Anomalies In Finance

Investment pioneer Len Zacks presents the latest academic research on how to beat the market using equity anomalies The Handbook of Equity Market Anomalies organizes and summarizes research carried out by hundreds of finance and accounting professors over the last twenty years to identify and measure equity market inefficiencies and provides self-directed individual investors with a framework for incorporating the results of this research into their own investment processes. Edited by Len Zacks, CEO of Zacks Investment Research, and written by leading professors who have performed groundbreaking research on specific anomalies, this book succinctly summarizes the most important anomalies that savvy investors have used for decades to beat the market. Some of the anomalies addressed include the accrual anomaly, net stock anomalies, fundamental anomalies, estimate revisions, changes in and levels of broker recommendations, earnings-per-share surprises, insider trading, price momentum and technical analysis, value and size anomalies, and several seasonal anomalies. This reliable resource also provides insights on how to best use the various anomalies in both market neutral and in long investor portfolios. A treasure trove of investment research and wisdom, the book will save you literally thousands of hours by distilling the essence of twenty years of academic research into eleven clear chapters and providing the framework and conviction to develop market-beating strategies. Strips the academic jargon from the research and highlights the actual returns generated by the anomalies, and documented in the academic literature Provides a theoretical framework within which to understand the concepts of risk adjusted returns and market inefficiencies Anomalies are selected by Len Zacks, a pioneer in the field of investing As the founder of Zacks Investment Research, Len Zacks pioneered the concept of the earnings-per-share surprise in 1982 and developed the Zacks Rank, one of the first anomaly-based stock selection tools. Today, his firm manages U.S. equities for individual and institutional investors and provides investment software and investment data to all types of investors. Now, with his new book, he shows you what it takes to build a quant process to outperform an index based on academically documented market inefficiencies and anomalies.

This book discusses calendar or seasonal anomalies in worldwide equity markets as well as arbitrage and risk arbitrage. A complete update of US anomalies such as the January turn-of-the year, turn-of-the-month, January barometer, sell in May and go away, holidays, days of the week, options expiry and other effects is given concentrating on the futures markets where these anomalies can be easily applied. Other effects that lend themselves to modified buy and hold cash strategies include the presidential election and factor models based on fundamental anomalies. The ideas have been used successfully by the author in personal and managed accounts and hedge funds.

Essay from the year 2014 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 16 (1,7), University of St Andrews (School of Management), course: Research Methods for Finance and Management, language: English, abstract: The size effect is a market anomaly in asset pricing according to the market efficiency theory. According to the current body of research, market anomalies arise either because of inefficiencies in the market or the underlying pricing model must be flawed. Anomalies in the financial markets are typically discovered form empirical tests. These tests usually rely jointly on one null hypothesis H0= markets are efficient AND they perform according to a specified equilibrium model (usually CAPM). Thus, if the empirical study rejects the H0, the reason could either be due to market inefficiency or due to the incorrect model. Market efficiency theory says that the price of an asset fully reflects all current information and is not predictable (Fama 1970). Fama (1997) states that market anomalies, even long‐term anomalies, are not an indicator for market inefficiencies due to the reason that they randomly split between “underreaction and overreaction, (so) they are consistent with market efficiency” (p. 284), they happen by chance and it is always possible to beat the market by chance. This essay will give an overview of the literature of the size effect and will stress the key theories, empirical methods and findings, as well as the existing body of research about this particular anomaly.

The Efficient Market Hypothesis believes that it is impossible for an investor to outperform the market because all available information is already built into stock prices. However, some anomalies could persist in stock markets while some other anomalies could appear, disappear and re-appear again without any warning. A Special Issue on "Efficiency and Anomalies in Stock Markets" will be devoted to advancements in the theoretical development of market efficiency and anomaly in the Stock Market, as well as applications in Stock Market efficiency and anomalies.

