{"title":"Wheat Futures Contracts: Liquidity, Spreading Opportunities, and Fundamental Factors","authors":"H. Till","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3110868","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3110868","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses how fund managers can choose amongst wheat futures contracts at the CME Group if they are interested in expressing bullish economic and inflationary views through positions in the agricultural futures complex.","PeriodicalId":375725,"journal":{"name":"SPGMI: Capital IQ Data (Topic)","volume":"84 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125623582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shelf Versus Traditional Seasoned Equity Offerings: The Impact of Potential Short Selling","authors":"Marie Dutordoir, N. Strong, Ping‐Wen Sun","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3076729","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3076729","url":null,"abstract":"Traditional seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) elicit short selling from traders trying to increase offering discounts. Such short selling is more difficult for shelf offerings because the time between their announcement and issuance tends to be shorter. We predict and find that firms with higher short-selling potential (SSP) are more likely to choose shelf over traditional SEOs. This result is robust to alternative proxies for SSP and other sensitivity tests. Further analysis suggests that shelf issuers aim to mitigate the threat of manipulative short selling. Our findings add to a growing literature showing that short selling has a real impact on corporate finance decisions.","PeriodicalId":375725,"journal":{"name":"SPGMI: Capital IQ Data (Topic)","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116626768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Information Content of Managers' Forward-Looking Disclosures","authors":"Julian Opferkuch","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3116060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3116060","url":null,"abstract":"I use textual analysis to measure the amount of forward-looking disclosures in public firms' 10-K reports, and relate it to the forecast revisions of sell-side analysts around the publication dates of these reports. By focusing on the revisions of forecasts made after the publication of a firm's financial results for the fiscal year covered by its report, I ensure that my findings are not driven by the simultaneous disclosure of forward-looking and financial information. Using a sample of 13484 firm-year observations, I find that more analysts revise their 1-year earnings per share (EPS) forecasts in response to a 10-K filing if the corresponding report contains more forward-looking expressions. Furthermore, among those analysts who responded to a report publication, the error of their revised forecasts is smaller for firms whose reports contain more forward-looking statements. These findings suggest that analysts perceive managers' forward-looking disclosures to be informative, and that their perception is justified. Further analyses reveal that the perceived and actual informativeness of such disclosures is more pronounced among firms which are opaque or experienced a strong recent profitability growth. I also find evidence that managers' forward-looking disclosures affect analysts' longer-term EPS forecasts in a similar way as their short-term forecasts.","PeriodicalId":375725,"journal":{"name":"SPGMI: Capital IQ Data (Topic)","volume":"1971 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130052450","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Trade Creditors’ Information Advantage","authors":"V. Ivashina, Benjamin Iverson","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3108646","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3108646","url":null,"abstract":"Using information on the sales of debt claims for 132 U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases, we show that large trade creditors’ decisions to sell receivables of a distressed company in bankruptcy are predictive of lower recovery rates, and that in such cases these creditors sell ahead of less informed suppliers and other creditors. This result is especially pronounced for more opaque distressed firms, when trade creditors’ information advantage is likely largest. This evidence shows that suppliers that extend significant amounts of trade credit hold private information about their trade partners. Trade creditors who are geographically closer or in similar industries tend to lend the most, suggesting that these are two channels through which suppliers hold an information advantage.","PeriodicalId":375725,"journal":{"name":"SPGMI: Capital IQ Data (Topic)","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115064108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Much Labor Do You Need to Manage Capital?","authors":"Leonard Kostovetsky, A. Manconi","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2896355","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2896355","url":null,"abstract":"Asset management companies in the United States employ several hundred thousand people in advisory, portfolio management, and research roles, yet academic research suggests their investments, on average, underperform passive benchmarks net of fees. Using a new dataset on over 10,000 registered investment advisors (RIAs), we analyze which clienteles, asset classes, and strategies require more human capital, as well as the value that human capital adds to investment management. We find that while more human capital is not associated with better performance (controlling for assets under management), having more advisory personnel helps attract more assets, justifying their salaries from the point of view of the firm. Furthermore, larger teams actually behave more like closet-indexers, holding more diversified portfolios with lower tracking error. Our findings suggest that some active management companies realize their ability, or lack thereof, to generate alpha, and use their employees in order to keep and attract clients.","PeriodicalId":375725,"journal":{"name":"SPGMI: Capital IQ Data (Topic)","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116080716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Large Shareholders with Diversified Equity Portfolios and Voluntary Disclosure: International Evidence","authors":"Herita T. Akamah, S. Q. Shu","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2888157","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2888157","url":null,"abstract":"This study, using a recently available dataset that tracks investors’ equity holdings across countries, investigates the relation between the degree of large shareholders’ acquisition of equity in multiple firms (i.e., portfolio diversification) and corporate voluntary disclosures. While large shareholders are traditionally viewed as investors with sufficient resources to acquire costly