<p>There is evidence that globalization, economic assimilation and integration among countries and their financial markets have increased correlation among stock markets and the correlation may in turn impact investors’ allocation of their assets and economic policies. We have conducted a quantitative study with daily stock index quotes for the period January 2000 and December 2009 in order to measure the eventual correlation between the markets of ASEAN+3. This economic integration consists of; Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, China, Japan and South Korea. Our problem formulation is:Are the stock markets of ASEAN+3 correlated?Does the eventual correlation change under turbulent market conditions?In terms of the eventual correlation, discuss: is it possible to diversify an investment portfolio within this area?The purpose of the study is to conduct a research that will provide investors with information about stock market correlation within the chosen market. We have conducted the study with a positivistic view and a deductive approach with some theories as our starting point. The main theories discussed are; market efficiency, risk and return, Modern Portfolio Theory, correlation and international investments. By using the financial datatbase, DataStream, we have been able to collect the necessary data for our study. The data has been processed in the statistical program SPSS by using Pearson correlation.From the empirical findings and our analysis we were able to draw some main conclusions about our study. We found that most of the ASEAN+3 countries were strongly correlated with each other. Japan showed lower correlation with all of the other countries. Based on this we concluded that economic integration seems to increase correlation between stock markets. When looking at the economic downturn in 2007-2009, we found that the correlation between ASEAN+3 became stronger and positive for all of the countries. The results also showed that the correlation varies over time. We concluded that it is, to a small extent, possible to diversify an investment portfolio across these markets.</p>

<p>The concept of grandstanding comes from Gompers (1996), in his article, he defined “to grandstand” as “to act or conduct oneself with a view to impressing onlookers”. The idea of grandstanding does not only apply solely to venture capital but also could apply to underwriters of IPOs industry as well.</p><p>IPOs activities provide huge revenues for underwriters, so underwriters compete with each other for IPO business. China’s stock market grows explosively after 2006, and it has the highest underpricing, as well as more and more underwriters have emerged recently, so our paper is constrained under Chinese stock market environment. We empirically examine whether inexperienced underwriters grandstand when they conduct IPOs in order to achieve more market shares, for example by deliberate underpricing or charging lower fee rates.</p><p>This study is conducted from the underwriter’s perspective. We use two kinds of reputation measurement methods to define “inexperienced” and “prestigious underwriters” and employ a quantitative approach to analyze the data. Evidence from a sample of 392 IPOs from June 19, 2006 to March 24, 2010 suggests that inexperienced underwriters do not have incentives to grandstand. The number of IPOs that underwriters have conducted and recent IPO performance do not always contribute to a gain of market share directly. Therefore, inexperienced underwriters do not provide more underpriced IPOs nor do they charge lower fee rates. Evidence also marginally supports that underwriters do not intend to conduct small offer sized IPOs.</p>

Nonlinear multivariate statistical techniques on fast computers offer the potential to capture more of the dynamics of the high dimensional, noisy systems underlying financial markets than traditional models, while making fewer restrictive assumptions. This thesis presents a collection of practical techniques to address important estimation and confidence issues for Radial Basis Function networks arising from such a data driven approach, including efficient methods for parameter estimation and pruning, a pointwise prediction error estimator, and a methodology for controlling the "data mining'' problem. Novel applications in the finance area are described, including customized, adaptive option pricing and stock price prediction.

