The underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs) and their subsequent low long-run performance represents one of the anomalies observed in primary markets worldwide. However, the depth and breadth of it varies from country to country, and sector to sector. Literature has documented that the phenomenon surrounding the long-run post issue performance of IPOs is not unique and that quite similar patterns can be found regarding firms making seasoned equity offerings (SEOs). This study is an empirical analysis of public equity offerings listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). Using data for 141 South African IPOs that were listed on the JSE Mainboard from 2001 to 2010, significant short-run underpricing is found. A sector wise analysis of three broad sectors indicated that the ‘other’ sector had the largest IPO underpricing after the first few days of trading. The year-wise analysis is also documented. In the long-run this study showed that IPOs in South Africa underperformed two out of three benchmarks in 36 full months post listing. In contrast, using data for 50 South African SEOs during 2003 to 2010, superior SEO performance is found over a 36-month period when assessed using a size and industry adjusted benchmark. Various cross-sectional and time-series patterns in the aftermarket performance of IPO and SEO firms are also documented

Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Glynn T. Tonsor / Over the past decade, social media has risen from an emerging novelty to the normative form of expression for many Americans. As these platforms have risen in popularity, researchers have recognized the potential for capturing information users are self-reporting about their beliefs and preferences. Simultaneously, social media corporations have become privy to the value of this information being freely shared by consumers and have safeguarded much of their historical data to monetize the data. Faced with both an enticing new source of data, but a steep price to obtain it, researchers must evaluate the potential gains that can be extracted from the often difficult to analyze data. This study explored the acquisition of social media, namely Twitter, data and the potential uses in the field of agriculture economics. A contract was secured with Sysomos, a social media analytics firm, in July of 2017 to collect raw Twitter data over the proceeding thirteen months. Changes in frequency of tweets and sentiment scoring of tweets were used to attempt to explain election results from November 2017 proposed legislations pertaining to marijuana and minimum wage as well as to explain and predict changes in the stock prices of selected publicly traded firms in the food producing sector. Twitter frequency changes were then compared to changes in traditional print media articles in an effort to determine the exchangeability of the two media sources when used to track events pertaining to animal health. Results of this study suggested that Twitter data possess little power to explain the studied election results, but creation of a strong model was difficult due to the limited number of months of data available. Changes in the frequency of tweets were not found to be a strong indicator of changes in the stock market on the average day, but were shown to explain potentially highly valued information to investors on days with large changes in price. Twitter and traditional print media were shown to be unique sources of data when exploring the topic of animal health events.

This thesis increases our understanding of the book-to-market ratio via a detailed examination of how and when earnings are realised in relation to firms' "capitalisation" and "average useful-life of assets". Book-to-market ratios (BMRs) are regressed as a function of changes in market value of equity ratios for British industrial companies registered on the London Stock Exchange from 1987 to 1996. Data from a prior period (1976-1986) is also employed to stabilise for effects of earnings realisation before the regression period. The "average useful-life assets" for the firms in the sample determines the time horizon of the analysis. The path of abnormal earnings over this horizon reflects the pattern of expiration of the useful-lives of assets in place. The analysis finds that an accrual measurement effect dominated in BMRs increases over the analysis period and also that accrual measurement is more influential in BMRs for firms with short than with long "average useful-life assets". Changes in market value ratios are found to inform about future earnings up to at least six years, except for highlycapitalised firms with long useful-life assets (for which the relationship lasts up to 4 years). The length of the informative period is found to be inverse to the average useful-life of firms' assets. The effect of differences between annual changes in market value of equity ratios on BMRs across time diminishes soon (two years) after the initial market shock' occurs. Long useful-life assets have no further effect on BMRs evolution at more distant lags. Contrary to previous research (in the USA), changes in market value of equity ratios (for UK firms) are found to be associated more with short than with long useful-life assets. Although not specially tested for, this result supports the notion of "short-terminism" of which the UK stock market is sometimes accused. The apparent "short-terministic" outlook by investors in UK firms coincides with improved predictability of BMRs in the UK compared with the US market. The high coefficients of determination from changes in market value of equity ratios as a function of BMRs, identified in the study, motivates a further test for a prediction model which is able to predict 29.2% of the variation in book-tomarket value of equity ratios 8 years in advance.

