Accruals, Investment, and the Accrual Anomaly PDF Download

Author: Xiaohu Zhang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Capital investments
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Author: Frank Zhang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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This paper investigates two competing hypotheses for the accrual anomaly: investment/growth and persistence. Both investment/growth and persistence information in accruals are likely to vary cross-sectionally, depending on a firm's business model, a fact that generates different cross-sectional implications for the accrual anomaly. I find that the magnitude of the accrual anomaly monotonically increases with the investment information contained in accruals, as measured by the co-variation between accruals and employee growth. In industries/firms in which accruals co-vary with employee growth, accruals show strong predictive power for future stock returns. In industries/firms in which accruals show little correlations with employee growth, the accrual anomaly is much weaker. In contrast, the evidence from the cross-sectional analysis is inconsistent with the persistence argument. From the earnings perspective, the evidence on one-year-ahead earnings growth is inconclusive, but the results on longer-term earnings growth support the investment argument but not the persistence argument. Collectively, I conclude that these results support the view that the accrual anomaly is attributable to the fundamental investment information contained in accruals.

Author: Jin Ginger Wu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Corporations
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Interpreting accruals as working capital investment, we hypothesize that firms rationally adjust their investment to respond to discount rate changes. Consistent with the optimal investment hypothesis, we document that (i) the predictive power of accruals for future stock returns increases with the covariations of accruals with past and current stock returns, and (ii) adding investment-based factors into standard factor regressions substantially reduces the magnitude of the accrual anomaly. High accrual firms also have similar corporate governance and entrenchment indexes as low accrual firms. This evidence suggests that the accrual anomaly is more likely to be driven by optimal investment than by investor overreaction to excessive growth or over-investment.

Author: X. Frank Zhang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Interpreting accruals as working capital investment, we hypothesize that firms rationally adjust their investment to respond to discount rate changes. Consistent with the optimal investment hypothesis, we document that (i) the predictive power of accruals for future stock returns increases with the covariations of accruals with past and current stock returns, and (ii) adding investment- based factors into standard factor regressions substantially reduces the magnitude of the accrual anomaly. High accrual firms also have similar corporate governance and entrenchment indexes as low accrual firms. This evidence suggests that the accrual anomaly is more likely to be driven by optimal investment than by investor overreaction to excessive growth or over-investment.

Author: Leonard Zacks
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118127765
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Investment pioneer Len Zacks presents the latest academic research on how to beat the market using equity anomalies The Handbook of Equity Market Anomalies organizes and summarizes research carried out by hundreds of finance and accounting professors over the last twenty years to identify and measure equity market inefficiencies and provides self-directed individual investors with a framework for incorporating the results of this research into their own investment processes. Edited by Len Zacks, CEO of Zacks Investment Research, and written by leading professors who have performed groundbreaking research on specific anomalies, this book succinctly summarizes the most important anomalies that savvy investors have used for decades to beat the market. Some of the anomalies addressed include the accrual anomaly, net stock anomalies, fundamental anomalies, estimate revisions, changes in and levels of broker recommendations, earnings-per-share surprises, insider trading, price momentum and technical analysis, value and size anomalies, and several seasonal anomalies. This reliable resource also provides insights on how to best use the various anomalies in both market neutral and in long investor portfolios. A treasure trove of investment research and wisdom, the book will save you literally thousands of hours by distilling the essence of twenty years of academic research into eleven clear chapters and providing the framework and conviction to develop market-beating strategies. Strips the academic jargon from the research and highlights the actual returns generated by the anomalies, and documented in the academic literature Provides a theoretical framework within which to understand the concepts of risk adjusted returns and market inefficiencies Anomalies are selected by Len Zacks, a pioneer in the field of investing As the founder of Zacks Investment Research, Len Zacks pioneered the concept of the earnings-per-share surprise in 1982 and developed the Zacks Rank, one of the first anomaly-based stock selection tools. Today, his firm manages U.S. equities for individual and institutional investors and provides investment software and investment data to all types of investors. Now, with his new book, he shows you what it takes to build a quant process to outperform an index based on academically documented market inefficiencies and anomalies.

