<p>Pairs trading is a relatively new trading strategy, the strategy has only been used during a couple of decades. A study made on the American stock market has shown that the strat-egy has generated a positive result. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate if pairs trad-ing has been able to create a positive result on the Swedish stock market during the time period of 1995-2004.</p><p>The data required for this thesis was collected from Stockholm stock exchange and is ad-justed for splits and issues.</p><p>The pairs trading strategy involves two stages – identification of pairs and trading signals. The pairs were identified during a period of 12 months. During this period a return index was constructed and a correlation matrix was calculated for each period. Out of this corre-lation matrix were then ten pairs with the highest correlation selected. These pairs were then used in the next six-month trading period.</p><p>The study show that the strategy generated a positive result for the time period examined 1995-2004. More than 60 percent of all positions had a positive development and contrib-uted to a positive result. The other positions had a negative development.</p> / <p>Pairs trading är en relativt ny handelstrategi som endast har använts under ett par årtionden. En studie gjord på den amerikanska aktiemarknaden har visat att strategin har genererat ett positivt resultat. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka om pairs trading kunnat skapa ett positivt resultat på den svenska aktiemarknaden under tidsperioden 1995-2004.</p><p>För att kunna genomföra studien, har daglig aktiedata inhämtats från Stockholms fondbörs. Datan som används är justerad för splittar och emissioner.</p><p>Pairs trading strategin involverar två steg – identifiera aktiepar och handelssignaler. Aktieparen identifierades under en tolv månaders period. Då konstruerades ett avkastningsindex och en korrelationsmatris beräknades för varje period. Ur denna korrelationsmatris valdes sedan de tio aktiepar som hade högst korrelation. Dessa aktiepar användes sedan under nästföljande handelsperiod som pågick under sex månader.</p><p>För den undersökta perioden, 1995-2004, uppvisade studien att pairs trading strategin har genererat ett positivt resultat. Mer än 60 procent av alla positioner har haft en positiv utveckling och bidragit till det positiva resultatet. Övriga positioner har haft en negativ utveckling.</p>

This report presents TSS - a Trading Strategy System developed to let traders define arbitrarily complex trading strategies in the Java programming language and evaluate them using historical stock information. In addition, TSS provides access to Google Trends data for use in meta-strategy definition, and has the ability to return the best strategy from a family of strategies using data mining algorithms. Finally, TSS is highly extensible - we can integrate new data feeds by simply extending the interface and database. / text

Pairs trading is a relatively new trading strategy, the strategy has only been used during a couple of decades. A study made on the American stock market has shown that the strat-egy has generated a positive result. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate if pairs trad-ing has been able to create a positive result on the Swedish stock market during the time period of 1995-2004. The data required for this thesis was collected from Stockholm stock exchange and is ad-justed for splits and issues. The pairs trading strategy involves two stages – identification of pairs and trading signals. The pairs were identified during a period of 12 months. During this period a return index was constructed and a correlation matrix was calculated for each period. Out of this corre-lation matrix were then ten pairs with the highest correlation selected. These pairs were then used in the next six-month trading period. The study show that the strategy generated a positive result for the time period examined 1995-2004. More than 60 percent of all positions had a positive development and contrib-uted to a positive result. The other positions had a negative development. / Pairs trading är en relativt ny handelstrategi som endast har använts under ett par årtionden. En studie gjord på den amerikanska aktiemarknaden har visat att strategin har genererat ett positivt resultat. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka om pairs trading kunnat skapa ett positivt resultat på den svenska aktiemarknaden under tidsperioden 1995-2004. För att kunna genomföra studien, har daglig aktiedata inhämtats från Stockholms fondbörs. Datan som används är justerad för splittar och emissioner. Pairs trading strategin involverar två steg – identifiera aktiepar och handelssignaler. Aktieparen identifierades under en tolv månaders period. Då konstruerades ett avkastningsindex och en korrelationsmatris beräknades för varje period. Ur denna korrelationsmatris valdes sedan de tio aktiepar som hade högst korrelation. Dessa aktiepar användes sedan under nästföljande handelsperiod som pågick under sex månader. För den undersökta perioden, 1995-2004, uppvisade studien att pairs trading strategin har genererat ett positivt resultat. Mer än 60 procent av alla positioner har haft en positiv utveckling och bidragit till det positiva resultatet. Övriga positioner har haft en negativ utveckling.

