Share Issuance and Factor Timing

Robin  Greenwood; Samuel G. Hanson

Article | Journal of Finance | April 2012

Share Issuance and Factor Timing

Abstract

We show that characteristics of stock issuers can be used to forecast important common factors in stocks' returns such as those associated with book-to-market, size, and industry. Specifically, we use differences between the attributes of stock issuers and repurchasers to forecast characteristic-related factor returns. For example, we show that large firms underperform following years when issuing firms are large relative to repurchasing firms. While our strongest results are for portfolios based on book-to-market, size (i.e., we forecast the HML and SMB factors), and industry, our approach is also useful for forecasting factor returns associated with distress, payout policy, and profitability.

Keywords: Investment Portfolio; Stock Shares; Forecasting and Prediction; Investment Return; Policy; Profit;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Greenwood, Robin, and Samuel G. Hanson. "Share Issuance and Factor Timing." Journal of Finance 67, no. 2 (April 2012): 761–798. (Internet Appendix Here.)

We evaluate Eugene Fama's claim that stock prices do not exhibit price bubbles. Based on U.S. industry returns 1926–2014 and international sector returns 1985–2014, we present four findings: (1) Fama is correct in that a sharp price increase of an industry portfolio does not, on average, predict unusually low returns going forward; (2) such sharp price increases predict a substantially heightened probability of a crash; (3) attributes of the price run-up, including volatility, turnover, issuance, and the price path of the run-up, can all help forecast an eventual crash and future returns; and (4) some of these characteristics can help investors earn superior returns by timing the bubble. Results hold similarly in U.S. and international samples.

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Share Issuance and Factor Timing

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