This doctoral thesis traces the various forms in which ordinary people engaged in the stock market across twentieth-century Britain. It asks how and why previously stigmatised forms of investment and speculation came to be regarded as socially, politically and economically desirable. I argue that financial and economic historians, preoccupied with the growing dominance of financial institutions over British security markets during this period, have neglected the social and cultural relevance of popular share ownership. Consequently investment is seen as more than an economic activity. Understanding the ways in which social and cultural attitudes towards finance relaxed over time, allows us to better understand the arrival of neoliberalism in Britain. After World War I, Britain witnessed a significant expansion of private stock market investment. However, in comparison to the United States, Britain’s financial establishment took a more conservative stance on universal share ownership and restrained much of the potential for a “democratisation of investment”. After 1945, private share ownership continued to grow gradually across classes due to higher living standards and in spite of nationalisation, high taxation and the institutionalisation of securities markets. Politics was not the main driver of this trend as efforts to widen share ownership were difficult to square with the interventionist postwar economic settlement. More importantly, the rapidly expanding trade of financial journalism increasingly educated multiple audiences about stock market affairs. By widening the analytical scope beyond socioeconomic conditions, it becomes apparent that the sweeping social and cultural changes during the 1950s and 1960s helped to loosen older reservations against financial speculation, thereby drawing evermore investors into the market. The key shift of this period was that ‘playing the stock market’ became a popular and socially acceptable hobby, predominantly among middle-class households. Tracing these developments to the 1970s and 1980s, this thesis concludes that market populism had a powerful appeal to savers and investors hit by inflation, thereby accelerating the growth of economic individualism long before the Thatcherite Revolution unfolded in Britain.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:30:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2007-07-21Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:59:50Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 veraldojunior_lg_me_guara.pdf: 525838 bytes, checksum: e3cef3176a9730dc5385740019e1e851 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / No mundo atual, com a globalização e abertura de mercados consumidores e fornecedores ocorre uma crescente concorrência de empresas no objetivo de aumentarem suas participações em vendas. Dessa forma, existe a necessidade de minimizar os custos operacionais, proporcionando maior faturamento, possibilitando maiores lucros. Assim, é de grande importância, ter uma gestão de estoques eficiente em toda a Cadeia de Suprimentos incluindo a parcela excedente. As causas desta parcela consistem na falta de um planejamento acurado na determinação das estimativas de compra, no aproveitamento do mercado fornecedor, na evolução dos produtos acabados e na interrupção ou finalização de um produto. O objetivo deste trabalho é, utilizando uma modelagem de tomada de decisão através de múltiplos critérios, apresentar a solução no destino de materiais determinados como estoque excedente, através de alternativas determinadas em conjunto com as diversas áreas da empresa. Estes critérios são características do material estocado definidos como volume ocupado, tempo de permanência em estoque e custo do material. Já as alternativas para a gestão da parcela excedente do estoque são devolver ao fornecedor, retrabalhar o material, disponibilizar para a área de suporte ao cliente ou sucatar o material. A aplicação do Analytic Hierarchy Process auxilia a melhor decisão de redução do excesso de estoque de um determinado item, diminuindo os investimentos necessários para manutenção dos estoques produtivos da empresa. / In the current world, with globalization and the opening of consumers and suppliers markets there is a growing competition from companies in order to increase their market share. This way, there is necessary to minimize the operational costs, providing bigger earnings, and making possible higher profits. Thus, it is of big importance, to have an efficient inventory management along the Supply Chain, including the exceeding amount. The causes of this amount are the inaccurate estimates of purchase, the exploitation of the supplier market, the evolution of finished products, and the interruption for the supplying of a product. The objective of this work is, using a modeling of decision-making with multiple criteria, provide the solution in the fate of certain materials carryover stock, through alternatives determined with the diverse areas of the company. These criteria are characteristic of the stored material: occupied volume, time kept in inventory, and cost of the material. The alternatives for the management of the exceeding inventory are: return to the supplier, rework the material, make available for the customer support area or scrap the material. The application of the Analytic Hierarchy Process helps the best decision to reduce the exceeding inventory, reducing the investment required for the maintenance of productive stocks of the company.

