We investigate the determinants and performance implications of cash holdings for a large sample of actively-managed equity funds domiciled in the European Union (EU). In line with recent evidence from the US, we observe that cash holdings are strongly influenced by a fund's fee structure, past...

We analyze whether newspaper content can predict aggregate future stock returns. Our study is based on articles published in the Handelsblatt, a leading German financial newspaper, from July 1989 to March 2011. We summarize newspaper content in a systematic way by constructing word-count indices...

Taking advantage of a trades-and-quotes high-frequency database, we document the main stylized facts and dynamic properties of spot precious metals, i.e. gold, silver, palladium, and platinum. We analyze the behaviors of spot prices, returns, volume, and selected liquidity measures. We find...

This paper proposes a risk-based explanation of the momentum anomaly on equity markets. Regressing the momentum strategy return on the return of a self-financing portfolio going long (short) in stocks with high (low) crash sensitivity in the USA from 1963 to 2012 reduces the momentum effect from...

In this paper, we investigate the performance persistence of hedge funds over time horizons between 6 and 36 months based on a merged sample from the Lipper/TASS and CISDM databases for the time period from 1994 to 2008. Unlike previous literature, we use a panel probit regression approach to...

This paper investigates the alpha generation of the hedge fund industry based on a recent sample compiled from the Lipper/TASS database covering the time period from January 1994 to September 2008. We find a positive average hedge fund alpha in the cross-section for the majority of strategies...

We shed light on computational challenges when fitting the Nelson-Siegel, Bliss and Svensson parsimonious yield curve models to observed US Treasury securities with maturities up to 30 years. As model parameters have a specific financial interpretation, the stability of their estimated values...

This paper identifies active addresses-to-network value as an additional common risk factor in the returns on cryptoassets. Investigating 652 cryptoassets, I find anomalous returns that increase with active addresses-to-network value ratio, a proxy for the value anomaly. Cryptoassets with a high...

We investigate whether value-relevant foreign information only gradually dilutes into stock prices of multinational firms worldwide. Using an international sample of firms from 22 developed countries, we find that a portfolio strategy based on firms' foreign sales information yields future...

We conduct a comprehensive asset pricing analysis for the U.S. property/liability insurance industry using monthly data from 1988 to 2015. We find that state-of-the-art models such as the Fama and French (2015) five-factor model cannot explain the returns of property/liability insurance stocks...