analysis will not yield excess returns
Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH): Semistrong-form EMH
- Holds that prices instantly adjust to the arrival of all new publicly available information
- Investors cannot achieve excess returns using fundamental analysis
Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH): Strong-form EMH
- Assumes all – market, nonmarket public, and private (inside) – information is reflected in the market price -> No group of investors should achieve superior returns
- Assumes perfect markets in which all information is cost free and available to everyone
Efficient Capital Markets - Anomalies
- If a mispricing is well known and persistent then it is referred to as an anomaly
- Market anomalies are phenomena not explained by the efficient market hypothesis and possibly disprove EMH
Efficient Capital Markets - Anomalies: Time-Series Tests
- Release of quarterly earnings surprises are not reflected in prices as fast as expected by semistrong EMH
- January anomaly: Shows that tax-induced trading at year end increase prices in the short run -> An investor can earn excess returns by buying in December and selling in early January
- Weekend effect: Shows that the average return for weekdays is positive but that there is a negative return associated with Fridays
- Prices tend to rise on the last trade of the day
Efficient Capital Markets - Anomalies: Cross-Sectional Tests
- Low price-earnings ratio (P/E) stocks experience superior results relative to the market
- Small firm effect says that small and neglected firms (few analysts following them) experience significantly larger risk-adjusted return
- The greater the ratio book to market value the greater the risk-adjusted return
Efficient Capital Markets - Anomalies: Event Studies (4)
- Stock splits were found to have no long- or short-run impacts
- IPOs are on average underpriced by 15%, the pricing adjustment occurs within the first trading day
- The listing on a prestigious exchange or segment does not cause a permanent value increase, but researchers found short-run profit opportunities
- Markets do react quickly and predictably accounting changes
Efficient Markets - Implications
- Fundamental analysis has to be directed towards estimating variables that influence the long-run performance
- Portfolio management should diversify on a global basis to eliminate unsystematic risk
- Minimizing transaction costs is an important part of the investment managers job, i.e. taxes, trading turnover, liquidity
- Performance measurement should compare investment professionals to a randomly selected buy-and-hold strategy
- The investors job is to separate good money managers from the average and poor
- Index funds are a cost-effective way to participate in the market’s performance, since EMH states that one cannot expect to outperform the market
Limitations to Efficient Markets
Prices can adjust to new information only with a time lag
- Processing of information is costly
- If the delay is short enough (a few minutes) markets are still considered efficient
Cost of trading incur by traders: Time for investment selection and brokerage cost
- The greater the cost of trading the greater the mispricing
- If short selling (selling a stock you do not own) is more difficult than buying long (buying a stock you do not own) then prices are likely to be biased upward
Limitations of arbitrage may occur if mispricing continues
- New economy
- Arbitrageurs are limited by the capital amount available, therefore they concentrate on the most egregious mispricing
Behavioral Finance
Considers how various psychological traits affect the ways that individuals or groups act as investors
Behavioral Finance - Overconfidence in Forecast
Bias which causes analysts to overestimate growth rates, emphasize good news, and ignore negative news from growth companies
Behavioral Finance - Following the Herd
Traders following the news – and they “following the herd” – are almost always wrong and contribute to excess volatility
Behavioral Finance - Fusion Investing
Fusion investing is the integration of two elements, the fundamental value and the investor sentiment
- Measures for investor sentiment can be analyst recommendation, price momentum, and high trading turnover
- Especially for short-term trading the market sentiment may be important as fundamental analysis takes about three years to assert itself