Investment Strategies and Human Behavior

Overreaction is probably the most popularly known consequence of human behavior
on market prices. All things being equal, in a rational market the basics of a company should determine its market price, and there should be a clear human relationship between the two. However, research - as well as a insouciant glimpse at CNN's stock-ticker on any given twenty-four hours - shows that this human relationship doesn't necessarily go on as expected.

Investors regularly overreact, often wildly, so pushing terms up too high or pushing them
down too low against their fundamentals. Not only is the market, therefore, not wholly
rational in reality, but the consequence cannot be attributed to any financial or company-based
factor. The most likely ground for the anomaly appears to be the manner investors perceive,
and respond to, earnings surprises or intelligence items, or indeed other investors' actions. This
overreaction happens across the stockmarket and gives rise to respective investment
strategies.

Contrarian Strategies

The overreaction consequence is highly marked when comparing 'out of favor' (contrarian
stocks) against current 'favorites', or what are also known as value and glamour
stocks. 'Out of favor' pillory are not pillory that are bad quality stocks, simply 1s that
are not attractive to the market, for whatever ground that mightiness be. The interesting thing
is, however, that over clip the 'out of favor' pillory will, in general, outperform the
'favorites'. Then, when the 'out of favor' pillory go the 'favorites' owed to increased
purchasing the consequence is reversed and the procedure is repeated in a cyclical manner, while only
minor changes may take topographic point to the stock's fundamentals. 'This occurs,' states David
Dremen, who researched the consequence with a portfolio of pillory over a 10 twelvemonth period,
'because these pillory will be given to change by reversal over clip as investor outlooks change'. Premiums paid for high growing pillory go too expensive while 'out-of-favor' stocks
get to stand for greater potentiality gains. The consequence is evocative of arrested development to the
mean, a statistical consequence where measurings will be given towards their average, and is in
fact nil new. Scientists have got known for respective hundred old age that this sort of effect
often happens when human behaviour is involved. What is new is that the consequence have been
establish to happen within a peculiar domain of stocks.

Whether a stock is an 'out of favor' or 'favored' stock is indicated by their ratios. According to Jesse James O'Shaughnessy, whose extended and well-researched findings were
published in What Plant on Wall Street, these include: terms to book value (P/BV),
terms to cash flow (P/CF), and terms to earnings (P/E). Pillory with the lowest ratios have
the most possible to rise, particularly on good intelligence surprises, and are therefore the
ones, from this contrarian perspective, that should be sought after, providing they are
essentially good stocks.

Momentum Strategies

Contrarian investment would look to bespeak that making money in the stockmarket, over
and above the smaller but consistent tax returns from well-known companies like Microsoft or
IBM, necessitates buying only 'out of favor' or value stocks. However, this is not the case. Indeed, if 1 were to take this to its logical decision no one would purchase rising stocks
- that were on their manner to becoming glamor pillory - and profitable chances would
be missed. In addition, value pillory take an average of five old age to demo a worthwhile
return. Clearly that is often unacceptable and research bears out, in fact, that momentum
forces many pillory towards new high regularly, and money can be made on these stocks
considerably faster than five years. This doesn't intend that you simply purchase any pillory that
are rising away from their rational terms owed to market or behavioural influences. Such an
attack would be unsystematic and likely to ensue in a loss. Although, as Henry Martin Robert Vishny
points out, 'You don't necessarily do money on the best pillory in the market but on the
pillory everyone believes are going to be the best'. The rider here, of course, is that you
still need to purchase pillory that are good or potentially good, even though they may not be
the best. Inasmuch as this is true, and you tin turn up these stocks, there are two
impulse strategies that can be implemented.

The first strategy uses to combinations of stocks, and do usage of what is known as
the big stock effect. Research on portfolio tax returns by Saint Andrew Lo and Craig
Mackinlay, using a mixture of small and large capitalization companies on the New York
Stock Exchange, showed there was a correlativity between one hebdomads tax tax tax return and the next,
where around ten-percent of the terms change of adjacent hebdomads return could be predicted from
this hebdomads return. Though the consequence only works for portfolios, not for individual stocks,
and only in the short-term - that is, day-to-day and weekly tax returns - there looks to be an
observable lead/lag pattern. Which means, large pillory lead small stocks, hence the
name. For example, Microsoft travels up dramatically and A few years later there’s a
terms leap in other computing machine software manufacturers.

