Thesis (Ph. D.)--Stanford University, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 212-216).

No description available.

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

No description available.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Real Estate and Construction / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Masters of Management in Finance and Investments, University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg, 2016 / Financial economists have spent a considerable amount of time trying to understand the impact of macroeconomic news announcements on exchange rates, more so evaluating how new information is incorporated into exchange rates. This study examines the impact of macroeconomic news announcements on exchange rate volatility. Unlike most studies that utilise developed market currency pairs, this study utilises high frequency USD/ZAR data. Macroeconomic news can affect exchange rates directly and indirectly through public and private information. However, this study only focuses on scheduled macroeconomic news announcements as they usually have market forecasts available to conduct analysis regarding the asymmetric news effects. The following asymmetries are evaluated into the study: news items by geographical location, no-news vs. surprise news announcements and positive vs. negative news announcements. We make the following findings in our empirical study: (i) After the release of a news announcement, the level of foreign exchange volatility rises. This event is independent of whether the news item surprised the market or not. (ii) We find that both South African and US news items significantly impact USD/ZAR volatility, suggesting that both US and South African news items are being used to formulate investor expectations regarding the future prospects of the currency pair. (iii) Negative news appears to have a greater impact on exchange rate volatility relative to positive news. This result is also state dependent, as investors tend to behave differently to news depending on the economic climate at that point in time. Investor cognitive biases also give rise to the asymmetric news effects on exchange rate volatility. Investors do not always act in rational manner, especially when faced with multiple news items that are contradictory to each other. / XL2018

This dissertation addresses two major issues. First, it investigates whether currency risk commands a significant premium in representative equity markets in Africa. The International Arbitrage Pricing Theory and the Stochastic Discount Factor model respectively provide the analytical frameworks for the unconditional and the conditional asset pricing models used to investigate currency risk pricing. Empirical data analysis uses the Generalized Method of Moments estimation technique. Second, it examines the nexus between real foreign exchange rates and net international portfolio flows in representative capital markets in Africa. Time series and panel data techniques are employed to this end. The study covers seven major African countries: Botswana, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, and South Africa over the period January 1997 through December 2009. Foreign exchange risk is found to be non-priced unconditionally when returns are measured in the US dollar; weakly priced unconditionally when returns are measured in the euro; and priced with time-varying risk premia in the conditional sense. Africa’s equity markets are found to be partially integrated with the rest of the world. Monthly international portfolio flows to Africa are found to be low, non-persistent and relatively volatile. Using monthly data, Granger causality tests and innovation accounting from vector autoregressions (VARs), the study shows that the dynamic relationship between the real exchange rates and net portfolio flows is both country-dependent and time-varying. The findings are robust to alternative VAR specifications. However, annual data exhibit strong causality moving from real exchange rates to net portfolio flows, suggesting that fluctuations in real exchange rates inform the investment decisions of foreign investors in Africa’s capital markets. Among the key policy implications, it is recommended that, in addition to the US dollar and precious metals, Africa’s monetary authorities should regard the euro as an important reserve currency; that policies be put in place to expedite the development of private fixed income securities and derivatives markets; that sound monetary policies be instituted to ensure that interest rate changes are market-determined and inflationary pressures are well-managed; and that regional markets integration and financial sector development policies be pursued more meticulously by governments in Africa.

The first essay formulates a dynamic rational contagion model in order to analyse the evolution of speculative bubbles. The model consists of two laws of motion: the speculative bubble and the probability of the bubble. The rst essay shows that the model has two stable equilibria and one unstable equilibrium. The dynamics of both the nonlinear speculative bubbles and the probability interact to form two stable equilibria and one unstable equilibrium which lead to ballooning and busting of the speculative bubbles. These features of speculative bubbles are driven by the speculators’s herd behaviour, the bubbles size, the speed of change, the strength of infection, and the effects of both the bubbles and the short-term interest rate on the transition probability. The second essay extracts speculative bubbles from two nancial markets: the foreign exchange and the stock markets for South Africa between 1995Q2 and 2008Q4. The second essay uses the no-arbitrage models for the exchange rate and the stock price. By invoking the rational bubbles theory and using the residuals, we compute the asset price bubbles using the expectational restriction for rational bubbles theory. Three robustness checks on the computed bubbles con rm that speculative bubbles are present in the stock price and the exchange rate. By using iii Abstract iv graphs of speculative bubbles, we show that the speculative bubbles are consistent with the existence of bubble episodes as documented in the literature. The third essay formulates a macro-model of a small-open economy in order to investigate the relative performance of optimal monetary policy rules that respond to speculative bubbles and those that do not. The model consists of two nonlinear speculative bubbles: the stock price and the exchange rate bubbles. These speculative bubbles interact with the IS curve, the Phillips curve and the asset prices. The ndings show that policy rules that respond to speculative bubbles dominate rules that do not.

