Ana-Maria Fuertes

• BSc Eng, MSc Eng, PhD Econ
• Professor at City, University of London

This paper sheds light on the negative pricing of the May 2020 WTI futures contract (CLK20) on April 20, 2020. The super contango of early 2020, triggered by COVID-19 lockdowns and geopolitical tensions, incentivized cash and carry (C&C) traders to be long CLK20 and short distant contracts, while simultaneously booking storage at Cushing. Our inves...

This paper investigates the predictive content of risk‐neutral skewness (RNSK) for the dynamics of commodity futures prices. A trading strategy that buys futures with positive RNSK and sells futures with negative RNSK generates a significant excess return. Unlike traditional commodity risk factors' signals, the positive return generated from the RN...

This paper employs quiet-period media tone as a proxy for investor sentiment in the IPO market and investigates its impact on primary-market demand and on short and long-run IPO performance. Using a sample of 1,068 book-built IPOs, it finds that pre-IPO quiet period media pessimism lowers primary-market demand for both retail and institutional inve...

This paper studies the energy futures risk premia that can be extracted through long-short portfolios that exploit heterogeneities across contracts as regards various characteristics or signals and integrations thereof. Investors can earn a sizeable premium of about 8% and 12% per annum by exploiting the energy futures contract risk associated with...

This paper documents a negative cross-transmission of bank-idiosyncratic credit risk events to the equity value of peers comprising other banks, insurance and real estate firms inter alia. Large jumps in the idiosyncratic component of bank CDS spreads significantly reduce the equity value of peers, particularly on the event day. The negative extern...

We examine the commodity futures pricing role of active attention to weather, disease, geopolitical or economic threats or “hazard fear” as proxied by the volume of internet searches by 149 query terms. A long-short portfolio strategy that sorts the cross-section of commodity futures contracts according to a hazard fear signal captures a significan...

The paper investigates the information content of speculative pressure across futures classes. Long‐short portfolios of futures contracts sorted by speculative pressure capture a significant premium in commodity, currency, and equity markets but not in fixed income markets. Exposure to commodity, currency, and equity index futures’ speculative pres...

The portfolio-rebalancing theory of Hau and Rey (2006) yields the uncovered equity parity (UEP) prediction that local-currency equity return appreciation is offset by currency depreciation. Vector autoregressive model estimation and tests for eight Asian emerging markets using daily data reveal instead a positive nexus between equity returns and cu...

The paper provides a comprehensive appraisal of style-integration methods in equity index, fixed income, currency, and commodity futures markets. We confront the naïve equal-weight integration (EWI) method with a host of ‘sophisticated’ style-integrations that derive the style exposures using past data according to utility maximization, style rotat...

This paper examines the quarter-ahead out-of-sample predictability of Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines and Turkey credit spreads before and after the Lehman Brothers’ default. A model based on the country-specific credit spread curve factors predicts no better than the random walk and slope regression benchmarks. Model extensions with the global yie...

This article studies the relation between the skewness of commodity futures returns and expected returns. A trading strategy that takes long positions in commodity futures with the most negative skew and shorts those with the most positive skew generates significant excess returns that remain after controlling for exposure to well-known risk factor...

Theoretical credit risk models à la Merton (1974) predict a non-linear negative link between the default likelihood and asset value of a firm. This motivates us to propose a flexible empirical Markov-switching bivariate copula that allows for distinct time-varying dependence between credit default swap (CDS) spreads and equity prices in “crisis” an...

Are Islamic banks inherently more stable than conventional banks? We address this question by applying a survival analysis based on the Cox proportional hazard model to a comprehensive sample of 421 banks in 20 Middle and Far Eastern countries from 1995 to 2010. By comparing the failure risk for both bank types, we find that Islamic banks have a si...

This paper investigates the quarter-ahead predictability of Brazil, Mexico, Philippines and Turkey credit spreads for short and long maturity bonds during two separate periods preceding and following the Lehman Brothers' default. A model based on the current country-specific credit spread curve predicts no better than the random walk and slope regr...