Thesis (LL.M.)--University of Toronto (Canada), 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2009. / Title from title screen (site viewed October 15, 2009). PDF text: viii, 117 p. : ill. ; 1.43 Mb. UMI publication number: AAT 3355631. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--Acadia University, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-98). Also available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

The presence of insider trading in a financial market is detrimental to its functioning. Traders with public information are always at a disadvantage when negotiating with agents in possession of inside information. Thus insider trading should increase risk and should lower participation in financial markets. In this study we investigate a channel through which inside information may be transferred to market participants: social connections based on common education. We hand-collect a novel data set of the educational background of members of the board of directors of Brazilian firms and portfolio managers of stock funds. Board members hold inside information on their firms that is valuable to fund managers. We propose that these agents may engage in active social interactions if they 1) attended the same educational institution, 2) within an overlapping time window, and 3) obtained the same degree. We study if such connections influence fund managers\' portfolio decisions. We find that fund managers tend to place larger bets in companies with which they possess this sort of educational connection. We also find that these connections are economically valuable: managers tend to conduct large purchases of connected stocks prior to large increases in their return, and also tend to sell them prior to downfalls. Finally, we study if market participants view increases in a company\'s connectivity as an increase in its risk. We find that increases in connectivity are followed by increases in expected returns. We also determine that the return of holding a portfolio long in highly connected stocks and short on stocks with few connections cannot be explained by the traditional risk factors. These two results indicate that the market does indeed see connectivity as a form of risk. This is, to our knowledge, the first study of its kind for Brazil. / A presença de insider trading em um mercado financeiro é prejudicial ao seu funcionamento. Investidores com informação pública sempre estão em desvantagem quando negociam com agentes que detêm informação privilegiada. Portanto, insider trading aumenta o risco e diminui a participação em mercados financeiros. Neste estudo nós investigamos um possível canal através do qual a informação interna à firma é potencialmente transferida para participantes do mercado: conexões sociais baseadas em uma educação comum. Nós coletamos manualmente uma base de dados inédita sobre a experiência educacional de dois grupos de agentes: membros do conselho de diretores de empresas brasileiras e gestores de carteiras de fundos de ações. Os membros do conselho possuem informação privilegiada sobre suas firmas que seria valiosa para os gestores de fundos. Nós propomos que esses agentes podem engajar em contato social ativo se eles 1) frequentaram a mesma instituição de ensino, 2) em janelas de tempo sobrepostas e 3) obtiveram o mesmo diploma. A partir daí, estudamos se tais conexões influenciam as decisões de investimento dos gestores de carteiras. Nós descobrimos que gerentes de fundos tendem a alocar posições maiores em companhias com as quais eles possuem esta conexão educacional. Nós também descobrimos que tais conexões são valiosas: gerentes tendem a realizar grandes compras de ações conectadas em antecipação a aumentos em seu retorno e tendem a vender essas ações antes de quedas. Finalmente, nós estudamos se participantes do mercado veem aumentos na conectividade de uma empresa como aumentos no risco da empresa. Nós descobrimos que aumentos na conectividade são seguidos de aumentos no retorno esperado. Nós também encontramos que o retorno de um portfólio comprado em ações de alta conectividade e vendido em ações de baixa conectividade não pode ser explicado pelos fatores de risco tradicionais. Esses dois resultados indicam que o mercado vê a conectividade como uma forma de risco. Este é, ao nosso conhecimento, o primeiro trabalho de seu tipo para o Brasil.

