In this study, we propose "SIX" as a new forward-looking index of negative market skew derived from state-preference pricing. Specifically, SIX is a forecast of the ratio of lower to upper partial moment volatility over a 30-day horizon, for SPX market returns. Using SPX options data from 1996...

Our paper investigates the timing of the inception of commodity trading advisors and the relationship between their fund flows and performance. Our results show that commodity trading advisor industry performance has, over the long-run (short-run), a positive (negative) effect on new commodity...

This paper uses a survey of Australian Corporate Treasurers to shed light on the gap between the theory and practice of corporate finance in Australia. Seven areas are examined: capital structure, payout policy, cash holdings, initial public offerings, seasoned equity offering, mergers and...

This paper develops a long-short portfolio construction technique that captures the fundamentals of backwardation and contango and simultaneously deviates from the equal-weighting scheme traditionally employed in the commodity literature. We find that the sophisticated weighting schemes based on...

We investigate the impact of scheduled government announcements relating to six different macroeconomic variables on the risk and return of three major US financial markets. Our results suggest that these markets do not respond in any meaningful way, to the act of releasing information by the...

Using a matched sample design where companies are matched by size and industry from Australian, Canadian and US capital markets, we investigate whether capital market integration varies across industries. The tests are conducted in the Capital Asset Pricing Model and multi-factor pricing...

This paper proposes and tests a new hypothesis concerning the price impact of option introductions on the underlying asset. In contrast to earlier research that has failed to explain the flipping of positive excess returns to negative excess returns on the listing date over the past thirty years...

We investigate the unconditional and conditional gold betas of four country-based gold industry portfolios. First, we document the similarity of unconditional gold betas across countries. Second, we find that the factors affecting conditional gold betas are different in the Australian and South...

This paper utilizes Frank Russell style portfolios to create useful proxies for the Fama and French (1993) factors. The proxy-mimicking portfolios are shown to represent a pervasive source of exposure across U.S. industry portfolios and to generally possess similar properties to those utilized...

In this article, we investigate the impact of the introduction of stock index futures trading on the daily returns seasonality of the underlying index for seven national markets. It has been previously argued that the introduction of futures trading should lead to reduced seasonality of mean...