This paper investigates the information content of the ex post overnight return for one-day-ahead equity Value-at-Risk (VaR) forecasting. To do so, we deploy a univariate VaR modeling approach that constructs the forecast at market open and, accordingly, exploits the available overnight close-to-open price variation. The benchmark is the bivariate...

We analyse exchange rate pass-through into import prices for a large group of 33 emerging and developed economies from 1980, quarter 1, to 2010, quarter 4. Our error correction models permit asymmetric pass-through for currency appreciations and depreciations over three horizons of interest: on impact, in the short run and in the long run. We find...

This paper examines the role played by cross-border equity, bond and bank credit flows versus international trade in the transmission of the U.S. financial crisis to equity markets worldwide. We estimate vector autoregressive models with exogenous global factors using monthly data on 36 emerging and developed countries. The results from an eclectic...

The increasing availability of intraday financial data has led to improvements in daily volatility forecasting through the use of long-memory models of realized volatility. This paper demonstrates the merit of the non-parametric nearest neighbor (NN) approach for S&P 100 realized variance forecasting. The NN approach is appealing a priori because,...

This article investigates the relationship between expected returns and past idiosyncratic volatility in commodity futures markets. Measuring the idiosyncratic volatility of 27 commodity futures contracts with traditional pricing models that fail to account for backwardation and contango leads to the puzzling finding that idiosyncratic volatility i...

This article shows that commodity portfolios that capture the backwardation and contango phases exhibit in-sample and out-of-sample predictive power for the first two moments of the distribution of long-horizon aggregate equity market returns, and for the business cycle. It also demonstrates that a pricing model based on the corresponding backwarda...

Paul De Grauwe’s Eurozone fragility hypothesis states that sovereign debt markets in a monetary union without a lender-of-last-resort are vulnerable to self-fulfilling dynamics fuelled by pessimistic investor sentiment that can trigger default. We test this contention by applying an eclectic methodology to a two-year window around Mario Draghi’s “w...

This article studies the relationship between the skewness of commodity futures returns and expected returns. A trading strategy that takes long positions in commodity futures with the most negative skew and shorts those with the most positive skew generates significant excess returns that remain after controlling for exposure to well-known risk fa...

This paper investigates the relative importance of hot money in bank credit and portfolio flows from the US to 18 emerging markets over the period 1988-2012.•We deploy state-space models à la Kalman filter to identify the unobserved hot money as the temporary component of each type of flow.•The analysis reveals that the importance of hot money rela...

This article presents a comprehensive analysis of the relative ability of three information sets ---daily trading volume, intraday returns and overnight returns --- to predict equity volatility. We investigate the extent to which statistical accuracy of one-day-ahead forecasts translates into economic gains for technical traders. Various profitabil...

This paper proposes a commodity-based specification of the Intertemporal CAPM (ICAPM) that uses state variables grounded on the theories of storage and hedging pressure. Accordingly, factor-mimicking portfolios are formed by taking long positions in backwardated contracts and short positions in contangoed contracts according to either term structur...

The authors test Paul De Grauwe’s eurozone fragility hypothesis using a time window around the announcement of the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) programme. The findings reveal significant contagion from Spain to other eurozone countries, but solely during the pre-announcement period. The authors conclude that in this case the OMT programme h...

This paper studies the response of import prices to exchange rate shocks in a framework that accommodates asymmetry both in the short-run dynamics and in the long-run equilib-rium relationship. Estimation of asymmetric single equation error correction models for 33 countries over the period 1980 to 2010 reveals stronger pass-through of depreciation...

Basel III seeks to improve the financial sector's resilience to stress scenarios which calls for a reassessment of banks' credit risk models and, particularly, of their dependence on business cy-cles. This paper advocates a Mixture of Markov Chains (MMC) model to account for stochastic business cycle effects in credit rating migration risk. The MMC...

We propose a flexible dynamic copula with Markov-switching to model the dependence between the iTraxx Europe CDS market and the underlying equity market. The model is able to reproduce extreme return clustering and asymmetry by allowing for two time-varying dependence regimes, low or “normal” and high or “crash”, both at the centre and tails of the...