by To Kwok-Fai. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-84). / ABSTRACT --- p.ii / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS --- p.iii / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.iv / LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS --- p.vi / LIST OF TABLES --- p.viii / Chapter / Chapter I. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter II. --- THE GROWTH AND CHANGING CHARACTER OF THE FOREIGN EXCHANGE MARKET --- p.3 / Three Economic Blocs --- p.3 / Increase of Trading Volume --- p.4 / Shift In Customer Base --- p.5 / Twenty-four Hours Global Market --- p.5 / Growth in the Use of Computer --- p.6 / Chapter III. --- FORECASTING OF FOREIGN EXCHANGE RATE --- p.7 / Efficient Market Hypothesis and Random Walk Theory --- p.7 / The Hypothesis --- p.7 / Implications --- p.9 / Chaos Theory --- p.9 / Definition --- p.9 / Phenomena in Foreign Exchange Market --- p.9 / Implications --- p.12 / Fundamental Analysis in Forecasting Foreign Exchange Rate --- p.12 / Technical Analysis in Forecasting Foreign Exchange Rate --- p.15 / Other Factors Influencing Foreign Exchange Rate --- p.17 / Chapter IV. --- METHODOLOGY --- p.18 / Collection of Data --- p.18 / Selection of Trading Systems --- p.20 / Construction of Trading Systems --- p.21 / Simple Moving Average Trading System --- p.21 / Directional Movement Index Trading System --- p.22 / Evaluation of Trading Performance --- p.27 / Chapter V. --- RESULTS AND FINDINGS --- p.30 / Simple Moving Average Trading System --- p.30 / Directional Movement Index Trading System --- p.40 / Comparison of the Two Trading Systems --- p.50 / Current Net Profit or Loss --- p.50 / Sample Standard Deviation --- p.52 / Sharpe Ratio --- p.52 / Ratio of Average Profit per Profitable Transaction to Average Loss per Losing Transaction --- p.55 / Chapter VI. --- CONCLUSIONS --- p.57 / APPENDIX / Chapter 1. --- Program Listing of Simple Moving Average Trading System Performance Report --- p.59 / Chapter 2. --- Program Listing of Directional Movement Index Trading System Performance Report --- p.63 / Chapter 3. --- "Detailed Listing of USD/DEM High, Low and Close Exchange Rate from Oct 18 1988 to Dec 31 1991" --- p.67 / BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.83

Roughly all the previous empirical research, focusing on the information effects on volatility, has investigated the volatility dynamics during and after the release of public information. Researchers use ARCH-type or realized volatility models and they proxy public information by market news announcements. So far, studies focusing on the effect of noise or technical trading on volatility have been limited to theoretical results without any empirical evidence. Technical trading is trading based on technical signals. As a consequence, the aim of this dissertation is to answer to the following question: how does foreign exchange volatility behave, in the very short term, around public information and technical signals ? To answer to this question we study the volatility dynamics before, during and after public news announcements and technical chart pattern signals. In order to meet this objective, we implement different methodologies specific to the different chapters of the dissertation. Each chapter tries to answer to a sub-question emerging from the main question of the thesis. This thesis contributes to the empirical finance literature on intradaily exchange rate volatility as follows. First we present evidence that volatility increases in the pre-announcement period of scheduled news. Second, we show that foreign exchange dealers quoting activity reacts to news announcements and it conveys useful information. The third contribution consists in presenting a new approach to recognize technical chart patterns from a time series, and shedding light on the predictive success of the technical chart signals. Finally, the last contribution consists in the finding that technical signals, considered by economists as "noise", have a significant effect on volatility.