Market abuse practices may directly or indirectly give rise to diverse problems such as inaccurate stock market prices, low public investor confidence, reduced market integrity and poor efficiency in the affected financial markets. This thesis reveals that three major forms of market abuse, namely insider trading, prohibited trading practices (trade-based market manipulation) and the making or publication of false, misleading or deceptive statements, promises and forecasts relating to listed securities (disclosure-based market manipulation) are prohibited in South Africa. However, although South Africa has had market abuse legislation for about 30 years, and must be commended for its great effort to enhance market integrity by combating market abuse practices, the enforcement of such legislation is still problematic. Moreover, in spite of the fact that there is no empirical data or accurate figures quantifying the occurrence and extent of market abuse activities in the South African financial markets, this thesis submits that market abuse practices are still to be completely eradicated. Accordingly, this thesis suggests that the aforementioned problem might have been aggravated by inter alia, various gaps, flaws and/or inconsistent implementation and enforcement of the market abuse legislation in South Africa. To this end, the anti-market abuse enforcement framework under the Securities Services Act 36 of 2004 is analysed to investigate its adequacy. The co-operation and role of the Financial Services Board, the courts, the Directorate of Market Abuse and other relevant stakeholders is also examined and discussed. Moreover, the co-operation between the Financial Services Board and similar international agencies is discussed to gauge its effectiveness in relation to the combating of cross-border market abuse practices. The adequacy of the awareness and preventative measures in place to curb market abuse practices is also investigated to determine whether such measures are robust enough to combat other new challenges that were posed by the 2007 to 2009 global financial crisis. Furthermore, a comparative analysis is undertaken of the enforcement of the market abuse prohibition in other jurisdictions, namely the United States of America, the United Kingdom, the European Union and Australia. This was done to investigate the relevant lessons that can be learnt or adopted from these jurisdictions. The thesis further discusses the adequacy of the recently introduced provisions of the Financial Markets Bill as well as the subsequent market abuse provisions of the Financial Markets Bill 2012. The thesis highlights that the aforementioned Bills are positive attempts by the policy makers to improve the enforcement of the market abuse provisions in South Africa. Nonetheless, the thesis reveals that most of the shortcomings contained in the Securities Services Act 36 of 2004 were duplicated in the Financial Markets Bill and the Financial Markets Bill 2012. In light of this, it remains to be seen whether the market abuse provisions contained in the Financial Markets Bill and/or the Financial Markets Bill 2012 will improve the combating of market abuse practices in South Africa. Consequently, it is hoped that the relevant market abuse provisions of the Securities Services Act 36 of 2004, the Financial Markets Bill and/or the Financial Markets Bill 2012 will be comprehensively reviewed in regard to the recommendations made in this thesis. To this end, the thesis proposes a viable anti-market abuse model and policy framework and sets out both policy objectives and provisions which policy makers could use to strengthen some of the market abuse provisions in South Africa.

This diploma thesis is devoted to the problem of creating a portfolio of shares. First part is focused on the characterization of shares - classes of shares and rights associated with them. The second chapter compares the Efficient market theory and Behavioral approach, as the two opposing schools of thought. The third chapter gradually introduces fundamental analysis, from the global analysis through the analysis of an industry to the analysis of a particular company. Furthermore, this work focuses on the Value investment approach, that is based on fundamental analysis. On the basis of several criteria are particular stocks selected to the portfolio. The intensity of these criteria is then tested in the relationship with the resulting number of selected stocks. The conclusion of the fourth chapter is devoted to the issue of discounts and premiums that are trying to take into account specific factors of securities, which should be reflected into their prices.

In 1981, Banz discovered evidence suggesting that small-cap firms outperform large-cap firms when considering risk-adjusted returns. Banz (1981), called this the “size effect” and raised concerns regarding the ability of current asset pricing models to set accurate prices for assets. This resulted in new models being developed, such as the Fama and French three-factor model which takes the size of a company into consideration (Fama & French, 1992). However, since the discovering of the size effect, several researchers have started to question its existence. (Asgharian & Hansson, 2008) Moreover, short after Banz findings, a study by Keim (1983) introduced results that complements the size effect. Keims study suggests that the size effect is present due to the fact that small-cap firms outperform large- cap firms during the month of January. This seasonal anomaly is called the “January effect” and could possibly be the reason for the existence of the size effect. The purpose of this study is to investigate if there is a size effect and/or a January effect present on the Swedish stock market (OMX) when using Enterprise Value as the measure for size. Enterprise Value has been chosen in order to consider the full capital structure of companies, hence, not solely the equity value. In order to answer these research questions, a quantitative study has been conducted on companies being listen on the OMX during the time period 2000-2019. The findings of the research are that there is no size effect present on the OMX. Furthermore, the research has found that there is a January effect present on the OMX. This paper suggests that the January effect might have been the reason for the presence of the size effect in history, but as of now, the size effect has diminished but the January effect still remains.