This paper demonstrates that nearest neighbor (NN) volatility predictions can enhance the profitability of model-based predictions. The theoretical motivation for the NN approach is that it can flexibly capture complex dynamic dependencies in a way that mitigates model misspecification and parameter estimation uncertainty. As an empirical motivatio...

This study investigates the practical importance of several VaR modeling and forecasting issues in the context of intraday stock returns. Value-at-Risk (VaR) predictions obtained from daily GARCH models extended with additional information such as the realized volatility and squared overnight returns, are confronted with those from ARFIMA realized...

A jump robust positive semidefinite rank-based estimator for the daily covariance matrix based on high-frequency intraday returns is proposed. It disentangles covariance estimation into variance and correlation components. This allows us to account for ...

This paper studies the relationship between idiosyncratic volatility and expected returns in commodity futures markets. Measuring idiosyncratic volatility relative to traditional pricing models that fail to account for backwardation and contango leads to the puzzling conclusion that idiosyncratic volatility is negatively priced. In sharp contrast,...

This article formally compares two traditional long-only commodity indices, S&P-GSCI and DJ-UBSCI, with their enhanced versions that exploit signals based on contract maturity, momentum and term structure. The enhanced indices are found to be useful for tactical asset allocation. With alphas ranging from 2.77% to 5.49% per annum, the maturity-enhan...

A large sample of developed and emerging economies is utilized to investigate import exchange rate pass-through. Panel models reveal that various economic aspects of the destination country can explain about one third of the total variation in pass-through elasticities and the remaining variation comes largely in the form of unobserved country-spec...

This study compares the hazard of failure in Islamic and conventional commercial banks using survival models. The sample consists of 421 banks from 20 Middle and Far Eastern countries observed during the 1995 to 2010 period. The conditioning variables are of both bank-level and country-level type. The analysis suggests that Islamic banks have lower...

This study investigates the practical importance of several VaR modeling and forecasting issues in the context of intraday stock returns. Value-at-Risk (VaR) predictions obtained from daily GARCH models extended with additional information such as the realized volatility and squared overnight returns, are confronted with those from ARFIMA realized...

This article proposes a new bivariate modeling approach for setting daily equity-trading risk limits using high-frequency data. We construct one-day-ahead Value-at-Risk forecasts by taking into account the different dynamics of the overnight and daytime return processes and their covariance. The covariance is motivated by market microstructure effe...

This paper studies the link between individual investors’ portfolio diversification levels and various personal traits that proxy informational advantages and overconfidence. The analysis is based on objective data from the largest Turkish brokerage house tracking 59,951 individual investors’ accounts with a total of 3,248,654 million transactions...

This paper assesses the relation between bank capital ratios and lending rates for the 8 largest UK banks over the period 1998-2011. Our paper differs from previous literature in that we employ a dynamic error correction specification and a unique regulatory database to disentangle long- and short-run effects. There is no long-run link in pre-crisi...

We make use of quantile regression theory to obtain a combination of individual potentially-biased VaR forecasts that is optimal because it meets by construction ex post the correct out-of-sample conditional coverage criterion. This enables a Wald-type conditional quantile forecast encompassing test for any finite set of competing (semi/non)paramet...

This article demonstrates that momentum, term structure and idiosyncratic volatility signals in commodity futures markets are not overlapping which motivates the design of a new triple-screen strategy. Over the period between January 1985 and August 2011, systematically buying contracts with high past performance, high roll-yield and low idiosyncra...

A large sample of developed and emerging economies is utilized to investigate import pass-through. Panel models reveal that various economic aspects of the destination country can explain about one third of the total variation in pass-through elasticities and the remaining variation comes largely in the form of unobserved country-specific effects....

This paper examines the long-run and short run components of the relationship between bank capital and intermediation margins. This is an important element of assessments of the macroeconomic impact of higher prudential standards, but empirical evidence on the direction and magnitude of the relationship is scarce and contradictory. We argue that de...

This paper examines the combined role of momentum and term structure signals for the design of profitable trading strategies in commodity futures markets. With significant annualized alphas of 10.14% and 12.66%, respectively, the momentum and term structure strategies appear profitable when implemented individually. With an abnormal return of 21.02...