Author: Abdul Rafay
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 12

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The purpose of this research is to determine the impact of “Capital investment anomaly” and “Accrual anomaly” on stock returns after controlling the size and book-to-market effects. This study aims to fill a gap regarding the implications of capital investment anomaly and accrual anomaly in South Asian economies, and primarily focused on two developing economies from SAARC region; India and Pakistan. This study uses 320 company-year observations using a sample period of 2009-2014. The sample is representative of 50% of non-financial companies selected systematically from nine different sectors included in Pakistan Stock Exchange (KSE- 100 index) and Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE-100 index) each. Selection is based on market capitalization to mitigate any bias in results. Preliminary analysis includes understanding stock performance of capital investment-based, and accrual-based portfolios, followed by stock performance of combined effect portfolios, and sector analysis. Lastly, regression analysis allows determining impact of both anomalies on returns as well as their independence or interdependence. The results of this study show that there exists a negative relationship between Stock Returns and Capital Investment/Accruals. In addition to this, we found that both anomalies are not distinct and work together and are attributed to country characteristics specific to the SAARC/South Asia region. All of the coefficients are statistically significant. The separate results for India and Pakistan are helpful for practitioners to know what strategy to adopt in order to maximize the returns. Combined results are beneficial for prospective investors. The mixed trend of returns for different sectors is useful for both managers and investors in the sense that both anomalies are independent of each other. From a theory development perspective, it reveals the differences in existing literature due to change in geographical context.

Author: Bernardine Mei Fong Low
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Author: S.P. Kothari
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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We show that the agency theory of overvalued equity (see Jensen, 2005) rather than investors' fixation on accruals explains the accrual anomaly, i.e., abnormal returns to an accrual trading strategy (see Sloan, 1996).Under the agency theory of overvalued equity, managers of overvalued firms are likely to manage their firms' accruals upwards to prolong the overvaluation.Thus, high-accrual portfolios are likely to be over-represented with over-valued firms.Overvaluation, however, cannot be sustained indefinitely and we expect price reversals for high accrual firms.In contrast, undervalued firms do not face incentives to report low accruals, so undervalued firms are not concentrated in low accrual decile portfolios.Therefore, across the accrual decile portfolios, we predict and find an asymmetric relation between accruals and both prior and subsequent returns.In addition, consistent with the predictions of the agency theory of overvalued equity, we find high, but not low, accrual firms' investment-financing decisions and insider trading activity are distorted, and analyst forecast optimism is concentrated among the high-accrual decile portfolios.Overall, return behavior, analyst optimism, investment-financing decisions, and insider trading activity are all consistent with the agency theory of overvalued equity, but do not support investor fixation on accruals.

Author: Brett Joseph Govendir
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Corporations
Languages : en
Pages : 722

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Author: Robert James Resutek
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Accrual basis accounting
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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This dissertation reexamines the theoretical and empirical relation between future period returns and current period accruals. Prior studies find a negative relation between current period accruals and future returns. This finding (the accrual anomaly) is often attributed to either (a) investors mispricing accrual persistence or (b) investors mispricing the growth information contained in current accruals. In this study, I show that accruals are a natural manifestation of firm growth and contraction and that the information contained in accruals is not associated with future returns. This finding holds for multiple accrual definitions and decompositions. My study provides an alternative explanation for the accrual anomaly. In addition, I provide economic intuition and empirical evidence suggesting that the accrual anomaly is a function of the value/growth anomaly. In contrast to prior studies which use a two-period model to show the negative association between accruals in period one and returns in period two, I employ a three period log-linear model decomposed from a firm's book-to-market ratio and show that investors do not misprice the information contained in accruals. My study shows that in the four year period prior to accrual recognition, equity prices tend to be driven disproportionately by intangible returns, or returns not explained by accounting measures. Accordingly, the relation between prior-period intangible returns and future-period returns may subsume the relation between current-period accruals and future returns. Empirical tests support this explanation.