The theory of efficient capital markets suggests that if the capital markets are efficient, security prices can be assumed at any time to “fully reflect” all available information. Various forms of the model have been subjected to extensive empirical testing. The results of these tests have been such that in reviewing the literature on the theory Fama [3] states, “ … the evidence in support of the efficient markets model is extensive, and (somewhat uniquely in economics) contradictory evidence is sparse.” Most of the research, however, has been addressed to the question of whether prices “fully reflect” particular subsets of available information. The validity of these results depends on the extent to which the information in the subset used for testing captures the information actually impounded in prices.

This study's purpose was to construct a performance criterion for New York Stock Exchange specialists which relates to their ability to affect price variability. It was emphasized that the price-setting behavior of the specialists, at times when trading imbalances prevail in the market, is the most important aspect of their performance. Their performance in this dimension may or may not be associated with their willingness to supply immediacy services to small orders. While the bid-ask spread is the correct variable to measure when the latter is considered, price variability or, more precisely, the functional relationship between price changes and trading imbalances is the variable to be measured when the price-setting behavior is of interest. While the experiment to evaluate the price-setting behavior of NYSE specialists using publicly available data may be considered a pioneer study, other studies have estimated the determinants of the bid-ask spread. The contributions of this study to the analysis of the spread can be summarized as follows: (a) observing an independent “specialist effect” on the size of the spread, (b) estimating the spread-volume relationships using a simultaneous system, and (c) estimating the association between the specialists' performance on both spread and price dimensions of their activity. The finding of this study is that there is a positive correlation between the quality measure of performance on both dimensions.

The purpose of this study is to measure and evaluate the objectives, risk, and return of 123 American mutual funds using monthly returns in the period 1960–1969. The paper considers five questions: How were stated fund objectives related to risk and return, as measured over the subsequent decade? How did funds of various objectives perform in terms of return and return-to-risk measures? Did average excess return increase with risk? Was the return-to-risk performance of the average mutual fund better or worse than that of the stock market as a whole? How did the slope of the mutual fund line of returns versus beta compare to the capital market line; i.e., did funds at one end of the risk spectrum appear to “outperform” those at the other end?

A fundamental function of any portfolio selection model is the identification of inefficient portfolios and the consequent reduction of the set of alternative investments that the decision maker must evaluate. In the absence of a specific utility function, the establishment of criteria for the identification of inefficient portfolios must strike a compromise in terms of convenience and effectiveness. Of the myriad possibilities, models employing a criterion based on two parameters have been found most convenient for reasons of simplicity of interpretation and computational feasibility. Certainly, the most popular of the two parameter models has been the expected value-variance (E-V) formulation first proposed by Markowitz [7]. The basic E-V model developed for individual decision making has been extended by Sharpe, Lintner, and others [1, 4, 3, 9] to set forth an extensive theory which seeks to explain the equilibrium price of risky assets. The purpose of the present paper is to review and extend some of the implications of an alternative two-parameter portfolio selection model, called the expected value-semivariance model (E-S). In particular, the discussion focuses on certain contrasts and similarities between the E-V and the E-S models.

It has been suggested that information has the three following uses:

1. Information can be employed to earn trading profits.

2. Information can improve the operating decisions of a firm or group of firms and thereby increase the stock price.

3. Information can reduce the risk of a firm or group of firms and thereby increase the stock price.

The stock price literature abounds with applications of the Markowitz [16] – Sharpe [18] market model to American stock price data. There is a lack of corresponding studies for non-American securities, due primarily to the absence of generally available machine readable data bases (see, however, [1], [2], [8, Section 9.5], [11], [17], and [20]. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of some initial tests of the market model for a broad cross-section of the European common stocks. Our data base consists of daily price and dividend data for 229 stocks from seven European countries. In addition, for comparison purposes we have included a sample of 65 American securities.

Stable distributions are suggested as being the underlying distributions for many economic variables. Capital market variables, in particular, are said to follow a member of the symmetric stable class.

The Markowitz-Sharpe market model has been extensively applied to the study of price behavior of American common stocks. In this paper an international market model will be used assuming that the return on any security is a linear function of the return on the world market portfolio. A justification for this approach lies in the International Asset Pricing Model (IAPM) proposed by Solnik [14] and [15]. This market model is by no means the only stochastic process of security returns consistent with the IAPM, but it is the most simple and straightforward extension of the traditional approach to domestic markets.

On February 1, 1971, the National Association of Security Dealers instituted an automatic quoting system for over-the-counter stocks. Heralded as a major advance in the elimination of market imperfections, the National Association of Security Dealers Automatic Quote System (NASDAQ) allowed bidand- ask prices of different firms in this geographically dispersed market to be centralized. Essentially its operation allowed individual “houses” to obtain the various bid-and-ask prices of market makers for a given unlisted security.

In the linear market-index model of the return-generating process, return on security j is given by

where αj and βj are constants characteristic of company j, is return on a market index, and is the company-specific component of return such that and . The coefficient βj is given by . It is known as market responsiveness, volatility, systematic risk, and, more commonly, simply as “beta.” It has been widely accepted as a measure of nondiversifiable risk and incorporated in popular performance measures. Many stock information services now provide estimates of beta.