Traditionally economic panels had large number of cross-section units and relatively few time periods and econometric methods were developed for such ‘large N small T’ data. More recently panels with observations for a large numbers of time periods have become available on cross-section units like firms, industries, regions or countries. These note...

This paper explores the interest rate transmission mechanism using a broad disaggregated sample of UK deposit and credit products. For a large proportion of rates the adjustment speed is time-varying, switching among four regimes according to the direction of the policy rate and its effect on the disequilibrium gap. In general, this sign asymmetry...

This article examines the role of nonnormality risks in explaining the momentum puzzle of equity returns. It shows that momentum profits are not normally distributed and, relatedly, that the momentum profitability is partly a compensation for systematic negative skewness risk in line with market efficiency. This finding is pervasive across nine tra...

Several recent studies advocate the use of nonparametric estimators of daily price variability that exploit intraday information. This paper compares four such estimators, realised volatility, realised range, realised power variation and realised bipower variation, by examining their in-sample distributional properties and out-of-sample forecast ra...

This paper differentiates itself from the existing literature by testing for heterogeneities in the interest rate transmission mechanism using a large sample of 662 monthly retail rate histories (1993-2004) on seven key deposit and loan products. Error correction models are estimated to analyse the long-run pass-through, the long-run mark-up and th...

This paper explores the interest rate transmission mechanism using a broad disaggregated sample of UK deposit and credit products. For a large proportion of rates the adjustment speed is time-varying, switching among four regimes according to the direction of the policy rate and its effect on the disequilibrium gap. In general, this sign asymmetry...

Panel estimators can provide consistent measures of a long-run average parameter even if the individual regressions are spurious. However, the t-test on this parameter is fraught with problems because the limit distribution of the test statistic is non-standard and rather complicated, particularly in panels with mixed (non-)stationary errors. A sie...

This paper explores the interest rate transmission mechanism on the basis of a large disaggregated sample of British monthly deposit and loan rates 1993-2005 for seven key products. The focus is on the adjustment speed towards the long run equilibrium rate. A sizeable proportion of UK deposits and credit products are found to have a time-varying ad...

This paper investigates the finite-sample behaviour of sovereign credit migration estimators and analyzes the properties of the rating process. Through bootstrap simulations, we compare a discrete multinomial estimator and two continuous hazard rate methods which differ in that one neglects time-heterogeneity in the rating process whereas the other...

Sovereign default models that differ in their treatment of unobservable country, regional and time heterogeneities are systematically compared. The analysis is based on annual data over the 1983–2002 period for 96 developing economies. Inference-based criteria and parameter plausibility overwhelmingly favour more complex models that allow the link...

This paper is concerned with the short-term price behaviour of closed-end funds following eight large market-wide shocks. The findings, based on a sample of 63 funds traded continuously on the London Stock Exchange, indicate that fund prices overreact with respect to net asset values. The speed of reversion in mean discounts following market-wide s...

This paper sheds light on US stock price deviations from fundamentals by analyzing the time-series dynamics of post-1870 S&P valuation ratios. It employs a non-linear, two-regime framework that allows for different behavior over phases of the stock market cycle. Persistence in the ratios implies prolonged price deviations from fundamentals stemming...

Recently, the large T panel literature has emphasized unobserved, time-varying heterogeneity that may stem from omitted common variables or global shocks that affect each individual unit differently. These latent common factors induce cross-section dependence and may lead to inconsistent regression coefficient estimates if they are correlated with...

This paper uses threshold autoregressions to characterize asymmetries in adjustment dynamics and develops likelihood ratio tests to detect them. A robust bootstrap technique is proposed to circumvent the problem that the asymptotic distribution of the test statistics is non-standard. Monte Carlo simulations show that the bootstrap tests are correct...

This paper tackles the design of an optimal early warning system (EWS) for sovereign default from two distinct angles: the choice of the econometric methodology and the evaluation of the EWS itself. It compares K-means clustering of macrodata, a logit regression for macrodata, a logit regression for credit ratings, and the combined forecasts from a...

