<p>The Chinese stock market is a remarkable emerging market, the two stock markets Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges were both established in 1990, and since then they have been playing a very important role in Chinese economy. More and more attention is focused on the emerging Chinese market, and investors have been trying to find the opportunity to achieve abnormal returns through the Chinese stock market. We name this phenomenon market efficiency anomaly, one pattern of which is seasonality effect. In our study, we would like to choose the seasonality effect as the approach.</p><p>This study focuses on Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index, and we settle two research questions: Does seasonality effect exist in Chinese Stock exchange? Is the seasonality effect persistent over times?We try to test the seasonality in Chinese stock market by day of the week effect, January effect and semi-month effect. Deductive approach and quantitative research method are used in this thesis. To analyze seasonality effect, the data has been collected from Shanghai Stock Exchange Index and has been tested in four periods: 1992-1996,1997-2001, 2002-2006 and the whole period 1992-2006. Null hypothesis and T-test with α=0.05 is used to test the seasonality effect. The results show that seasonal anomalies like Day of the week effect, positive March effect, and negative July effect exist in the Chinese stock market, while semi-month effect does not occur significantly; but the existing seasonal effect is not persistent over times. The above indicates that the Chinese stock market is not fully efficient yet. Investors may have opportunities to make use of the seasonal anomalies to earn abnormal return.</p>

<p>This thesis consists of an introductory chapter and four self-contained essays on the value relevance of financial statement information.</p><p>Essay 1: The purpose of this essay is to examine relevance of environmental information from an investor’s perspective. The study proposes that the market value of companies will reflect both financial and environmental performance. The theoretical foundation of the study is the accounting based valuation theory outlined by Ohlson (1995). This study provides new insights into how environmental performance is reflected in the market value of Swedish companies listed on the Swedish Stock market.</p><p>Essay 2: In financial accounting research, much effort has been devoted to study the relation between accounting earnings and stock prices. The primary purpose of the second essay is to investigate the effect of alternative return-earnings model specifications to the estimated returns-earnings relation, that is, the earnings response coefficients. The returns-earnings models investigated include the traditional earnings levels and changes, and models including analysts’ earnings forecasts based on Ohlson’s (1995) extended residual income model.</p><p>Essay 3: Fundamental analysis research that focuses on the use of accounting information to estimate equity value, has surfaced as a central theme in market based accounting research of the 1990s (Lee, 1999). The purpose of third essay is to compare two different approaches to valuation based on the theory presented in Ohlson (1995) in terms of explanatory and predictive power of the value estimates. Both approaches are implemented with and without the use of analysts forecasts. </p><p>Essay 4: In this essay data from the Swedish stock market is used to investigate the profitability of two different types of investment strategies based on fundamental-to-value ratios and past insider trading activity. The purpose of the research is to explore four related research questions: (i) Do accounting based trading strategies generate abnormal returns on the Swedish stock market?; (ii) Do trading strategies based on insider trading behaviour generate abnormal returns on the Swedish stock market?; (iii) Do insiders who buy stocks tend to favour value stocks and do insiders who sell stocks tend to dispose growth stocks?; and (iv) Are insiders able to discriminate between temporary high/low fundamentals and temporary low/high prices when buying/selling value stocks and growth stocks? </p>

<p>This paper is an empirical study on Harry Markowitz work on Modern Portfolio Theory. The model introduced by him assumes the normality of assets’ return. We examined the OMX Large Cap List1 by mathematical and statistical methods for normality of assets’ returns. We studied the effect of the parameters, Skewness and Kurtosis for different time series data. We tried to figure it out which data series is better to construct a portfolio and how these extra parameters can make us better informed in our investments.</p>

<p>Forecasting the stock market is a complex task, partly because of the random walk behavior of the stock price series. The task is further complicated by the noise, outliers and missing values that are common in financial time series. Despite of this, the subject receives a fair amount of attention, which probably can be attributed to the potential rewards that follows from being able to forecast the stock market.</p><p>Since artificial neural networks are capable of exploiting non-linear relations in the data, they are suitable to use when forecasting the stock market. In addition to this, they are able to outperform the classic autoregressive linear models.</p><p>The objective of this thesis is to investigate if the stock market can be forecasted, using the so called error correction neural network. This is accomplished through the development of a method aimed at finding the optimum forecast model.</p><p>The results of this thesis indicates that the developed method can be applied successfully when forecasting the stock market. Of the five stocks that were forecasted in this thesis using forecast models based on the developed method, all generated positive returns. This suggests that the stock market can be forecasted using neural networks.</p>

<p>Bakgrund: 4 av 5 svenskar äger aktier i någon form och det är många som är intresserade av att maximera sin avkastning. Det har lett till att det skrivs mycket i media om olika sätt att få avkastning högre än marknaden. Om det skulle vara möjligt att nå överavkastning är det en indikation på att marknaden inte är effektiv.</p><p>Syfte: Syftet med studien är att undersöka om det historiskt har gått att nå en överavkastning genom tillämpa momentum- eller motsatstrategin på den svenska aktiemarknaden. Syftet är även att testa om den svenska aktiemarknaden har varit effektiv i svag form.</p><p>Genomförande: Momentumstrategin testades genom att portföljer formades med de tio aktier som har haft högst relativ prisstyrka de senaste sex månaderna. Portföljernas marknadsjusterade avkastning har sedan följts i sex månader. Motsatsstrategin testades genom att vinnarportföljer formades med de tio aktier som har haft högst avkastning de senaste tre åren och förlorarportföljer formades för de med lägst avkastning. Portföljernas marknadsjusterade avkastningar under de kommande tre åren jämfördes sedan med varandra.</p><p>Slutsats: Vi har kommit fram till att det har gått att nå en överavkastning med hjälp av momentumstrategin och att den har fungerat bäst i perioder av stabila uppgångar. Det har däremot inte gått att få överavkastning med hjälp av motsatsstrategin. Vi menar att resultatet beror på att marknaden underreagerar. Därmed kan vi säga att den svenska aktiemarknaden under den undersöka tidsperioden inte har varit effektiv i svag form.</p> / <p>Background: 4 out of 5 Swedes own stocks in some form and many people are interested in maximising their profits. This has led to a lot of publicity in ways to get profits higher than the market. The eventual possibility to receive abnormal returns indicates that the market is inefficient.</p><p>Purpose: The purpose of the study is to investigate if it historically has been possible to receive abnormal returns by implementing momentum- and contrarian strategies on the Swedish stock market. The purpose is also to test if the Swedish stock market has been efficient in weak form.</p><p>Implementation: The momentum strategy was tested by forming portfolios consisting of the ten stocks with the highest relative price strength over the last six months. The portfolio abnormal returns were then followed for the following six months. The contrarian strategy was tested by forming winner portfolios consisting of the ten stocks with the highest abnormal returns over the last three years. Loser portfolios were formed of the ten stocks with the lowest abnormal returns over the last three years. The portfolios abnormal returns were then compared to each other for the following three years.</p><p>Conclusion: We have reached the conclusion that it has been possible to receive abnormal returns by using the momentum strategy. It has been the most successful in periods of steady raises. The contrarian strategy has not generated any excess returns. We believe that reason for the results is that the market under reacts. Therefore we can state that the Swedish stock market not has been efficient in weak form during the examined period.</p>

<p>I denna uppsats<strong> </strong>undersöker jag huruvida CAPM eller APT modellerna ger resultat på den svenska aktiemarknaden mellan 1998 och 2007. Jag undersöker om någon av dessa modeller passar in i den svenska aktiemarknaden och hurdan är resultatet. Det som gör uppsatsen intressant är att jag använder båda modellerna i en och samma studie och jämför resultatet av uppskattningar av modellerna. Som markandsindex har jag använt OMXS30 index och som makroekonomiska variabler i APT-modellen har jag använt inflation, oljepris, industriproduktionsindex och ränta. Resultatet av studien är att med de makroekonomiska variablerna, som jag har använt, ger både CAPM och APT likvärdiga resultat. Slutsatsen av min studie är att APT med de rätta variablerna är en bättre modell att skatta priset på aktier än CAPM.</p> / <p>In this essay, I examine whether CAPM or APT models give results on the Swedish stock market between 1998 and 2007. I examine if either CAMP or APT or both of these models fits in on the Swedish stock market and what the result is. What makes this essay interesting is that I use both models in one and the same study and compare the result of my estimates with these two models. As market index, I have used the OMXS30 index and as macroeconomic variables in APT model, I have used inflation, oil price, industry production index and interest. The result of the study is that with the macroeconomic variables, that I have used with APT and CAPM, gives CAPM and APT equivalent results. The conclusion of the study is that APT, with the correct variables, is better model for estimating the stock prices than CAPM.</p>

<p>Listed corporations achieve effectiveness through segmentation of investors. Categorization of like- minded investors diminishes goal incongruence. This thesis aim to examine an Investor models accuracy, provided by a Professor Emeritus in Economic Psychology in 2001. This model segments investors as active, passive, speculative and naive investors.</p><p> </p><p>This thesis has a demarcation to private investors on the Swedish stock market. It has a deductive and qualitative approach as the purpose is to study the Investor model. In order to obtain empirical data semi- structured interviews were conducted with Avanza Bank, Handelsbanken, Aktiespararna and Karl- Erik Wärneryd, the author of the Investor model. All interviews were carried out by telephone except the face- to- face interview with Karl- Erik Wärneryd.</p><p> </p><p>The conclusion of this thesis is that the Investor model is not universal. The Investor model needs to be modified by the purpose of the sector of the application in order to be accurate. Different factors have influenced investors since 2001 which has subsequently had an effect on the Investor groups’ characteristics.</p>

<p>There is evidence that globalization, economic assimilation and integration among countries and their financial markets have increased correlation among stock markets and the correlation may in turn impact investors’ allocation of their assets and economic policies. We have conducted a quantitative study with daily stock index quotes for the period January 2000 and December 2009 in order to measure the eventual correlation between the markets of ASEAN+3. This economic integration consists of; Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, China, Japan and South Korea. Our problem formulation is:Are the stock markets of ASEAN+3 correlated?Does the eventual correlation change under turbulent market conditions?In terms of the eventual correlation, discuss: is it possible to diversify an investment portfolio within this area?The purpose of the study is to conduct a research that will provide investors with information about stock market correlation within the chosen market. We have conducted the study with a positivistic view and a deductive approach with some theories as our starting point. The main theories discussed are; market efficiency, risk and return, Modern Portfolio Theory, correlation and international investments. By using the financial datatbase, DataStream, we have been able to collect the necessary data for our study. The data has been processed in the statistical program SPSS by using Pearson correlation.From the empirical findings and our analysis we were able to draw some main conclusions about our study. We found that most of the ASEAN+3 countries were strongly correlated with each other. Japan showed lower correlation with all of the other countries. Based on this we concluded that economic integration seems to increase correlation between stock markets. When looking at the economic downturn in 2007-2009, we found that the correlation between ASEAN+3 became stronger and positive for all of the countries. The results also showed that the correlation varies over time. We concluded that it is, to a small extent, possible to diversify an investment portfolio across these markets.</p>

<p>The concept of grandstanding comes from Gompers (1996), in his article, he defined “to grandstand” as “to act or conduct oneself with a view to impressing onlookers”. The idea of grandstanding does not only apply solely to venture capital but also could apply to underwriters of IPOs industry as well.</p><p>IPOs activities provide huge revenues for underwriters, so underwriters compete with each other for IPO business. China’s stock market grows explosively after 2006, and it has the highest underpricing, as well as more and more underwriters have emerged recently, so our paper is constrained under Chinese stock market environment. We empirically examine whether inexperienced underwriters grandstand when they conduct IPOs in order to achieve more market shares, for example by deliberate underpricing or charging lower fee rates.</p><p>This study is conducted from the underwriter’s perspective. We use two kinds of reputation measurement methods to define “inexperienced” and “prestigious underwriters” and employ a quantitative approach to analyze the data. Evidence from a sample of 392 IPOs from June 19, 2006 to March 24, 2010 suggests that inexperienced underwriters do not have incentives to grandstand. The number of IPOs that underwriters have conducted and recent IPO performance do not always contribute to a gain of market share directly. Therefore, inexperienced underwriters do not provide more underpriced IPOs nor do they charge lower fee rates. Evidence also marginally supports that underwriters do not intend to conduct small offer sized IPOs.</p>

Nonlinear multivariate statistical techniques on fast computers offer the potential to capture more of the dynamics of the high dimensional, noisy systems underlying financial markets than traditional models, while making fewer restrictive assumptions. This thesis presents a collection of practical techniques to address important estimation and confidence issues for Radial Basis Function networks arising from such a data driven approach, including efficient methods for parameter estimation and pruning, a pointwise prediction error estimator, and a methodology for controlling the "data mining'' problem. Novel applications in the finance area are described, including customized, adaptive option pricing and stock price prediction.