The efficient markets hypothesis has been the central proposition in finance for nearly thirty years. It states that securities prices in financial markets must equal fundamental values, either because all investors are rational or because arbitrage eliminates pricing anomalies. This book describes an alternative approach to the study of financial markets: behavioral finance. This approach starts with an observation that the assumptions of investor rationality and perfect arbitrage are overwhelmingly contradicted by both psychological and institutional evidence. In actual financial markets, less than fully rational investors trade against arbitrageurs whose resources are limited by risk aversion, short horizons, and agency problems. The book presents and empirically evaluates models of such inefficient markets. Behavioral finance models both explain the available financial data better than does the efficient markets hypothesis and generate new empirical predictions. These models can account for such anomalies as the superior performance of value stocks, the closed end fund puzzle, the high returns on stocks included in market indices, the persistence of stock price bubbles, and even the collapse of several well-known hedge funds in 1998. By summarizing and expanding the research in behavioral finance, the book builds a new theoretical and empirical foundation for the economic analysis of real-world markets.

In an efficient market, all stocks should be valued at a price that is consistent with available information. But as financial expert Singal points out, there are circumstances under which certain stocks sell at a price higher or lower than the right price. Here he discusses ten such anomalous prices and shows how investors might--or might not--be able to exploit these situations for profit.

Why do small caps achieve higher risk-adjusted yields than large caps? Why do stock prices increase or decrease upon an index entry respectively deletion? Why does January records higher yields than the remaining months of the year? These as well as other observed capital market anomalies or phenomena could be insufficiently explained by the classical capital market theory, which proceeds on the assumptions that all correspondent information are reflected in the stock prices, all negative effects are directly balanced on the market level and that efficiency of arbitrage principle exists as well as that all market participants act rationally (i.e. optimizing their benefits in the sense of the homo economicus). This motivated some economists and psychologists to include behavioural scientific findings in their research of the influences on the formation of prices on the capital market. In the 1980s the theory of Behavioural Finance was developed, which challenges the homo economicus. Researchers came to the conclusion that humans are not only acting rational, but that they are also influenced by emotions, knowledge and experiences. This new scientific behavioural oriented theory, which is today a separate branch of research, contradicts the classical capital market theory and supplies explanations for the observed phenomena on the capital market. The aim of this book is to demonstrate how human behaviour influences the development on the capital market and how Behavioural Finance serves as an explanation for the empirically observed capital market anomalies. This book begins with the introduction of the theoretical basis of Behavioural Finance and its emergence; tasks as well as aims will be explained in detail. Subsequently, human's heuristics as well as anomalies and irrationalities in their decision making process will be demonstrated. In the third chapter, the capital market anomalies or phenomena as well as the irrational and behavioural reasons for their existen

The Korean stock market, ranked 11th in the world in terms of market capitalization of stocks in 2017, is a globalized market. Foreign investors hold close to one-third of stocks listed on the Korea Exchange (KRX) as of May 2017 (in terms of market capitalization). The US and the UK alone account for almost 50% of foreign ownership in the KRX.Research or information on the Korean stock market, however, is not well known to the domestic or the global investment communities. There are minimal investment studies that deal with practical issues from the perspective of investment analysts. This volume bridges the academic and investment communities by providing analyses of the Korean stock market that contain practical values.This book comprehensively analyzes anomalies in the Korean stock market, including time series anomalies such as the January effect, cross-sectional anomalies such as the size effect and book-to-market effect, and anomalies related to corporate events. The authors also investigate sales revenue, profitability, valuation (M/B ratio), and the financial risk of listed companies in the Korean stock market at both the sectoral level and industrial level.As the study uses a comprehensive data set and long-term sample period, readers can benefit from consistent and comparable empirical results.

Investment Styles, Market Anomalies, and Global Stock Selection focuses on global factor-return relationships for institutional equity management and style analysis. The author uses a new global factor-return equity database, defined in 1990 and allowed to evolve over time, that was designed to avoid incurring some of the common critiques of market anomaly studies. The framework and data the author presents are intended to enhance the investor/manager's understanding of vital global equity investment issues.