Investing Expertise

In their March 2005 paper entitled “Do Investor Sophistication and Trading Experience Eliminate Behavioral Biases in Financial Markets?”, Lei Feng and Mark Seasholes analyze how sophistication and trading experience of investors affect their disposition behavioral bias (reluctance to realize losses and propensity to realize gains). They define sophistication based on four factors: number of trading rights; initial level of portfolio diversification; age; and, gender. They define trading experience as the number of positions taken since account initiation. Using data from a national brokerage firm in the People’s Republic of China for 1,511 individual accounts initiated on or after 1/1/99 and monitored through 12/31/00, they conclude that: Keep Reading

In the August 2005 draft of their paper entitled “Analyst Conflicts and Research Quality”, Anup Agrawal and Mark Chen examine whether the forecasts quality of stock analysts relates to conflicts of interest from the investment banking and brokerage businesses of their employers. They define forecast quality in terms of: (1) accuracy; (2) bias; (3) frequency of quarterly earnings per share (EPS) forecast revisions; and, (4) relative optimism of long-term earnings growth forecasts. By cross-referencing the forecasts of 3,000 analysts with line-of-business revenue breakdowns for their respective employers (163 different firms) over the period 1994-2003, they find that: Keep Reading

In his recent paper entitled “Information Uncertainty and Analyst Forecast Behavior”, Frank Zhang explores the effects of an increase in information uncertainty (from either volatility of underlying fundamentals or poor information) on the behavior of sell-side stock analysts. He hypothesizes that if behavioral biases cause analysts to underreact to new information when revising their forecasts, they underreact even more as information uncertainty increases. Using dispersion in analysts’ earnings forecasts as a proxy for information uncertainty over the period 1983-2001, he determines that: Keep Reading

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted Regulation FD (Fair Disclosure) effective October 2000. “The regulation provides that when an issuer, or person acting on its behalf, discloses material nonpublic information to certain enumerated persons (in general, securities market professionals and holders of the issuer’s securities who may well trade on the basis of the information), it must make public disclosure of that information.” In their June 2005 paper entitled “Who is Afraid of Reg FD? The Behavior and Performance of Sell-Side Analysts Following the SEC’s Fair Disclosure Rules”, Anup Agrawal, Sahiba Chadha and Mark Chen assess the impact of Regulation FD on the accuracy and dispersion of sell-side analyst earnings forecasts. By examining earnings forecasts from March 1995 to June 2004, they determine that: Keep Reading

In The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, James Surowiecki identifies and discusses the three conditions necessary for a crowd to make good group decisions. Applied to the stock market, good decisions means stock prices that reflect the true values of underlying assets. As depicted in the figure below, the three conditions are: Keep Reading

In media interviews and in their own columns, expert investors often project high levels of confidence regarding their opinion of market direction and their stock recommendations. Are they overconfident with respect to their private information and/or abilities? In their paper “Overconfidence of Professionals and Lay Men: Individual Differences Within and Between Tasks?”, Markus Glaser, Thomas Langer and Martin Weber analyze whether professional traders and investment bankers are overconfident in their judgments to the same degree as non-professionals. Based on testing of 33 professional traders and 90 investment bankers, and of control groups of advanced students specializing in finance and banking, they conclude that: Keep Reading

In his paper “The Kiss Of Death: A 5-Star Morningstar Mutual Fund Rating?”, appearing in the second quarter 2005 issue of the Journal Of Investment Management, Matthew Morey examines the performance of mutual funds immediately after first achieving a Morningstar 5-star rating. Focusing on diversified domestic stock funds from July 1993 to July 2001 (273 funds), he concludes that: Keep Reading

If your crystal ball has not been working so well… Keep Reading

In their March 2005 paper entitled “Do Sell-Side Analysts Exhibit Differential Target Price Forecasting Ability?”, Mark Bradshaw and Lawrence Brown test the accuracy of 12-month stock price targets both for individual analysts and for analysts overall. Using a filtered sample of about 100,000 individual 12-month stock price targets from Thomson Financial over the period 1997-2002, the authors conclude that: Keep Reading

Hedge funds now haul about $1 trillion in capital from opportunity to opportunity around world markets. Hedge fund managers have latitude to operate in ways that mutual fund managers do not in terms of leverage, shorting and types of assets traded (such as derivatives). What makes the best hedge fund managers successful? In their March 2005 paper entitled “Hedge Fund Performance and Manager Characteristics Education and Age Matter…”, Haitao Li, Rui Zhao and Xiaoyan Zhang correlate the background characteristics of hedge fund managers with the performances of their funds. Using a dataset encompassing 1,000+ hedge funds over the period 1994 to 2003, they conclude that: Keep Reading