Consequently, buying second line pillory - mid caps and small caps - in a sector
believed to be ready for a re-rating sometime in the close future, and then sitting on the
investings patiently, can work very well. Though money can be made here purely from
impulse effects, my penchant is for a portfolio that’s financially sound and less
likely to be buffeted around by volatility once it moves. In other words, you are pitting
your humors against market sentiment, where investor perceptual experience alone have decided these
pillory are unfashionable, not against cardinal financial determinants and economic
realities.

The second strategy associates to Professor Chief Joseph Lakonishok's challenging determinations which
demo that high impulse pillory - as measured by their former six calendar months additions -
outperform low impulse pillory by 8 percent to 9 percent during the following year. Hence,
buying high impulse pillory can turn out to be another utile method for increasing portfolio
returns. Again, though, the rider is that you still need to purchase pillory that are good or
potentially good.

Joseph Lakonishok and his colleagues, finance professors Andre Shleifer and Robert
Vishny, don't just come up up with interesting academic ideas. They run LSV Asset Management,
where they set into pattern many of their research discoveries. Generally, they be given to
avoid choosing expensive growing pillory that have got been given the impulse tag. Instead,
they utilize momentum signals - such as as increased sensitiveness and volatility to
earnings reports or intelligence proclamations - to uncover value pillory that are just beginning
the upward form of their recovery. This is not an easy method of portfolio formation,
timing and stock pick are crucial, but just like the professors, you'll happen it a lot
simpler if you have got a specialised computing machine program!

Earnings Surprise Strategies

As far as impulse pillory are concerned, the fast one in forming a portfolio is in using
accurate measurements indicating the stock is starting its rise phase. This tin be somewhat
harder than it first appears, even with a specialised computing machine program. Nevertheless,
besides looking at the stock's past six calendar months gains, earnings surprises may also be used
as the crucial factor for stock selection.

One manner of assessing the earnings surprise, suggested by the work of Victor Claude Bernard and
Francois Jacob Seth Thomas at Columbia River University, is by measurement the surprise against analyst's
expectations. If the surprise is not only positive but transcends analyst's expectations
there is a greater likeliness of it being a possible winning campaigner for your
portfolio. However, it needs to be remembered that it isn't always clear what constitutes
a utile positive earnings surprise, especially when it is considered whether the earnings
can be maintained or repeated in the future. One swallow doesn't do a summer! Has
the company actually changed at all?

Earnings surprises can also be affected negatively in the market by analyst's
ratings and this motivates overreaction in the extreme, which again supplies another
utile strategy. For example, Intel dropped a hugely excessive 20 percent in three days
when it had reported stronger second one-fourth earnings in 1995. These though came in at 4
percent under analyst's expectations, which was, behaviorally speaking, the drift for
the drop. A change-around was inevitable though as earnings continued to grow. By the
springtime of 1997 Intel's stock terms had almost tripled. Anyone knowledgeable about the
company, rather than following the investing crowd, would have got made money in this
situation.

A similarly dramatic illustration concerns Hewlett Packard, and it also functions to emphasize
just how utmost investors' reaction to intelligence releases can be. Exploiting this overreaction
once again leads to a profitable investing strategy. In September 1992 the company
announced that earnings would be below analyst's expectations. By the adjacent day, the price
had plummeted 18 percent. This reaction was totally irrational and disproportionate. In
existent terms for an expected reduction in earnings during the following twelvemonth of a few
million dollars the company's market evaluation had plummeted in twenty-four hours by 3.5
billion dollars. Needless to state - if you've followed the push of this article so far -
it won't come up as a daze to cognize that within three calendar months the terms had fully recovered
and then some.

With a profound penetration into these types of behaviorally based pricing anomalies, born
out by his success, and taking the position that a good investor doesn't need to be constantly
trading, Robert Penn Warren counter set it well when he said, 'Only look at the market to see if
anyone's done something foolish that twenty-four hours on which you can capitalize'.

Merger Strategies

Another manner to do usage of overreaction that cause pricing anomalousnesses is to exploit
certain types of merger situations. For example, in 1907 an alliance was made between
Royal Dutch Petroleum and Shell Transport. These two companies agreed to merge their
interests on a 60 to 40 percent footing but stay independently incorporated in Netherlands and
in England. As things stood in the early 1990's, RDP was trading primarily in the United States as a
component of the S&P500 and Shell was trading primarily in the United Kingdom as a constituent
of the FTSE100 (Financial Times Stock Exchange One Hundred index).

