Each of the three essays in this dissertation deals with asset timing or allocation using technical techniques and pattern recognition. The first essay uses a technical indicator, the stochastic oscillator, for market timing in the bond market. The trading strategy using this technical indicator is optimized using a genetic algorithm The second essay finds that a measure of market chaos improves the performance of a simple trend-following technique in the stock market. The last essay uses technical analysis for asset allocation. A neural network with technical indicator inputs outperforms both a passive asset mix strategy and a neural network with economic data as inputs.

By describing investors' decision-making processes and actions, this thesis provides a background to the share prices that millions of people follow closely everyday. It focuses on the reasons for institutional investors' investment actions on the stock market, and in particular the role of financial information about the quoted companies. Interviews and document studies linked to a large number of actual investment actions in eight large Swedish institutional investor organisations constitute the empirical basis of the thesis. Important empirical results concern how action based on fundamental opinions about investment objects is restricted or reinforced by investor contexts and market premises, the role of valuation models and quantitative analysis in comparison with qualitative judgements, and how uncertainty is dealt with during investment decision-making processes. Non-public information played an essential role in forming the fundamental opinions about companies/equities. In addition, this information could help trigger equity investment actions. Several factors, some of them organisational, contributed to time lags between the first impulse and the completed investment transaction.The results also suggest that the institutional investors in this study did not take action independently of other investors. Furthermore, they did not develop their fundamental opinions about investment objects independently of other market participants - to varying extents they adjusted to other market participants' expectations, equity valuation methods and ways of using accounting figures. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk.

This thesis consists of empirical studies on various aspects of international corporate finance, a series of long-run event studies examining the abnormal stock return performance of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs), American Depositary Receipts (ADRs), and stock analyst recommendations. The first two of these, presented in Chapters 2 and 3, investigate the key issues relating to Initial Public Offerings (IPOs). The next, in Chapter 4, examines the performance of new American Depositary Receipt issues from emerging markets and its determinants. The final study, presented in Chapter 5, assesses the value of stock analysts? recommendations in emerging markets. It is essentially a series of empirical studies adopting a tried and tested methodology, involving benchmarks, for measuring returns over time in emerging markets, a subject that has not been sufficiently investigated. The long-run event study approach is designed to identify anomalies in these markets, which may be much more pronounced than in developed markets. This thesis makes substantive contributions to the existing knowledge on measuring, documenting and determining various issues in international corporate finance, and provides methodological improvements over previous studies. Chapter 2 presents an examination of the stock return performance of the IPO stocks listed on the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) in Hong Kong, finding that the return performance is sensitive to the benchmark employed. Two main factors contributing to the underperformance of GEM stocks are the ?technology boom? and ?IPO effects?. Moreover, the results of cross-sectional analyses suggest that the Hong Kong GEM is a unique market; since at least 70 percent of the IPO stocks listed on the GEM are technology stocks, the ?technology? factor outweighs previous hypotheses advocated by previous researchers to explain the poor performance of newly listed stocks. Chapter 3 extends this analysis by turning attention to the post-issue stock price performance of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) in Asian markets, using a comparative assessment of the stock performance of Asian IPOs motivated by the ongoing discovery of biases in event studies involving long horizon returns. Various methods were used to remove such biases, while examining the robustness of the long run performance of the IPOs. The results of this examination show that the existence of long run underperformance for the Asian IPOs depends on the methodology used. The study also assesses the ?Market Timing? theory with regard to Initial Public Offerings (IPOs), adding to the growing literature that suggests that Asian firms time their issuance of equity securities. Chapter 4 presents a comparative study of the post-issue stock performance and operating performance of the Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) of American Depositary Receipts (ADR) in emerging markets. The results of this study suggest that ADR IPOs are underpriced, though not to the same extent as regular IPOs. In the aftermarket, ADR IPOs underperform the Emerging Market Index. However, after controlling for differences in size and industry, underperformance of ADR IPOs compared with both home market IPOs and US IPOs could not be demonstrated. The analysis of stock and operating performance yields consistent results; aside from the ?window dressing? effect, this also demonstrates that stock price performance is a reflection of operating performance over the long run. Chapter 5 presents the first study to examine post-recommendation abnormal returns in emerging markets, based on the Emerging Market Index adjusted model and the Controlling Firm approach, demonstrating that stock prices react significantly to recommendation revisions, both on the revision day and subsequently. In this cross-sectional analysis, it appears that the Market-to-Book ratio is the primary indicator for Buy and Strong Buy recommendations. This indicates that stock analysts in emerging markets prefer high growth stocks with their attractive characteristics.

This thesis examines the profitability of the oldest known form of technical analysis, candlestick trading strategies. Unlike traditional technical analysis which is based around close prices, these strategies generate buy and sell signals that are based on the relationship between open, high, low and close prices within a day and over consecutive days. Traditional technical analysis, which has been the focus of previous academic research, has a long-term focus with positions being held for months and years. In contrast, candlestick technical analysis has a short-term focus with positions being held for ten days or less. This difference is significant as surveys of market participants indicate that they place 50 per cent more importance on technical analysis for horizons of a week than they do for horizons of a year. Candlestick technical analysis was developed on rice data in Japan in the 1700s so the tests in this thesis, using Dow Jones Industrial Index (DJIA) component stock data for the 1992 - 2002 period, are clearly out of sample tests. These tests are more robust to criticisms of data snooping than is the existing technical analysis literature. Proponents of technical analysis in the Western world would have had the opportunity to have become aware of candlestick trading strategies by this study's timeframe and would also have had the opportunity to source the data and software necessary to implement these strategies. So, a direct test of market efficiency is possible. This was not achievable by authors of many previous papers, who used data starting in the early 1900s and techniques that could not have been implemented at that time. Using an innovative extension of the bootstrap methodology, which allows the generation of random open, high, low and close prices, to test the profitability of candlestick technical trading strategies showed that candlestick technical analysis does not have value. There is no evidence that a trader adhering to candlestick technical analysis would out-perform the market.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed October 3, 2007). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 60-64).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2007. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 303-338.

Thesis (PhD) -- University of Western Sydney, 2003. / Bibliography: leaves 356 - 370.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed July 1, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed September 20, 2006). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-132).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2006. / "February 2006." Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-144). Also available via the World Wide Web.