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;

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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 develop a model of government portfolio choice in which a benevolent government chooses the scale of risky projects in the presence of market failures and tax distortions. These two frictions generate motives to manage social risk and fiscal risk. Social risk management makes attractive programs that ameliorate market failures in bad economic times. Fiscal risk management makes unattractive programs that entail large government outlays at times when other programs in the government's portfolio also require large outlays. We characterize the determinants of social and fiscal risk and argue that these two risk management motives often conflict. Using the model, we explore how the attractiveness of different financial stability programs varies with the government's fiscal burden and with characteristics of the economy.

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Share Issuance and Factor Timing

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