Bakgrund: 4 av 5 svenskar äger aktier i någon form och det är många som är intresserade av att maximera sin avkastning. Det har lett till att det skrivs mycket i media om olika sätt att få avkastning högre än marknaden. Om det skulle vara möjligt att nå överavkastning är det en indikation på att marknaden inte är effektiv. Syfte: Syftet med studien är att undersöka om det historiskt har gått att nå en överavkastning genom tillämpa momentum- eller motsatstrategin på den svenska aktiemarknaden. Syftet är även att testa om den svenska aktiemarknaden har varit effektiv i svag form. Genomförande: Momentumstrategin testades genom att portföljer formades med de tio aktier som har haft högst relativ prisstyrka de senaste sex månaderna. Portföljernas marknadsjusterade avkastning har sedan följts i sex månader. Motsatsstrategin testades genom att vinnarportföljer formades med de tio aktier som har haft högst avkastning de senaste tre åren och förlorarportföljer formades för de med lägst avkastning. Portföljernas marknadsjusterade avkastningar under de kommande tre åren jämfördes sedan med varandra. Slutsats: Vi har kommit fram till att det har gått att nå en överavkastning med hjälp av momentumstrategin och att den har fungerat bäst i perioder av stabila uppgångar. Det har däremot inte gått att få överavkastning med hjälp av motsatsstrategin. Vi menar att resultatet beror på att marknaden underreagerar. Därmed kan vi säga att den svenska aktiemarknaden under den undersöka tidsperioden inte har varit effektiv i svag form. / Background: 4 out of 5 Swedes own stocks in some form and many people are interested in maximising their profits. This has led to a lot of publicity in ways to get profits higher than the market. The eventual possibility to receive abnormal returns indicates that the market is inefficient. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to investigate if it historically has been possible to receive abnormal returns by implementing momentum- and contrarian strategies on the Swedish stock market. The purpose is also to test if the Swedish stock market has been efficient in weak form. Implementation: The momentum strategy was tested by forming portfolios consisting of the ten stocks with the highest relative price strength over the last six months. The portfolio abnormal returns were then followed for the following six months. The contrarian strategy was tested by forming winner portfolios consisting of the ten stocks with the highest abnormal returns over the last three years. Loser portfolios were formed of the ten stocks with the lowest abnormal returns over the last three years. The portfolios abnormal returns were then compared to each other for the following three years. Conclusion: We have reached the conclusion that it has been possible to receive abnormal returns by using the momentum strategy. It has been the most successful in periods of steady raises. The contrarian strategy has not generated any excess returns. We believe that reason for the results is that the market under reacts. Therefore we can state that the Swedish stock market not has been efficient in weak form during the examined period.

The concept of grandstanding comes from Gompers (1996), in his article, he defined “to grandstand” as “to act or conduct oneself with a view to impressing onlookers”. The idea of grandstanding does not only apply solely to venture capital but also could apply to underwriters of IPOs industry as well. IPOs activities provide huge revenues for underwriters, so underwriters compete with each other for IPO business. China’s stock market grows explosively after 2006, and it has the highest underpricing, as well as more and more underwriters have emerged recently, so our paper is constrained under Chinese stock market environment. We empirically examine whether inexperienced underwriters grandstand when they conduct IPOs in order to achieve more market shares, for example by deliberate underpricing or charging lower fee rates. This study is conducted from the underwriter’s perspective. We use two kinds of reputation measurement methods to define “inexperienced” and “prestigious underwriters” and employ a quantitative approach to analyze the data. Evidence from a sample of 392 IPOs from June 19, 2006 to March 24, 2010 suggests that inexperienced underwriters do not have incentives to grandstand. The number of IPOs that underwriters have conducted and recent IPO performance do not always contribute to a gain of market share directly. Therefore, inexperienced underwriters do not provide more underpriced IPOs nor do they charge lower fee rates. Evidence also marginally supports that underwriters do not intend to conduct small offer sized IPOs.

Listed corporations achieve effectiveness through segmentation of investors. Categorization of like- minded investors diminishes goal incongruence. This thesis aim to examine an Investor models accuracy, provided by a Professor Emeritus in Economic Psychology in 2001. This model segments investors as active, passive, speculative and naive investors.   This thesis has a demarcation to private investors on the Swedish stock market. It has a deductive and qualitative approach as the purpose is to study the Investor model. In order to obtain empirical data semi- structured interviews were conducted with Avanza Bank, Handelsbanken, Aktiespararna and Karl- Erik Wärneryd, the author of the Investor model. All interviews were carried out by telephone except the face- to- face interview with Karl- Erik Wärneryd.   The conclusion of this thesis is that the Investor model is not universal. The Investor model needs to be modified by the purpose of the sector of the application in order to be accurate. Different factors have influenced investors since 2001 which has subsequently had an effect on the Investor groups’ characteristics.

