Investeringar i aktier eller aktiefonder kan få ens pengar att växa genom den kumulativa avkastning som genereras. Genom ränta-på-ränta-effekten kan en liten ökning i avkastning från dessa investeringar få en stor effekt över en lång tidsperiod. På grund av detta etablerar många investerare strategier för att försöka uppnå en högre avkastning än den generella aktiemarknaden. Att slå marknaden har historiskt sett varit svårt vilket går i linje med det rådande paradigmet om att marknader är effektiva. Empirisk forskning har dock visat på återupprepande prismönster, som inneburit att det funnits möjligheter att strategiskt och systematiskt investera för att generera en högre riskjusterad avkastning än marknaden. Dessa prismönster kallas för anomalier och när de är tidsbaserade benämns de vanligtvis som kalendereffekter. Syftet med studien var att undersöka huruvida kalendereffekter även varit förekommande på marknader med mindre utvecklade institutioner och begränsad tidigare forskning. Studien är avgränsad till aktiemarknader i Afrika och har ställts i relation till motsvarande marknader i några av västvärldens mest välutvecklade ekonomier. En jämförelse har gjorts för att undersöka vart och vilka kalendereffekter som funnits samt hur resultatet skiljer sig mellan Afrika och västvärlden. Studien omfattar en tidsperiod från år 2000 fram till 2020. Resultatet visar något vanligare och mer signifikanta kalendereffekter på de afrikanska marknaderna men inte någon annan tydlig övergripande skillnad vid jämförelse med de västerländska marknaderna. Långa positioner vid månadsskiftet och efterföljande dagar alternativt vid slutet av handelsveckan har kunnat ge en högre riskjusterad avkastning än den generella marknaden i flera länder. Under tidsperioden finns det således belägg för att överavkastning kunnat uppnåtts på ett flertal afrikanska aktiemarknader genom systematiskt planerade investeringar. / Investments in equities or equity funds can help to make your money grow through the cumulative returns generated. Through compound interest, a small increase in return on these investments can have a large effect over a long period of time, resulting in many investors establishing strategies to achieve a higher return than the general stock market. Beating the market has historically been difficult which supports the prevailing paradigm that markets are efficient. However, empirical research has shown recurring price patterns, implying that there have been opportunities to strategically and systematically invest to generate a higher risk-adjusted return than the market. These price patterns are called anomalies and when time-based, are usually referred to as calendar effects. The purpose of this study was to examine whether calendar effects were also present in markets with less developed institutions and limited previous research. The study is focused on stock markets in Africa, which have been compared to corresponding markets in some of the most developed economies in the Western world. A comparison has been made to examine where and what calendar effects existed and how the results differ between Africa and the Western world. The study covers a period from 2000 to 2020. The results show slightly more common and significant calendar effects in the African markets, but no other clear overall difference was observed when compared with the Western markets. Long positions at the end of the month and subsequent days, alternatively at the end of the trading week, have been able to produce a higher risk-adjusted return than the general market in several countries. Thus, during this time period, there is evidence that excess returns could have been achieved in a number of African stock markets through systematically planned investments.

The purpose of this investigation was to test the theoretical possibility of an investor earning a positive cash return from the activities of the stock market despite effectively holding no position at all in said market. The sample data were the daily returns for the shares of the 780 companies listed on the NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange (“NYSE”), which fell within the top 500 listed companies by market capitalisation between 1 January 2005 and 31 December 2017. The reversal strategy’s performance was evaluated using portfolios constructed as quantiles of 100 or 500 shares, respectively, where the investor had the option of implementing the reversal strategy immediately after an information-gathering period closed or a day thereafter. The time intervals used were 1 January 2005 to 29 September 2008 (the day the Dow Jones Industrial Average crashed by 777.68 points), 29 September 2008 to 31 December 2017 and 1 January 2005 to 31 December 2017. Of the 1000 portfolios tested in each time interval, at least 416 had positive average returns in every time interval. Of the portfolios that had positive average returns over the time intervals, at least 66 had statistically significant average returns in every time interval. The best-performing portfolio for the entire sample period was a combination of the best-performing pre-crash and post-crash portfolios - an investor who held that portfolio realised a cumulative return of approximately $61.39 for every $1 invested. The conclusion was that it was theoretically possible for an investor to earn a positive cash return from the market’s activities despite effectively holding no position at all in the market. Consequently, it was concluded that the strong form of Fama’s (1970) Efficient Market Hypothesis was disproved. Future research should include out-of-sample tests, tests that include restrictions on short selling and tests that consider the impact of trading costs on portfolio performance, to render the conclusions of this investigation more practically applicable to investors.

In spite of the well-accepted belief of the relationship between cash flow and stock price, there are some controversies about whether cash flow is a good value driver in terms of explaining the volatility of stock prices, when compared with other value drivers, such as earnings or dividends. Most of the previous studies that have focused on the relationship between stock price and cash flow have used cross-industries data, primarily S&P 500 index. These studies do not distinguish service industry from manufacturing industry. However, the service industry is different from manufacturing in many ways. These differences make cash play different roles in the daily operation between the service industry and the manufacturing industry. Given these factors, whether the relationship between stock price and cash flow identified in previous studies will hold in the casual theme restaurant industry is the question this study tries to answer. Therefore, a set of 20 casual theme restaurant companies are selected through the COMPUSTAT database as the sample of this study. In this study, the performance of cash flow, earnings and dividends helping to explain the stock price move will be compared and ranked under the setting of casual theme restaurants. This result will provide the management of casual theme restaurants a guideline, which explains how to maintain the stock price increase and minimize the volatility by monitoring the most important value driver of the industry. The methodology of this study will follow the traditional multiple valuation model. The logic of this model is to compare the pricing error of different value drivers and determine which one is the best. The results of this study show that operating cash flow outperformed earnings and dividends in the multiple valuation tests. This is different from the results of previous studies that earnings has the strongest explanatory power in the variance of share price. / Master of Science

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(経済学) / 甲第24374号 / 経博第661号 / 新制||経||302(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院経済学研究科経済学専攻 / (主査)教授 西山 慶彦, 教授 江上 雅彦, 教授 秋田 祐哉 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Economics / Kyoto University / DGAM

Magister Commercii - MCom / The efficient market hypothesis (EMH) is a controversial theory in Finance. Advocates of the EMH argue that it provides a basis for understanding financial markets while critics suggest that the hypothesis is unreasonable in its assumptions of the real function of these markets. Although the EMH may not be perfect, it provides a sufficient baseline against which financial markets may be analysed. Over the past couple of years, academics have broadly examined the EMH in both developing and developed financial markets. However, limited research has been done on African markets. Therefore, this study examines the weak-form EMH of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) after 2008 to ascertain the impact the 2008 global financial crisis had on its efficiency. This study analysed the JSE using weekly and monthly returns of the three major indices (RESI 10, FINI 15, INDI 25) as well as the individual companies under these indices from 30th January 2009 to 30th January 2019. Analysis was carried using various statistical tests i.e., runs test, variance ratio test, unit root tests, and a GARCH model which revealed mixed results. Results of the unit root tests (ADF and PP) confirm that the JSE is weak-form efficient when both the weekly and monthly data of the indices and individual companies are analysed. The results of the runs test reveal that all the weekly and monthly data apart from the weekly data of the companies under RESI 10 index exhibit weak-form efficiency. The variance ratio test confirms weak-form inefficiency when weekly data is used while the monthly data confirms weak form efficiency of the JSE and shows that the market moves from periods of efficiency to periods of relative predictability. The results of the GARCH model on the other hand confirm the weak-form efficiency of the JSE when both the weekly and monthly data of the indices are analysed.

