This paper documents a stark periodicity in intraday volume and in the number of trades. We find activity in both variables spikes by about 20% at regular intervals of 5 or 10min throughout the trading day. We speculate this activity is either the result of algorithmic trading influenced by...

Futures market officials are confronted with the difficult task of setting appropriate margin levels that must balance the costs of trader default and the benefits of increased market liquidity. One way to guard against default is prudent margin setting practices designed to protect futures...

The paper explores issues related to time-varying global equity market integration from a Finnish perspective. Finland is an interesting market since profound economic changes and financial deregulation have taken place since the mid-1980s. Using Finnish firm size ranked portfolios and a...

In this paper we analyze the results from a survey among all publicly listed Nordic firms on their dividend payout policy. The results show that 72% of the Nordic companies have a specified dividend policy. Larger and more profitable companies are more likely to have a defined dividend policy in...

Using new monthly series collected together for the first time for Finland, this paper analyses the performance and development of the Finnish equity and money markets as well as the equity premium and inflation from 1912 to 2009. The series are analyzed and compared to similar series from...