Abstract This study consists introductory survey and three essays where investors' trading responses to interim earnings announcements are studied using Finnish data. The essays are individual papers, but their topics are closely connected since they address the trading response from different angles. The essays progress from an aggregated to a more detailed examination. The first essay was conducted on daily data, whereas the second and third consist of intraday trading data. In all three essays information asymmetry is assumed to affect trading behavior around interim earnings announcements. The first article contains empirical findings regarding the effect of interim earnings announcements on investors' trading policy using Finnish data. The aim of the paper is to investigate empirically the role of pre-disclosure information asymmetry and the information content in explaining volume responses to interim earnings announcements. Evidence is provided that the trading volume response is positively associated with the information content and to some extent with the level of pre-disclosure information asymmetry. The results are in line with the theoretical trading volume proposition. However, the significance levels are lower than in similar US studies and the association between positive and negative news is slightly asymmetric. The second article finds evidence from the Helsinki Stock Exchange that the widely documented U-shape pattern in trading activity - namely heavy trading in the beginning and at the end of the trading day and relatively light trading in the middle of the day - is affected by an anticipated information event (i.e. interim earnings announcement). Before the announcement day, trading is more concentrated at the close. This is consistent with investors' heterogeneous willingness to bear expected overnight risk, which is especially prevalent before an announcement. Moreover, a slight increase on the open is evident after the announcement day. Evidence is also provided that the change in intraday trading behavior is associated with announcement-related factors, such as the range of analysts' earnings forecasts, the magnitude of unexpected earnings and firm size. Furthermore, this association is evident to some extent during the transition between trading and non-trading regimes. The third study examines whether the permanent price effects of individual trades are greater before or after an interim earnings announcement on the Helsinki Stock Exchange. If the permanent price effects are greater before the announcement this would suggest that investors believe that some traders are better informed before the interim earnings announcement than after. Using permanent price effects as a measure of price adjustment for private information, tests were performed to see whether price adjustments are greater in pre-announcement periods than in post-announcement periods. The results, based on interim earnings releases for the period 1993 to 1997 by HSE-listed firms, suggest that large trades do indeed produce greater permanent price effects before an announcement than after it. This suggests that large trades associated with price changes (especially uptick trades) before an announcement send a stronger signal to other investors than similar trades after the announcement. For small trades the results were insignificant.

I explore the effects of the implementation of the two U.S. cap-and-trade policies on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for the two regions in which the policies are active as well as the regions on their respective borders. The cap-and-trade policy is a market-based approach to reduce emissions by capping the total amount of emissions produced and allowing emission producing entities to trade emission allowances on an open market. The two active cap-and-trade policies in the United States are the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), located in the northeastern United States, and in California, which differ in design, scope, and duration. I use a difference in differences design to analyze the change in CO2 emissions in the states effected by the policies relative to the rest of the country. I find that the RGGI policy has not reduced CO2 emissions in comparison to the rest of the non-policy states but only the California emission trading system has yielded a statistically significant decline. The results also find that the there is no evidence to suggest different changes in CO2 emissions in the states bordering both regions in which the policies are in place.

M.Com. (Business Management) / After years of international isolation, South Africa has been re-admitted to the international fold. For the country's business community this entails new opportunities, as well as threats. International markets and finance opened up during the past year. It also led to South Africa signing the latest GAIT agreement. This will, enable foreign exporters to have access to the local market in the future, it will also encourage competition amongst local companies that previously mainly produced for domestic consumption. New markets will have to be exploited. These new opportunities and threats create new risks for companies entering these new markets. An important component of these new risks is the volatility in the foreign exchange market. Import and export companies receive and make payments in foreign. currencies. Unexpected movements in exchange rates can influence a company's profitability and competitiveness. Due to the size of the foreign exchange market, it is the most liquid and volatile market in the world. To minimise the risk and seize opportunities in adverse foreign exchange movements, currency exposure must be managed properly. Although integrated treasury management proves to be a successful approach in most industrial countries, it is a relatively new science, in South Africa. A large number of financial instruments exist for the hedging of foreign currency exposure. In South Africa' these options are limited, due to exchange. control regulations and this also hampers the number of hedging possibilities. Under different market conditions different hedging strategies and instruments can provide different results. There is one guarantee that a given instrument or strategy will result in the optimal hedge. It might even result in more inherent risks. Risk management is a dynamic activity within an organisation and calls for educated decisions to minimise risk and utilise opportunities.