There has been considerable interest among market participants, market regulators and academics in the pricing of stock index futures contracts. Academic research in this area has been motivated by several considerations. First, the utility of these contracts for risk allocation and price discovery depends on the efficiency with which they are priced relative to the underlying index. Second, it has been widely believed that they have adverse impact on price dynamics in the stock market. Third, and most important, stock index futures offer the possibility of directly studying the economics of arbitrage in the context of market microstructure. This dissertation extends the theoretical framework on stock index futures pricing in two directions. First, within the static cost of carry framework, it generalises the forward pricing formula by allowing for cash market settlement procedures. Second, it shows that in the presence of arbitrage related transaction costs, the time series of stock index futures "mispricing" can be modelled as a threshold autoregressive (TAR) process, a piecewise linear autoregressive process in which the process parameters are path dependent. The TAR model is potentially attractive for many financial applications and this dissertation appears to be the first use of the TAR model in finance. This dissertation also provides substantial and significant new empirical evidence relevant to the theoretical issues involved. Inter-alia, it analyses several important aspects not adequately examined in past research, and it utilises the unique microstructural features of the London stock market to explore several major theoretical issues. The empirical analysis is based mainly on about four years of "time and sales" transactions data from the London International Financial Futures Exchange together with synchronous hourly cash index data.

This dissertation concerns the development of market information technologies in the London Stock Exchange, c. 1945-1992. Based on archival research in London, Cambridge and Edinburgh, and 20 semistructured interviews with former technologists, brokers, and marketmakers, my dissertation identifies the social, technological and institutional factors that allowed dealings in bonds and equities to move off the trading floor of the Stock Exchange and onto competing electronic platforms. My dissertation utilises the history of market information technologies as an occasion for producing a multi-layered analysis of the material, social, and regulatory transformations of finance in the City of London between c. 1945 and the mid 1990s. In particular, my dissertation deals with the rise of the so-called ‘information age’ in relation to British finance. The analysis is carried out in three parts, each tackling a specific ‘myth’ on the role of information and communication technologies in contemporary finance. The first part (chapters 3-4) deals with the dematerialisation of finance, demonstrating the often ignored character of technologies, materialities and their associated expertise in the constitution of the market. The second part (chapter 5) deconstructs the concept of disintermediation by analysing the social history of broking and jobbing in post-war City of London. Specifically, this part argues that changes in financial practices amongst the membership of the Stock Exchange were neither determined by the adoption of computers nor defined by a pre-existing culture of gentlemanly capitalism. Rather, they derived from the adaptation of market participants to a changing economic and social environment. The third part of this thesis (chapter 6) engages with deregulation. In particular, it provides an account of three broad patterns of financial regulation in Britain and the emergence of the current understanding of financial markets as manageable entities. The dissertation finalises by exploring the role of ‘informational metaphors’ in mediating the practices, materialities and regulations of the London Stock Exchange.

This study is a test of the efficiency of the London Traded Options Market. Because it uses the Black-Scholes Option Pricing Model, it is also a test of option pricing. In the process of examining call option price behaviour it investigates the effects of three empirical factors. First, it investigates the effect of a non-constant share price volatility. Hitherto, there has been no agreed procedure on modelling or forecasting the future share price volatility. This study shows that the GARCH process has the best forecasting accuracy. The ex ante GARCH volatility estimate is then incorporated in the Black-Scholes model. Because the volatility is assumed constant in the Black-Scholes model, the consideration of adapting the GARCH volatility into the model sheds insight on bridging empirical results and theoretical requirements. Second, because the London Traded Options Market is thinly traded the quoted prices may not reflect prices at which trade did or could take place. However, information on call option trading volume may not be available. This study develops and implements an analytical criterion to select the most actively traded call options. The call options selected by this criterion bear the basic characteristics of those frequently traded call options where trading volume is available. Third, this study uses the bid and ask quotations for shares and call options to test the efficiency of the London Traded Options Market. By incorporating the bid-ask spread directly in the establishment of arbitrage portfolios, an accurate assessment of transactions data can be made. The results of incorporating these factors in the test for market efficiency reveal that, despite the identification of mispriced call options, it would not have been possible to exploit the mispricing by setting up arbitrage portfolios. It must therefore be concluded that the London Traded Options Market was trading efficiently over the period of this study.