For purposes of discussing Professor Emery's work, we may adopt the following symbolism: (1) let SEEj denote the standard error about the regression-established trend of the reported earnings stream of firm j; (2) let VAR(ΔEPSj) denote the variance of the annual changes in the reported earnings stream of firm j; (3) let denote the variance of the annual changes in the cthsimulated (unsmoothed) earnings stream for firm j; (4) let CORRj be the coefficient of correlation between the reported earnings stream and the price series for firm j; (5) let be the coefficient of correlation between the cthsimulated earnings stream and the price series for firm j; (6) let Nj be the number of the C unsmoothed earnings streams generated for firm j for which ; and (7) let Nj* be the number of these Nj earnings streams for which .

This paper develops a credit-analysis model encompassing the accuracy of analytical methods, quality of applicants, cost of acquisition and analysis, profit from good loans, and losses from bad loans. Information generally available to the lending institution and subjective estimates can then be used to select from among alternative credit-granting systems the system with the greatest expected net present value. Each institution is thus able to find the credit granting system most appropriate for its particular market and analytical abilities.

The model's profit maximizing objective and broad scope make it useful for setting credit department standards of performance. Costs can be compared with theoretical values of performance computed from loss rates, acceptance rates, and market information. The conditional probabilities, the chances of making the correct decision, can also be estimated for use in comparing methods of analysis or individual analysts. Unlike the loss rate, the conditional probability is an independent, unbiased measure of a method's accuracy.

The example presented dealt with consumer installment loans, but the formulation is applicable to direct lending of any type. It provides the means for comparing loans with differing initial costs as well as widely varying risk classes and maturities. Financial institutions making direct loans add substantial values to capital supplied by the money and capital markets. The model is a theoretical formulation of the relationship between the cost and output of credit analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to indicate that the opportunity to obtain information regarding the probability distribution of the return on a risky asset, such as a portfolio or a mutual fund, may cause a risk-averse decision maker to accept a single-period actuarially unfair gamble. This behavior is the same as that implied by utility functions that have convex segments, as originally considered by Friedman and Savage [2] and by Markowitz [12], but the utility function derived is not convex on any interval, since it is the envelope of a finite set of strictly increasing, strictly concave functions. Similar utility functions have been obtained, by Fleming [1] because of transactions costs, by Hakansson [4] by imposing a borrowing restriction on an investment-consumption model, and by Masson [14] in the context of an imperfect capital market. In this paper acceptance of single-period actuarially unfair gambles by an individual risk averse with respect to future wealth levels results from the opportunity to acquire information. The acquisition of information creates a set of conditional decisions each of which the individual may treat in an optimal manner, and that set of conditional decisions may induce risk-taking behavior.

The purpose of this article is to produce a conservative estimate of how often traditionally conceived seasonal components are present in prices of individual Dow Jones industrial stocks. A careful estimate is needed to resolve some of the current confusion on the question and to provide basic information along lines suggested by Smidt [27, p. 238]: “… investigations of the random walk hypothesis would be most fruitful if they were conducted in the spirit of attempting to determine the size and extent of systematic tendencies that may exist in price series” (italics added).

Ceteris paribus, investors prefer to purchase municipal bonds selling close to their par value. That is, investors are willing to purchase at the lowest yield a municipal bond alike in all respects to other municipal bonds, but with a coupon that permits it to be sold at or near its par value. Conversely, investors are willing to purchase municipal bonds with coupons that cause them to be sold at prices either greatly above or greatly below par only at penalty or premium yields relative to similar par bonds.

Since the Second World War the corporate pension trust has become a prominent method of provision for employees' retirement income. The continuing liberalization of pension provisions and pressures to match pension trust liabilities with assets has established pension contributions as a significant component of corporate cash outlays. Asset accumulation in pension trusts has rendered such institutions a major source of capital funds.

Previous empirical studies of mutual fund performance relative to market performance were conducted using two- and three-moment analysis. This study has applied first-, second-, and third-degree stochastic dominance principles to investigate the same question. Our results support the earlier Sharpe study and oppose the recent Arditti work. From the investor's standpoint, mutual fund performance was inferior to market performance over the period 1954–1963.

Bernell Stone's paper extends the single-factor market model to a two-factor model to “better” explain the stochastic process that generates security returns. The inductive search for new models (of which his paper is one) presumably is predicated upon some unsatisfactory results of joint tests of the single-index market model and the capital asset pricing model. It is well known that there are other components of systematic or covariance risk that are not explained by the single-market factor. In the most general sense then, one would conclude that the truth of the return generating process is a multiple factor model, given that the process is indeed linear in the factors. Professor Stone chooses a two-factor (or index) model, in which the known factors are: (1) the return on an equity index, and (2) the return on a bond index. To this extent his interesting work is a special case of the more general work of others.

The study had two objectives: 1) an evaluation of third-market operational efficiency vis-a-vis the New York Stock Exchange and 2) an evaluation of any impact resulting from inclusion of third-market issues in the NASDAQ quotation system on preexisting third market versus NYSE efficiency.

For many years, the stock option has been an investment device used primarily by speculators and some “sophisticated” investors. During the past few years, much more attention has been paid to options by mutual funds, insurance companies, and conservative investors who previously showed little concern for this investment alternative. The opening of the Chicago Board of Trade's exchange for the trading of options will lead to even wider interest in the area.