Even allowing for the passing play of the years, a rational market orders that the two
parts of the company should merchandise in the same, or similar, ratio of 60 to 40. Yet, recent
research have highlighted that this was not the case; stock terms of the corporation did
not reflect this ratio. On the contrary, after adjusting for tax, transaction costs, and
foreign exchange differences, the existent terms ratio between RDP and Shell had deviated
from the expected ratio by approximately 35 percent.

Human behaviour is again at work to cause the effect, which, apart from dealing in the
most potentially profitable portion of the company's stock, can also be exploited with an
arbitraging approach. The strategy is long-term perhaps but for common finances or hedge
finances it can be an ideal method of investment.

Apparent High Hazard Strategies

An evident high hazard strategy affects dealing in investings that are considered as
needing an extremely broad position as they will lead to heavy losses. The principle for this
strategy is that misinformation, a deficiency of knowledge about the investment, or market
pressures, are influencing investors thinking in some manner and leading them to overreact. Successful execution of the strategy affects overcoming these factors and rationally
examining the projected investment.

Junk chemical bonds are one illustration here. These are high output chemical bonds with low evaluations by credit
agencies, ie issues rated BB shot or lower. The general perceptual experience of these, strengthened by
the mass media coverage surrounding Microphone Milken and Drexel Daniel Hudson Burnham in the late Eighties, is
that they are very bad and therefore exceptionally risky. But is that perceptual experience justified
or is it another lawsuit of investors overreacting to the information they hear rather than
making their ain considered assessment? The fact is these chemical bonds are still around so
person is buying them - in actuality $178.45 billion worth was issued during the five
old age ending in 1996 (source: Securities Data Co.). Indeed these people may well have
based their dealing determinations on a assortment of reports and surveys that demonstrate the
high public presentation of these chemical bonds under the appropriate conditions. Notably that low grade
chemical bonds on average output 50 percent more than high class 1s and that defaults were not
substantially larger (the Hickman report looking at information from 1900 - 1945); that the
default rate, according to T. R. Atkinson, was actually 0.01 percent from 1945 -1965; and
perhaps most convincingly that even when the default rate rose to between 0.015 percent
and 0.019 percent by 1981, on a output insurance premium of 4 percent the hazard was highly acceptable. What this meant was that the possibility of a addition was over twenty modern times more likely than
against the possible loss on the default. But in the affected mentality of most investors
there wasn't any opportunity of a certain gain. Faced with the possibility of what they believed
were greater additions elsewhere in the market, and as prospect theory developed by
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Twerski predicts, investors steered clear of this chance in
favour of what they believed were safer stocks, such as as the approaching glamourous Microsoft
and Yahoo! The sarcasm is that many investors would later get burned on these pillory as their
evaluations shot through the roof and then see-sawed.

Junk chemical bonds are not for everyone, and certainly not for the novice; they take a high
degree of knowledge to merchandise them successfully, they need to be in a diversified portfolio,
and they need to be good quality, which many still aren't. But what this strategy
demonstrates is that there are many investings that on stopping point examination are safer than
first appears. Person behavior, overreaction, corpulences the importance of extraneous
information such as as mass media ballyhoo and expert opinion, stopping investors from giving junk
chemical bonds or similar evident high hazard investings careful consideration on their ain merit.

A New Wave of Strategies

While overreaction can be exploited with a assortment of strategies, as we've seen, so far
overreaction is itself hard to mensurate as a causal factor in determining price
anomalies. Knowing this would give us a highly effectual strategy. But, the scientific
jury is still out on what exactly represents overreaction. We cognize what consequence it have but
what actually is it? For example, is it a market based or individual investor based
effect, or both? Can we cognize before we see its personal effects that the factors that advance it
are in evidence? Attempts at using a measurement have got got produced amalgamated results, as ABN AMRO have
establish with their behavioural finance monetary fund which have lost about 27 percent since inception. Much work needs to be done before we fully understand how human behaviour mathematical functions in the
linguistic context of the stockmarket.

There is small uncertainty that a knowledge of human behaviour can better our
money-making accidentals when investing. Behavioral finance specialists, though, have got only
just begun to abrasion the surface of new strategies with a systematic attack to
apprehension the procedures involved and applying the findings. Many more than useful
strategies are likely to happen in the adjacent few years. The field itself is only about
15 old age old, a fledgling in the financial arena, and one that is only now beginning
to demo its worth.