This study intends to investigate the momentum effect, which states that shares which performed the best (worst) over the previous three to twelve months continue to perform well (poorly) over the subsequent three to twelve months. Evidence suggests that a strategy that buys previous winner shares and sells short past loser stocks can generate abnormal profitability of about 1 per cent per month (Jegadeesh and Titman, 1993). Although momentum payoffs tend to persist when share returns in international markets are employed (e. g., Griffin et al., 2003, Rouwenhorst, 1998), a significant number of studies have debated the potential explanation of the momentum effect without reaching a consensus. Using data from the London Stock Exchange from January 1975 to October 2001, this thesis investigates some factors that influence the magnitude of continuation gains that have not been previously identified. I examine the relationship between momentum profitability and the stock market trading mechanism and is motivated by recent changes to the trading systems that have taken place on the London Stock Exchange. Since 1975 the London stock market has employed three different trading systems: a floor based system, a computerised dealer system called SEAQ and the automated auction system SETS. I find that after the introduction of the computerised dealer system SEAQ momentum profits are higher than when the floor based system operated. I also document that companies trading on the SETS auction system display greater momentum profitability than shares trading on SEAQ. Results are robust to the use of different samples and alternative risk adjustments. I investigate the role of volatility in influencing momentum profits. Shares with high volatility display wide spread out returns and therefore, potential higher magnitude momentum profitability. Given that shares displayed higher volatility traded on the post-Big Bang period (Tonks and Webb, 1991) and on the SETS system (Chelley-Steeley, 2003), I examine whether the different levels of momentum profitability achieved in alternative stock market structures arises from volatility. I find that momentum profits are strongly influenced by volatility, but the finding that the organisation of a stock market influences the momentum profits holds even after considering differences in volatility. I examine whether the magnitude of momentum profitability varies following bull and bear markets. Momentum profits stem from the winner shares in bull markets and from the loser stocks in bear markets. I report that momentum profits are stronger following bear markets, showing a sign of mean reversion in the UK stock market. Overall, this study contradicts the model of Hong and Stein (1999) that the momentum effect arises from the gradual expansion of information among investors and the model of Daniel et al, (1998) that the momentum effect stems from the investors' overconfidence that increases following the arrival of confirming news. This study also indicates that a significant portion of momentum profits stem from the magnitude of volatility.

Yes / We study liquidity on the London Stock Exchange. We find that the average bid-ask spread declines, but that the skewness of the spread increases. These results are robust to firm size, trading volume and price level. Our findings hold when the bid-ask spread is estimated utilising high frequency data. We find that the bid-ask spread prior to earnings announcements dates is significantly higher than that of post earnings announcements, suggesting that asymmetric information has driven the increase in liquidity skewness. We also find that the effect of earnings announcements is more pronounced in the 2007 global financial crisis, consistent with the notion that extreme market downturns amplify asymmetric information. Our overall evidence also implies that increased competition and transparent trading environments limit market makers' abilities to cross-subsidize bid-ask spreads between periods of high and low levels of asymmetric information. / National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71571197)

This diploma thesis deals with the comparison of equity and debt financing the development of the company according to pre-defined criteria such as cost, PR and marketing, debt and autonomy. Attention is also paid to the underpricing on the Czech capital market. The result of the work will assess the appropriate way of financing a particular company. It will also be calculated above underpricing the selected company on the basis of two selected methods.

En omvänd aktiesplit minskar antalet aktier i ett företag samtidigt som värdet per aktie ökar. Företag genomför vanligen omvända aktiesplittar för att justera prisintervallet, förbättra aktiens anseende och minska transaktionskostnader. Trots dessa fördelar, och att processen i sig enbart är en redovisningsmässig åtgärd som inte påverkar värdet av företag, visar tidigare forskning att både offentliggörandet och genomförandet av en omvänd aktiesplit kan resultera i avvikande avkastning. Den avvikande avkastningen som uppstår vid offentliggörandet av omvända aktiesplittar kan förklaras av signaleringsteorin, att händelsen signalerar ny information till investerare gällande företagens förväntade oförmåga att höja aktiekursen genom egen prestation. Däremot är det anmärkningsvärt att avvikande avkastning också upptäckts vid genomförandet, eftersom marknaden redan borde ha anammat den nya informationen. Studien undersöker om avvikande avkastning förekommer vid omvända aktiesplittar på London Stock Exchange under åren 2016 till 2021, och om företagets tidigare prestation mätt i räntabilitet på totalt kapital kan påverka marknadsreaktionen vid offentliggörandet. Genom att använda eventstudier finner studien resultat som stöder att det förekommer negativ avvikande avkastning vid offentliggörandet, och att företagets tidigare prestationer kan påverka den avvikande avkastningen. Det upptäcktes dock inte signifikanta reaktioner vid genomförandet, vilket kan indikera att marknaden är effektiv i sin halvstarka form. För att säkerställa denna slutsats krävs dock ytterligare studier.