This paper compares the finite-sample properties of sovereign credit migration estimators and investi-gates the presence of non-Markov effects in the rating process. To this end, we evaluate the conventional discrete multinomial estimator against two continuous hazard rate methods that differ in the treatment of time-homogeneity. Bootstrap simulati...

We review the time series econometrics package TSMod. The new features in TSMod 4.03, released in April 2004, are described and its potential for teaching is analysed. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

We implement novel tests of general relative purchasing power parity (PPP), defined as a long-run unit elasticity of the nominal exchange rate with respect to relative national prices, allowing for potentially permanent real exchange rate shocks. The finite-sample properties of the estimators used are analyzed through Monte Carlo analysis, allowing...

This paper compares rival sovereign default models that differ in how country-, region- and time-specific effects are treated. The quality of the models is gauged using inference-based criteria and the plausibility of estimates. An out-of-sample forecast evaluation framework is deployed based on statistical- and economic-loss functions, naive bench...

This paper considers three different approaches - K-means clustering and logit regressions based on macrovariables or credit ratings - to develop an Early Warning System for sovereign default. The data pertain to 75 emerging and developing countries. The optimal choice of key elements, such as the logit cut-off probability and the number of cluster...

Recently, the large T panel literature has emphasized unobserved, time-varying heterogeneity that may stem from omitted common variables or global shocks that affect each individual unit differently. These latent common factors induce cross-section dependence and may lead to inconsistent regression coefficient estimates if they are correlated with...

Empirical studies have had difficulty in establishing the long-run relationship between real exchange rates and real yield differentials predicted by sticky price exchange rate models. We revisit this issue in a nonstationary panel regression framework. This facilitates estimation of a long-run parameter even when the underlying relation-ship is su...

A country's intertemporal budget constraint implies current account stationarity or that its saving and investment rates should cointegrate. However, such behaviour may not pertain in finite sample spans where the current account could be subject to persistent shocks. Accordingly, this paper reconsiders the Feldstein-Horioka puzzle for a panel of 1...

This paper investigates the short-term behaviour of closed-end funds following large price shocks for a panel of 63 UK-traded funds. Our findings suggest that for the eight market-wide shocks, significant overreaction occurs. The level of overreaction is unrelated to the size of the funds. Both the small and difficult-to-arbitrage fund groups take...

We divide the time series of aggregate valuation into bull and bear market phases to test for momentum and reversal, respectively. Our results are consistent with price-earnings and price-dividends displaying continuation by drifting upwards in bull markets irrespective of fundamentals. Such persistence can be explained by market sentiment but not...

This paper assesses the relative merits of panel time series models in forecasting sovereign default. It explores the contentious issue of whether controlling for time-series and country heterogeneity is important in forecasting emerging market default. For this purpose, it uses conventional inference methods alongside forecasting performance stati...

This paper utilizes two different classification techniques to explore issues in the development of an early warning system for sovereign default. Specifically, the paper develops K-means clustering and logit models to illustrate how the optimal choice of parameters, such as assignment rule of fitted observations to binary groups depend on the deci...

This paper examines whether electoral motives and government ideology influence short-term economic performance. I employ data on annual GDP growth in 21 OECD countries over the 1951-2006 period and provide a battery of empirical tests. In countries with two-party systems GDP growth is boosted before elections and, under leftwing governments, in th...

Although the real exchange rate-real interest rate (RERI) relationship is central to most open economy macroeconomic models, empirical support for the relationship is generally found to be rather weak. In this paper we re-investigate the RERI relationship using bilateral US real exchange rate data spanning the period 1978-2007. Instead of testing o...

We employ a two-regime, nonlinear model and more than a century of data to investigate the time series behavior of the S&P Composite price-dividends and price-earnings ratios. On average, the ratios display continuation fuelled by investor sentiment in bull markets but they adjust toward their long run equilibrium levels in bear markets. Impulse re...

This paper analyses the contribution of various numerical approaches to making the estimation of threshold autoregressive time series more efficient. It relies on the computational advantages of QR factorizations and proposes Givens transformations to update these factors for sequential LS problems. By showing that the residual sum of squares is a...