G15 - International Financial MarketsReturn

This paper identifies the relationship between changes in oil prices and the returns of the world's highest-producing oil companies. Oil companies are divided into state-owned (national) and private companies. This paper focused on three different time periods to identify the relationship between changes in oil price and stock market returns by examining the specific backgrounds of each period. The results revealed that during oil's bearish market, it was more beneficial for investors to prefer state-owned companies to optimise their portfolios. The risk analysis focused on systematic risk, and the beta coefficients confirmed that state-owned companies are less sensitive to market shocks. State-owned companies are supported by governments during periods of downtrends in oil prices; therefore, they are less likely to go bankrupt. However, these companies do not have as much flexibility as private companies to cut their costs; therefore, they are more negatively affected by market movements not defined by shocks.

The paper investigates the relationship between short selling activities of stocks on the volatility of the US market and its sectors. We apply the multivariate DCC GARCH Model on the NYSE US 100 Index between November 2017 and October 2018. We find evidence that investments in some specific firms on the market reduce the market volatility and higher short selling activities reduce risk in the market. The study also finds that firms in the financial sector dominate the market and short selling activities in this sector has a greater impact on the market volatility. We also find portfolio managers to be better off investing in the market than creating portfolio within sectors.

Following the landmark ruling by the German Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe on 7th February 2014 in which they endorsed the efficient market hypothesis, we present evidence on the efficiency of the German financial market. Introducing a new variance bound test based on the Component-GARCH model of volatility to analyse the long- and short-runs effects on the efficiency of the German financial market, we test the price volatility of four markets: DAX stock index, German sovereign debt index as provided by Barclays and Bloomberg, Euro gold index by the World Gold Council and Euro currency index by the Bank of England. Our use of the Component-GARCH-T model highlight two key contributions, the first being the analysis of the efficiency of the market in the long and short runs. However, a more important contribution is the result of our variance bound test highlight the relatively strong acceptance of the efficient market hypothesis in both the short and long runs in all the observed financial markets. It must be stated our research is of importance to researches in both applied finance and portfolio management. The influencing question of what moves specific markets is crucial to market participants seeking market alpha for their investments strategies and portfolio optimisations.