This thesis investigates systematic liquidity risk and short-term stock price reaction to large one-day price changes. We study 642 constituents of the FTSALL share index over the period from 1st July 1992 to 29th June 2007. We show that the US evidence of a priced systematic liquidity risk of Pastor and Stambaugh (2003) and Liu (2006) is not country-specific. Particularly, systematic liquidity risk is priced in the London Stock Exchange when Amihud's (2002) illiquidity ratio is used as a liquidity proxy. Given the importance of systematic liquidity risk in the asset pricing literature, we are interested in testing whether the different levels of systematic liquidity risk across stocks can explain the anomaly following large one-day price changes. Specifically, we expect that the stocks with high sensitivity to the fluctuations in aggregate market liquidity to be more affected by price shocks. We find that most liquid stocks react efficiently to price shocks, while the reactions of the least liquid stocks support the uncertain information hypothesis. However, we show that time-varying risk is more important than systematic liquidity risk in explaining the price reaction of stocks in different liquidity portfolios. Indeed, the time varying risk explains nearly all of the documented overreaction and underreaction following large one-day price changes. Our evidence suggests that the observed anomalies following large one-day price shocks are caused by the pricing errors arising from the use of static asset pricing models. In particular, the conditional asset pricing model of Harris et al. (2007), which allow both risk and return to vary systematically over time, explain most of the observed anomalies. This evidence supports the Brown et al. (1988) findings that both risk and return increase in a systematic fashion following price shocks.

There are plenty of things said about the financial industry, an always ongoing debate, to say the least. We have identified a complex situation with three dimensions: Initial public offerings, Venture capital, and Lockup agreements. IPOs are generally difficult to put a price on because the market is not united yet, which creates uncertainties. Venture capital firms invest into startups, often with the incentive of bringing them to an IPO and then make a fast cash out exit. Lockup agreements are contracts that prevent insiders from dumping their shares during a set period in the beginning of the IPO. Additionally, based on the market efficiency theory, a market should always be efficient. But does it play out when these characteristics are affecting each other? The purpose of this research was to investigate whether there are abnormal returns in the financial performance for publicly listed companies on the London Stock Exchange at the end of their lockup period. We sorted on venture capital backed companies and sought to explore differences between VC backed, Non-VC backed firms, and the entire market. The research question for this study is: ‘Does The theoretical aspects of this research’s ontological and epistemological views were set in positivism and objectivism with a deductive approach. The financial performance was key in this research, and it was essential to get ample and appropriate data, therefore a quantitative research method was used with an archival research strategy and explanatory research design. We explored a big research gap in this area after the financial crisis 2008, which made us look at IPOs from 2009 to 2012 with an event window as our time horizon. To answer the research question and fulfill our purpose, four hypotheses were developed with focus on VC backed firms, Non-VC backed firms, the entire market, and one shorter event window. Our results prove that the market efficiency theory does not hold. To answer the research question, we found negative abnormal returns after the lockup expiration date for both Non- VC backed firms and the entire market. However, we were unable to provide a statistically significant result for VC backed firms. There was an extra clear trend during the middle 20 days, and we suggest and encourage to further research with a longer time horizon than [- 20, +20] days.

This paper examines the short and long-term interdependencies between stock prices and dividends. I utilize firm level data from FTSE ALL SHARE from 1990-2014 and apply panel vector error correction model estimated with Engle & Grangers (1987) two-step procedure. The results show that there is a bi-directional long-term relationship between stock prices and dividends, i.e. an adjustment process is at work when a disequilibrium occurs. I also find a bi-directional short-term relationship. This paper also shows that Lintners model and the present value model are relevant frameworks in stock valuations.