Whether insiders can use informational advantage when purchasing or selling their company stocks to generate cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) has shown different results in several markets. The Swedish market is yet to be extensively examined, and this thesis aims to understand how insiders in the OMXS30 companies perform when testing CAR and if there exists an information asymmetry. A predicted return is generated through the market model to calculate CAR, and the same index OMXS30 is combined with stock return data. We conducted an event study through Stata to match the transactions with a particular trading day to see how the insiders' transaction yielded CAR. We find that significant CAR exists for all insider groups for various event windows and find a difference in significant CAR for both genders and insider positions. The results were robust when we changed to a new market index as the independent variable in our regression analysis. The results align with previous literature, stating that insiders generated significant CAR from insider trading and differences between insider position and gender (Jeng et al. 2003; Jiang & Zaman, 2010; Lasfer & Ye, 2023). The findings can be used for regulatory purposes when investigating information asymmetry.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine if underlying psychological factors have an impact on shareholders' investment decisions and if forecasting quarterly reports have an impact on shareholders' investment decisions. Methods: The study combines an application of two different methods, survey and an event study. The purpose of the survey was to investigate if psychological factors interfere with shareholders' investment decisions. The Event study is designed to measure equity market reaction to the forecasts and if any changes occurred in the companies' share price. Theoretical: This study is based on established theories in the fields of behavioral finance, the efficient market hypothesis and the economic man. Conlusion: Underlying psychological factors have a certain impact on the shareholders' investment decisions. Both events study and survey, in particularly the part of the survey, which includes forecasts, showed that the shareholders are not affected by the forecasts published by market analysts.

Syfte: Studiens syfte var att undersöka om det uppstår onormal avkastning för målföretagets aktieägare vid offentliggörandet av företagsförvärv på den svenska aktiemarknaden, samt att undersöka om den svenska aktiemarknaden är effektiv enligt den effektiva marknadshypotesen. Metod: I uppsatsen tillämpades en eventstudie för att studera den onormala avkastningen. Datainsamlingen har skett från Thomson Reuters Eikon, Orbis, Zephyr och Retriver. Studiens dataunderlag har analyserats och presenterats i figurer och tabeller. Resultatet bygger på hypotesprövning och signifikanstest av framräknade onormala avkastningar.  Resultat & slutsats: Resultatet visade att målföretagens aktieägare vid offentliggörandet av företagsförvärv i genomsnitt erhöll en hög positiv onormal avkastning under perioden 2011 till 2016, samt att den svenska aktiemarknaden var effektiv. Detta genomsnittliga värde var statistiskt signifikant på signifikansnivån 0,01 procent. Förslag till fortsatt forskning: Ett förslag till vidare forskning är att undersöka ett längre tidsspann, vilket kan öka populationens storlek. Vidare forskning kan även undersöka om olika faktorer i företagsförvärvet kan förklara de erhållna onormala avkastningarna.  Uppsatsens bidrag: Studien bidrar med relevant information till företagsledningar, finansanalytiker och företagsintressenter. Detta eftersom studiens resultat skapar förståelse för företagsförvärv i en svensk kontext och kan därför ligga till grund för beslutsfattande, värderingar och beräkningar av framtida företagsförvärv. / Aim: The aim of the study is to examine if the target company shareholders receive an abnormal return on the day of the announcement, on the Swedish stock market. The study also examines if the Swedish stock market is efficient according to the efficient market hypothesis. Method: The study was conducted according to the event study methodology. The data was collected from Thomson Reuters Eikon, Orbis, Zephyr and Retriever. The findings in the study was displayed and analysed in figures and tables. Hypothesis test and test of significance were used to investigate the aim of the study. Findings and conclusions: For the time period studied, 2011 to 2016, the target company shareholders on average received a high positive abnormal return on the day of the announcement, which was significant on the one percent level. The findings also indicates that the Swedish stock market is efficient according to the efficient market hypothesis. Suggestions for future research: One suggestion for future research could be to expand the time interval, which could increase the size of the population. Future research could also take the characteristics of the acquisition in consideration in an attempt to explain the abnormal returns found in this study.  Contribution of the thesis: This study’s findings are relevant for the chairmen of the board, finance analysts and corporate stakeholders. The findings in this study provides an understanding of the nature of acquisitions on the Swedish stock market, which can be used for decision making, evaluations and calculations of future acquisitions.

Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) has been the central assumption of financial modelling in the previous decades. At its core, it is a statement about the efficient incorporation of available information in the prices of assets, rendering each price a 'true' representation of the asset's intrinsic value. The notion of informationally efficient financial markets has been, since its formulation, entrenched in the very core of our understanding of how asset pricing works, yet, with ever so increasing frequency, when subjected to empirical scrutiny, it fails to prove its explanatory and predictive prowess. New academic strands emerged have emerged as a result, attempting to explain those empirical short-comings, with rather mixed results. The new models and theories often either explain a singular anomaly, rather than pro- viding a generalized and consistent theoretical framework, or are exclusive with the general state of financial markets, which tends to be efficient and rational. This thesis shall explore the relationship of information and financial mar- kets, taking into account developments that have occurred since the inception of the EMH. Subsequently it will present a new theoretical model for asset pric- ing and ipso facto the efficiency of financial markets, based on meta-analysis of information, along...

Bakgrund: Det finns olika investeringsstrategier som investerare kan använda sig av, att investera i låga multiplar är en strategi som har studerats väl. Genom att använda sig av låga multiplar kan investerare finna undervärderade bolag som på sikt genererar en överavkastning gentemot marknaden.  Syfte: Studiens syfte är att analysera hur väl P/E, P/B, P/S, EV/EBIT, EV/EBITDA och EV/S multiplarna skulle kunna appliceras som investeringsstrategi på Stockholmsbörsen. Vidare ämnar studien åt att analysera om det är möjligt att generera en högre avkastning än vad indexet OMXSPI har avkastat under tidsperioden 2008-2018. Metod: Studien använder sig av en kvantitativ forskningsstrategi där två portföljer för respektive multipel har sammanställts. Portföljerna viktas om årligen och både den verkliga och den ackumulerade avkastningen beräknas fram. Vidare utvärderas portföljerna enligt utvärderingsmåtten Sharpekvot, M^2, Treynorkvot och Jensens Alpha. Resultat: Investeringsstrategin är implementerbar för tre av sex multiplar. Låga P/B, EV/EBIT och EV/EBITDA genererade en överavkastning och slog både index samt respektive hög portfölj. Medan för de resterande multiplarna P/E, P/S och EV/S resulterade det i att investeringsstrategin inte är implementerbar. EV/S hade den högsta riskjusterade överavkastning och presterade bäst av samtliga sex multiplar. Studieresultatet för samtliga multiplar kan statistiskt säkerställas med en signifikansnivå på 5%. Den månatliga portföljavkastningen är inte slumpmässig, utan marknadsavkastningen har en viss påverkan. / Background: There are several investment strategies investors can use, where the strategy to invest in low multiples is well studied. By using low multiples investors can find undervalued companies to generate an excess return. Previous studies have been focusing on the P/E and EV/EBITDA- multiples, and not as much on other used multiples in relative valuation. Therefore an interest exists to also analyze multiples such as P/B, P/S, EV/EBIT and EV/S. Purpose: The study’s purpose is to analyze how well the multiples P/E, P/B, P/S, EV/EBIT, EV/EBITDA and EV/S can be applied as an investment strategy in the Stockholm Stock Exchange. Furthermore the study aim to analyze the possibility to generate a higher return than the index OMXSPI during the time period 2008-2018. Method: The study uses a quantitative research strategy, where two portfolios for each multiple has been created. The portfolio has been reinvested once a year, both the real and accumulated return was calculated. Also, the portfolios’ performance has been evaluated by adjusting it to risk by using the Sharpe ratio, M^2 , Treynor ratio and Jensen’s Alpha. Result: The investment strategy can be implemented for three of six multiples. The low P/B, EV/EBIT and EV/EBITDA generated a higher return than both index and their respective high portfolio. The other multiples P/E, P/S and EV/S cannot be used as an investment strategy. The high EV/S portfolio had the highest risk adjusted excess return meanwhile P/S had the highest accumulated return. The result of all multiples has been found to be statistically significant, therefore the market return has an effect on the portfolios’ monthly return.