This paper is an empirical study on Harry Markowitz work on Modern Portfolio Theory. The model introduced by him assumes the normality of assets’ return. We examined the OMX Large Cap List1 by mathematical and statistical methods for normality of assets’ returns. We studied the effect of the parameters, Skewness and Kurtosis for different time series data. We tried to figure it out which data series is better to construct a portfolio and how these extra parameters can make us better informed in our investments.

China’s economy has experienced a spectacular growth and achieved a remarkable success over the past three decades. Opportunities created by the striking economic growth have led China’s most important investment markets, real estate and stock markets to undertake an enormous transformation and development. This paper is concentrated on examining the relationship between the returns on Chinese real estate and stock markets. In particular, the paper attempts to investigate whether the returns are correlated between them, and to explore the potential diversification effects on creating a balanced portfolio including both real estate and stock assets. The empirical study is conducted on the basis of monthly data collected from year 2005 to 2010. Statistical tests are applied to measure the magnitude of return correlations between Chinese real estate and stock markets. The results of the empirical study indicate that the monthly returns on Chinese real estate and stock markets are not correlated. And when investing in China’s capital markets, diversification benefits could be achieved by creating a balanced portfolio including both real estate and stock assets. Keywords: Return Correlation; Diversification Benefit; Chinese Real Estate market; Chinese Stock Market

This thesis examines the influence of investor protection and legal origin on equity market size. Previous studies have shown a relationship between legal origin and equity markets as well as quality of law. We examine whether there are any relationship between stock market capitalization as a percentage of GDP, private property rights, anti director rights and legal origin. We use data from 49 countries in our sample that is collected from the World Bank, Heri-tage foundation and La Porta et al. (1998). Our study is based upon a cross-sectional re-gressions and a variance analyzes. Our results show that property rights as well as anti director rights have a positive relation-ship to stock market capitalization as a percentage of GDP. We could not find any signifi-cant results in our regressions that stock market capitalization as a percentage of GDP can be explained by legal origin. We consider previous conducted studies regarding legal origin to have exaggerated legal origins’ impact on equity markets. Equity markets are more related to the level of develop-ment in countries, no matter legal origin.

The Chinese stock market is a remarkable emerging market, the two stock markets Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges were both established in 1990, and since then they have been playing a very important role in Chinese economy. More and more attention is focused on the emerging Chinese market, and investors have been trying to find the opportunity to achieve abnormal returns through the Chinese stock market. We name this phenomenon market efficiency anomaly, one pattern of which is seasonality effect. In our study, we would like to choose the seasonality effect as the approach. This study focuses on Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index, and we settle two research questions: Does seasonality effect exist in Chinese Stock exchange? Is the seasonality effect persistent over times?We try to test the seasonality in Chinese stock market by day of the week effect, January effect and semi-month effect. Deductive approach and quantitative research method are used in this thesis. To analyze seasonality effect, the data has been collected from Shanghai Stock Exchange Index and has been tested in four periods: 1992-1996,1997-2001, 2002-2006 and the whole period 1992-2006. Null hypothesis and T-test with α=0.05 is used to test the seasonality effect. The results show that seasonal anomalies like Day of the week effect, positive March effect, and negative July effect exist in the Chinese stock market, while semi-month effect does not occur significantly; but the existing seasonal effect is not persistent over times. The above indicates that the Chinese stock market is not fully efficient yet. Investors may have opportunities to make use of the seasonal anomalies to earn abnormal return.