Active management funds are associated with higher transaction costs, which is something that has been acknowledged for a long time. The question is whether these costs can compensate with a higher return. This paper investigates how two active strategies, momentum and growth investing, have performed in relation to a passive index. To test this, we investigated the Frankfurt stock market during 2005-2020 on stocks from the automobile sector. By doing this, the purpose was investigated whether growth and momentum has had a higher risk-adjusted return than the benchmark index during the 15 years of observation. The result showed that both growth and momentum performed better than a passive index fund, despite its costly variables. However, the risk adjusted return was not significant higher. This study includes transaction costs in its calculation, which other studies ignore and focus on one industry with a consistent benchmark index for the same industry. By doing this, we believe that the test will be more accurate, and avoid potential industry effects on return and hopefully contribute with new thoughts on the subject.

Magister Commercii - MCom / The drastic decline in stock prices on the 24th October 1929 sent a frantic wave of panic across the US. Merely a century later, on the 29th September 2008 another financial crisis hit the globe - this time leaving most countries devastated. The main objective of this study is twofold: 1) to determine whether leading indicators have sufficient predictive capacity to predict global financial crises; and 2) to use the Efficient Market Theory (EMT) and/ or Behavioural Finance Theory (BFT) as a means of developing a theory explaining the potential impact bad public announcements had on the level of investor confidence before the 1929 Great Depression and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. This study was not only designed to qualitatively conceptualise the notion of the term “investor confidence” whilst drawing special attention to its frailty using the 1929 Great Depression and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, but also assist governments, reserve banks and key institutions to develop effective strategies of mitigating the effects of the latter financial crisis as well as provide guidance on how another financial crisis can be prevented. This study extracted bad public announcements from 40 books and 60 journal articles using 6 NBER-based leading economic indicators (LEI) and 4 systematic risk-based leading non-economic indicators (LNEI) in order to: 1) qualitatively assess the extent to which leading indicators can be used to predict global financial crises 3 – 8 months in advance; and 2) use the EMT and/ or BFT to provide an explanation concerning the potential impact that bad public announcements had on the level of investor confidence before the 1929 Great Depression and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

PhD (Statistics) / Department of Statistics / There has been a growing interest in investment opportunities in Africa. The net foreign direct investment (FDI) to Sub-Saharan Africa has increased from $13 billion in 2004 to about $54 billion in 2015. Investing on the stock markets is one of such investment opportunities. Stock markets in Africa have realised growth in market capitalization, membership, value and volume traded due to an increase in investments. This level of growth in African stock markets has raised questions about their efficiency. This thesis examined the weak-form informational efficiency of African stock markets. The aim therefore of this thesis is to test the efficiency of African stock markets in the weak-form of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) for eight countries, namely, Botswana, Egypt, Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa and Tunisia. Since, the researcher will be testing the weak-form of the EMH, the data to be used is on past price information on the markets of the eight countries. Data for the eight countries were obtained from DataStream for the period between August 28, 2000 to August 28, 2015. The data is for a period of 180 months which resulted in 3915 data points. Although there have been studies on the weak-form market efficiency of African stock markets, the efficiency conclusions on the markets have been mixed. This problem might be due to the methods used in the analyses. First, most of the methods used were linear in nature although the data generating process of stock market data is nonlinear and hence nonlinear methods maybe more appropriate in its analysis. Also these linear methods tested the efficiency of African markets in absolute form, however, an efficiency conclusion relying solely on absolute efficiency might be misleading because, stock markets become efficient with time due to improvements in the quality of information processing from reforms on the markets. The researcher solved this problem of using absolute frequency by comparing the results when the presence of long-memory in frequency and time domains of the markets were examined. The researcher used a semi-parametric estimator, the Local Whittle estimator to test for long-memory in frequency domain and the Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA) to test for long-memory in time domain. The DFA method is suitable for both stationary and nonstationary time series which makes it to have more power over methods like the rescaled range analysis (R/S) in the estimation of Hurst exponent. Second, the researcher examined whether the markets were predictable under the Adaptive Market Hypothesis (AMH). The researcher employed the Generalised Spectral (GS) test to examine the Martingale difference hypothesis (MDH) of the markets. The Generalised spectral (GS) test is a non-parametric ii test designed to detect the presence of linear and nonlinear dependencies in a stationary time series. The GS test considers dependence at all lags. Third, because of the nonlinear nature in the data-generating process on the markets, the stationarity of the market returns under a nonlinear Exponential Smooth Threshold Autoregressive (ESTAR) model was examined. A nonlinear ADF unit root test against ESTAR and a modified Wald-type test against ESTAR in the analysis were employed. Fourth, the self-exciting threshold Autoregressive (SETAR) method was employed to model the returns when non-linear patterns were observed as a result of nonlinear data generating process on the markets. The literature on market efficiency of African stock markets has shown that variations exist in the study characteristics. There are variations in the method of analysis, type of test, type of data employed, time period chosen and the scope of analysis for the studies. The researcher therefore quantitatively reviewed previous studies by means of meta-analysis to identify which study characteristics affects efficiency conclusions of African markets using the mixed effects model. The findings showed the presence of long-memory in the returns of the stock markets when the whole sample was used. This made the markets weak-form inefficient, however, when the researcher tested for the persistence of long-memory through time, there were periods the markets were efficient in the weak-form. The memory effect was low in the South African market but high in the Mauritian market. Furthermore, it was observed that, the returns for Egypt, which were highly predictable when the whole data was analysed became not highly predictable when the rolling window approach of the GS test was used. Egypt had one of the lowest percentages of the windows that had a p-value less than 0.05 after South Africa. The results obtained from using the non-linear unit root tests on the logarithmic price series of the markets under study showed that, the markets were non-stationary and hence weak-form efficient under an ESTAR framework but for Botswana. Thus the markets were weak-form efficient when analysed using a non-linear method. This observation means that Africa’s foreign direct investment would have been increased over the years if the appropriate methods are used. This is because, over the years, studies on the weak-form efficiency African stock markets have ended with mixed conclusions with most of the markets being concluded to be weak-form inefficient as a result of the use of linear methods in the analysis. This finding, to us, has had an effect on investors commitments to Africa because the right methodology was not employed. iii The findings from modelling the returns under the non-linear SETAR model showed that, the SETAR model performs better than the standard AR(1) and AR(2) model for all the markets under study after the non-linear patterns were identified in the returns series. The SETAR (2,2,2) model is a threshold model, therefore, investors are able to move freely in search of higher opportunities between the low and high regimes. Investors main aim is to make profits, hence, the threshold model of SETAR gives them the freedom to move to a regime where the rate of returns is increasing unlike the standard AR(1) and AR(2) linear models where there are no switching of regimes. Finally, none of the study characteristics in the market efficiency studies was found to be significant in efficiency conclusions of African stock markets but the indicator for publication bias was significant. This means that there has been a change in attitude in recent years towards studies on informational market efficiency whose results do not support the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), unlike the earlier years when the EMH was formulated and acclaimed to be one of the best propositions in economics. It was therefore concluded that when time-varying methods are used in analysing weak-form efficiency, the dynamics of the markets become known to investors for proper decision-making. Also, nonlinear methods should be used in order to reflect the nonlinear nature of data capturing on the stock markets / NRF

As the world is gravitating toward an information economy, it has become more and more critical for an investor to understand the impact of data and information. One of the sources of data that can be converted into information are texts from microblogging platforms, such as Twitter. The user of such a microblogging account can filtrate opinion and information to millions of people. Depending on the account holder, the opinion or information originated from the designated account may lead to different societal impact. The microblogging scope of this investigation are politicians holding a Twitter account. This investigation will look into the relationship between political tweets' sentiment and market movement and the subsequent longevity of such an effect. The classified sentiments are positive or negative. The presence of artificial intelligence is vital for a data-driven investigation; in the context of this investigation, artificial intelligence will be used to classify the sentiment of the political tweet. The methods chose to assess the impact of a political tweet and market movement is event-study. The impact is expressed in either a positive or a negative cumulative abnormal return subsequent to the political tweet. The findings of the investigation indicate that on average, there is no statistical evidence that a political tweets' sentiment leads to an abnormal return. However, in specific cases, political tweet leads to abnormal return. Moreover, it has been determined that the longevity of the effect is rather short. This is an interdisciplinary approach that can be applied by individual and institutional investors and financial institutions.

Investors are constantly searching for new ways to obtain a higher return on the market. This study examines if the stock prices for the companies within the market index OMXS30 changes more than expected when an earnings announcement is published and if it is possible to benefit from it in order to obtain a higher return. The study investigates how well the traditional theories, such as the efficient market hypothesis and random walk, can explain the market today by performing two event studies that represent different investment strategies. Event study 1 examine how the stock price changes before earnings announcement. Event study 2 examine how the stock price changes if you own the stock when the earnings announcement is published and sells it afterwards. The results from the event studies show that the null hypothesis are rejected at a 5 percent significance level, where event study 1 had an abnormal return of 0.84 percent and event study 2 had an abnormal return of 5.46 percent. Based on the results of the study the conclusion is that it is possible to obtain an abnormal return using the two investment strategies. / Investerare letar ständigt efter nya sätt att erhålla en överavkastning. Denna studie kommer att undersöka om aktiepriset för bolagen inom indexet OMXS30 förändras mer än förväntat i samband med att kvartalsrapporten publiceras och om det går att dra nytta av detta för att erhålla en överavkastning. Studien testar hur väl de traditionella finansiella teorierna såsom den effektiva marknadshypotesen och random walk förklarar marknaden idag genom att genomföra två eventstudier som representerar två alternativa investeringsstrategier. Eventstudie 1 undersöker hur aktiepriset förändras inför en kvartalsrapport. Eventstudie 2 undersöker hur aktiepriset förändras när en aktie ägs vid publiceringen av kvartalsrapporten och säljs efteråt. Resultatet från eventstudierna visade att båda nollhypoteserna kan förkastas på 5 procents signifikansnivå, där eventstudie 1 visade en abnormal avkastning på 0,84 procent och eventstudie 2 visade en abnormal avkastning på 5,46 procent. Utifrån studiens resultat dras slutsatsen att det går att erhålla en abnormal avkastning vid de båda alternativa investeringsstrategierna.

A high return is a driving factor for most investors. The ways to reach success are many and different investment strategies on how to earn high returns have been discussed for decades. Value stocks (low P/E ratios) and growth stocks (high P/E ratios) are two strategies among the investment area with different and contrary results on which strategy can give the highest possible return. However, studies of the P/E effect have shown different results the last years compared to previous findings of a value premium for low P/E stocks, with trends of a higher return for growth stocks compared to value stocks. This led us to the research question “Does a portfolio of growth stocks present a higher return than a portfolio with value stocks on the Swedish and Norwegian stock markets?”. The problem that the study aims to answer is therefore if a portfolio of growth stocks provides a higher return than a portfolio of value stocks between the years 2001-2021. The long timespan will give us the opportunity to evaluate the stock markets during both booms and busts. Our study is made on historical data on the Swedish and the Norwegian stock markets since we found a lack of previous research in these countries within the research area. To fulfil the purpose of the study and to answer the research question, a quantitative method is used with historical data provided from Eikon (Thomson Reuters DataStream) where firms are sorted on the P/E ratios and after that growth and value portfolios are created. We will present both the actual return as well as a risk adjusted return for the stocks. The risk adjusted returns are conducted by using the financial measurements Sharpe ratio and Jensen’s alpha. The result of the study shows that on a 5 % significance level, growth stocks presented a higher actual return than value stocks for both Sweden and Norway. The same evidence was found for the returns for growth stocks compared to market index. Though, when testing the risk adjusted returns, the null hypothesis could not be rejected, which implies that a statistical difference between the portfolios could not be found.

This study examines the relationship between mean reversion and a black swan event on the Swedish stock market. The data is taken from the Mid Cap and the Large Cap and then compared with the OMXS index. The purpose is to try and find evidence of mean reversion on both lists and if a black swan event will interfere with the mean reverting behaviour. The results we could find was that there is mean reversion on the market for our time period 2005-2022. We could also find evidence of mean reversion during the three black swan events, 2008 financial crisis, Brexit, and Covid-19 pandemic.