This research project examines the link between social media and its effect on stock exchanges and movement of stocks. The study uses Twitter as its primary social media platform and focuses on its effect on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The study examines various forms of social media and micro-blogging sites in its attempt to provide a thorough understanding of the role of social media within the market. In line with its exploration of social media, the study analyses User-Generated Content, Sentiment Analysis and the impact of Word-of-Mouth. A brief explanation of Algorithmic Trading, the Efficient Market Hypothesis, and the Adaptive Market Hypothesis is also provided. The information used to show the relationship between Twitter and the JSE was extracted using a quantitative survey answered by registered traders on the JSE. The survey aimed to ascertain the level of information pertaining to stock movement posted to the platform by these traders, and how these traders used that same information to make trading decisions. The results of the study show that Twitter and other micro-blogging sites have a level of determination in stock exchanges. This study shows that traders make some use of online information to inform their trading decisions on the Stock Market. The validity of this online information stems from the fact that traders place trust in other people and other users’ experience, as proven by Word of Mouth. The findings of this study were contrary to the researchers’ expectation that Twitter was widely used as an informant for trade decisions. What is deduced from the available findings is that while Twitter and other social media platforms do to some extent provide information for traders on the JSE in making trade decisions, it is not a wide-spread basis for movement of shares. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / zkgibs2014 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

No description available.

Class of 2011 Abstract / OBJECTIVES: To establish the risk versus return of pharmacy corporations those are traded publicly on the open market. METHODS: Descriptive retrospective study of financial data obtained through Center of Research in Security Prices (CRSP). Pharmacy corporations were selected by the Standard Industrial Classification Code (SIC code) of 5912. Information that was gathered were monthly security-level stock market prices, value-weighted stock market index, the 30-day return on Treasury bill, SMB, HML, and MOM. Analysis timeframe: 1929-2009. RESULTS: CAPM and Fama-French three factor and four models calculated the data results. CAPM resulted in statistically significant overall beta= 1.04 (p≤0.05). Fama-French three factor model resulted in significant overall beta= 0.87 and overall SMB= 0.79. Fama-French four factor model resulted in significant overall beta= 0.86 and overall SMB= 0.78. CONCLUSION: Over the 80 year time period pharmacy corporations suggested mixed volatility. Risk of investment has never suggested being a viable gain on return of investment versus a 30-day Treasury bill.

Several researchers and practitioners have claimed that economic value added is superior to traditional accounting measures in driving shareholder value. Other researchers have refuted these claims by supplying data in support of traditional accounting indicators such as EPS and ROE. In light of these contradicting findings, the paper endeavoured to analyse the results of JSE-listed gold mining companies. The share price was correlated to EVA, ROE, EPS, CFG and gold price. Using simple and multiple regression analyses, the paper established the strength of correlation between these different performance drivers with the share price. It also established the impact of gold price on the correlation to share price. The results suggested that EVA had the strongest correlation with the share price, with a coefficient of determination r2 = 45%. It was followed by EPS which had a positive correlation, CFG and ROE. Results also revealed that the gold price had a positive and moderate influence on the share price. Not only that the gold price affected the share price moderately, the study found that it also affected the correlation between EVA, ROE, EPS, and CFG with the share price. The impact increased in magnitude from CFG, EVA, and ROE to EPS. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

There is broad agreement in the literature that in general, mergers and acquisitions in both the short and long run are largely zero or negative, net present value exercises for the shareholders of the acquiring company. At the same time it is believed that significant returns are realised by the shareholders of the target companies. Despite this broad agreement and due to the complexity of the open market, there are still a large number of variables which can and could possibly account for many of the exceptions which have been highlighted in a range of studies. The aim of this study was to investigate whether there is any evidence to suggest that merger and acquisition activity in the different market sectors of the JSE are either, more or less successful than the average. A total of 82 transactions were identified as meeting the strict requirements of the methodology. These included representatives from five sectors Basic Industries, Consumer Goods&Services, Financials, Information Technology and Resources. Event study methodology was used to investigate the abnormal returns of acquiring companies before and after the announcement of the event. It was established that in all but one of the market sectors there was statistically significant evidence that merger and acquisition transactions in different market sectors are either better or worse than the average at creating value for the acquiring company shareholders. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted