Si Cheng

University of Amsterdam | UVA · Amsterdam Business School

This paper develops a comprehensive framework to address uncertainty about the correct factor model. Asset pricing inferences draw on a composite model that integrates over competing factor models weighted by posterior probabilities. Evidence shows that unconditional models record near‐zero probabilities, while postearnings announcement drift, qual...

This paper analyzes the asset pricing and portfolio implications of an important barrier to sustainable investing: uncertainty about the corporate ESG profile. In equilibrium, the market premium increases and demand for stocks declines under ESG uncertainty. In addition, the CAPM alpha and effective beta both rise with ESG uncertainty and the negat...

This paper shows that investments based on deep learning signals extract profitability from difficult-to-arbitrage stocks and during high limits-to-arbitrage market states. In particular, excluding microcaps, distressed stocks, or episodes of high market volatility considerably attenuates profitability. Machine learning-based performance further de...

Fund flows are more correlated among funds with similar investment horizon, consistent with correlated demand for liquidity. We find that stocks held by institutions with more heterogeneous investment horizon are more liquid and have lower volatility of liquidity. Identification tests confirm that the improvement in stock liquidity holds when the i...

Mutual fund families set and report values of their private startup holdings, which affect the fund net asset value (NAV) at which investors buy/sell fund shares. We test three hypotheses related to the valuation practice: (i) information cost/access, (ii) litigation risk, and (iii) strategic NAV management. Consistent with (i), families with large...

This paper analyzes the asset pricing and portfolio implications of an important barrier to sustainable investing---uncertainty about the corporate ESG profile. In equilibrium, the market premium increases and demand for stocks declines under ESG uncertainty. In addition, the CAPM alpha and effective beta both rise with ESG uncertainty and the nega...

We propose a new measure of fund investment skill, active fund overpricing (AFO), encapsulating the fund’s active share of investments, the direction of fund active bets with regard to mispriced stocks, and the dispersion of mispriced stocks in the fund’s investment opportunity set. We find that fund activeness is not sufficient for outperformance:...

Price declines over the previous quarter lead to stronger reversals across the subsequent 2 months. We explain this finding based on the dual notions that liquidity provision can influence reversals and that agents who act as de facto liquidity providers may be less active in past losers. Supporting these observations, we find that active instituti...

A basic intuition is that arbitrage is easier when markets are most liquid. Surprisingly, we find that momentum profits are markedly larger in liquid market states. This finding is not explained by variation in liquidity risk, time-varying exposure to risk factors, or changes in macroeconomic condition, cross-sectional return dispersion, and invest...

We find strong and persistent cross-sectional differences in the propensity of active mutual funds to hold mispriced stocks. Funds with high propensity to hold overpriced stocks display poor stock-picking skills as they further purchase overpriced stocks during episodes of fund inflows and significantly underperform in subsequent periods. Intriguin...

Return reversals depend on de facto market making by active informed investors as well as uninformed market makers. Accordingly, we find that reversals are higher following declines in the number of active institutional investors. Price declines over the past quarter, which serve as a proxy for declines in active investors, lead to stronger reversa...

This paper shows that the state of market illiquidity explains time variation in momentum payoffs, consistent with behavioral models of investor overconfidence. The predictive power of aggregate market illiquidity uniformly exceeds that of alternative proxies such as the market return and market volatility states. During highly illiquid periods, lo...

A basic intuition is that arbitrage is easier when markets are most liquid. Surprisingly, we find that momentum profits are markedly larger in more liquid markets. This finding is not explained by variation in macroeconomic condition, cross-sectional return dispersion, investor sentiment or by disposition-driven theory of momentum. The predictive p...