Narrow Results

In this paper we investigate the behavior of the market around dividend payment dates. Our empirical analysis, based on a Bayesian approach applied to Italian stock data, confirms the presence of abnormal returns at the ex-dividend date, as already documented in the literature for other markets. Calibrating a suitable model introduced in [1] to take care of the additional randomness pertubing the market around dividend payment dates, we investigate the effects on the derivative evaluation. Looking at the NoArbitrage prices of American call options written on some Italian dividend-paying stock and comparing them with the marketed prices, we conclude that the effect of this additional randomness can be neglected.

We propose a solution to the closed-end fund puzzle in financial markets without a free lunch with vanishing risk. Our results are consistent with both the time-series and the cross-sectional aspect of the closed-end fund puzzle. It turns out that a closed-end fund cannot exist if the fund manager is supposed to receive a fee although he is not able to find mispriced assets in the market. By contrast, a premium can typically be observed at the initial public offering because the fund manager has access to information that enables him to create a dominant strategy. As soon as this weak arbitrage opportunity evaporates, a premium can no longer occur. The reason why a premium quickly turns into a discount might be that the fund manager stops applying a superior trading strategy at some point in time. Another possibility is that abnormal profits are transient in a competitive financial market. In any case, when the fund manager is no longer willing or able to maintain a superior strategy, the fund must trade at a discount in order to compensate for his management fee.

In a frictionless and competitive economy, where high frequency (HF) traders possess no market power, this paper characterizes necessary and sufficient conditions on the price process and information sets for HF traders to earn abnormal trading profits. Two sufficient conditions shown to generate abnormal returns are that HF trading enables the observation of short-term price momentum/reversals, not otherwise visible, or it enables the observation of signals correlated to future price movements. The welfare considerations of the existence of such abnormal trading profits are also discussed.

The importance of market efficiency to derivative pricing is not well understood. The purpose of this paper is to explain this connection using the third fundamental theorem of asset pricing. The third fundamental theorem of asset pricing characterizes the conditions under which an equivalent martingale probability measure exists in an economy. Noting that the existence of an equivalent martingale probability measure is both necessary and sufficient for the market being informationally efficient, we prove that in a complete market, the market being efficient is both necessary and sufficient for the validity of the risk neutral valuation methodology.