private information, we posit that shareholders with more diversified portfolios have greater reliance on public disclosures owing to resource constraints. Hence, we expect these shareholders to have a stronger demand for voluntary disclosures as a less costly alternative information source. Consistent with this prediction, we find that large shareholder portfolio diversification relates positively to voluntary disclosures as measured by the incidence and the frequency of management forecasts, conference calls, analyst/investor days, and product-related announcements. Corroborating our main analysis, we document a negative impact of portfolio diversification on voluntary disclosures when the firms providing the disclosures constitute a significant portion of large shareholders’ investment portfolios. We also find that the positive relation between large shareholder portfolio diversification and voluntary disclosure is more pronounced when the firm is located in a country with a lower quality labor market. In addition, we find that firms cater to diversified large shareholders’ public information reliance by providing disclosures that elicit a stronger stock market reaction, indicating the high information content of these disclosures. Overall, our findings suggest that diversified portfolio holdings incentivize large shareholders to place greater reliance on public information and that managers respond through providing high-quality voluntary disclosures.","PeriodicalId":375725,"journal":{"name":"SPGMI: Capital IQ Data (Topic)","volume":"134 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124439182","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beauty and Appearance in Corporate Director Elections","authors":"Philipp Geiler, L. Renneboog, Yang Zhao","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3054649","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3054649","url":null,"abstract":"We study the role of facial appearance in corporate director (re-)elections by means of director photographs published in annual reports. We find that shareholders use inferences from facial appearance in corporate elections, as a better (higher rated) appearance measure of a director reduces voting dissent. These heuristics are based on perceived competence, trustworthiness, likability, and intelligence, but not on physical beauty. The results are valid for director re-elections but not for first appointment elections as in the latter cases, shareholders may not as yet be familiar with a director’s looks. In firms with few institutional shareholders and more retail investors owning small equity stakes, the latter tend to rely more on facial appearance than institutional shareholders, presumably as institutions conduct more research on the director’s background and performance, and consequently rely less on facial appearance. While female directors generally experience lower voting dissent, their facial appearance does not affect their elections results.","PeriodicalId":375725,"journal":{"name":"SPGMI: Capital IQ Data (Topic)","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133570860","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Debt Structure as a Strategic Bargaining Tool","authors":"Yue Qiu","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2762085","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2762085","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies the strategic role of debt structure in improving the bargaining position of a firm's management relative to its non-financial stakeholders. Debt structure is essential for strategic bargaining because it affects the ease of renegotiating debt contracts and thus the credibility of bankruptcy threats. Using the airline industry as an empirical setting, we first show that the degree of wage concessions is strongly related to a firm's debt structure. Debt structure is further shown to be adjusted as a response to an increase in non-financial stakeholders' negotiation power. Using NLRB labor union election as a laboratory setting and employing a regression discontinuity design, we find that passing a labor union election leads to an increase in the ratio of public debt to total assets and a decrease in the ratio of bank debt to total assets in the following three years after elections, whereas there is no significant change in the level of total debt. The syndication size of newly issued bank loans increases while creditor ownership concentration decreases once the vote share for unions passes the winning threshold. Further analyses confirm that the debt structure adjustments after union certification are more likely driven by the strategic concerns of management rather than more constrained access to bank loans.","PeriodicalId":375725,"journal":{"name":"SPGMI: Capital IQ Data (Topic)","volume":"389 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124720227","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Smart Beta Strategies Work in the Hong Kong Market","authors":"Liyu Zeng, P. Luk","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3054594","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3054594","url":null,"abstract":"Factor-based investing shares some common characteristics with passive investing such as rules-based construction, transparency, and cost-efficiency, and it also shares features of active investing in that it aims to enhance return and reduce risk compared to market-cap-weighted indices. In this paper, we examined the effectiveness of six well-known factors including size, value, low volatility, momentum, quality, and dividend in the Hong Kong equity market, their investability in practice, as well as the behavior of these factors under different market regimes from June 30, 2006, to June 30, 2017.","PeriodicalId":375725,"journal":{"name":"SPGMI: Capital IQ Data (Topic)","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116704094","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Inferring Latent Social Networks from Stock Holdings","authors":"Harrison G. Hong, Jiangmin Xu","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2634306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2634306","url":null,"abstract":"We infer the latent social networks of investors using data on their stock holdings. We map linkages to portfolio weights using a portfolio-choice model. The precision of an investor’s private signal about firm value is assumed to increase with his connections in the city where the firm is headquartered. Using money-manager data, we find that managerial linkages to a city are overly dispersed relative to the Erdos–Renyi model of i.i.d. connections. Managers at the tail of this distribution with non-i.i.d. linkages have more university alumni in that city. Their stock holdings there outperform their holdings in other cities.","PeriodicalId":375725,"journal":{"name":"SPGMI: Capital IQ Data (Topic)","volume":"77 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121846141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}