We investigate the performance and characteristics of acquiring firms on 1148 M&A on the two Chinese stock markets from 1998 to 2003. Using the market model, the CAPM model and the buy-and-hold methods, we find significantly positive abnormal returns before (6 months) and upon M&A announcements, while the long-run abnormal returns (6 months) after M&A are insignificant. Within our sample, cash is the dominant payment method and the competition during M&A is low. The cross-sectional analysis on acquirers' market performance upon announcements shows that the political advantages of acquiring firms have a significantly positive impact on the acquirers' performance, while the economic advantages do not. Cross-provincial M&A and better corporate governance create value to acquiring firms. Finally, cash payment impacts positively and regulation development impacts negatively the performance of acquiring firms during M&A.

This paper considers informed traders’ trading strategies in a bear market. Known as stealth trading, one strategy of informed traders’ is to use medium-size trades, which tend to contain more information than small- and large-size ones and thus to have stronger impact on stock price movement. Using the tick-by-tick data of Shanghai 180 Index Component Stocks, we document the strong pattern of stealth trading in Chinese stock market during the period of June 1, 2004 to May 31, 2005, which is: (1) an order-driven market; (2) a market that has limit orders only; (3) a bear market; (4) a market with no corresponding derivative market; (5) a market with short-selling constraints; (6) an emerging market. The results extend the empirical evidence on the stealth trading by documenting the fact that price movements are mainly due to the medium-size trades. We find that the pattern in a bear market is highly consistent with that in a bull market. First, we observe that the per-transaction stock price changes in different trade-size categories exhibit a clear U-shape and only the price changes induced by medium-size trades are consistent with the market movement direction. We formally test the stealth trading as well as four alternative hypotheses, and conclude that stealth trading hypothesis can correctly explain this phenomenon. Second, the evidence shows that the medium- size trades have stronger impacts on price change s in the stocks whose price movements are highly consistent with the market (in our study, it refers to those stocks with severely low cumulative return in the sample period). Third, we further document that there is strong interaction between stealth trading hypothesis and order imbalance hypothesis. However, after controlling the effect of order imbalance, the stealth trading hypothesis still holds, but the magnitude is much lower. It is suggested that the follow-up researchers take into consideration the effect of order imbalance, when confirming the existence or the magnitude of the stealth trading.

In 2005-2006 China reformed its stock market by eliminating non-tradable shares. The regulator set general guidelines and then assigned responsibility for implementation to each company. We derive relations that should have been followed by the prices of stocks and exploit a company-level data set to compare the actual and the theoretical price reactions. We find evidence for abnormal returns both before the beginning of the reform and during the reform. Cross-sectionally, abnormal returns are associated mainly with turnover and compensation. This shows that in a speculative market, investors do not properly react to unambiguous corporate actions.

The presence of price disparity between A- and H- shares suggests that the two markets are segmented and thus allocation of capital is inefficient. In this paper, we attempt to identify the factors contributing to the price disparity, with a view to helping policymakers find solutions to the problem. Our results suggest that the disparity is caused by a combination of micro and macro factors. The fact that some of these factors are found to have played a crucial role in determining the disparity implies that reforms that can remove or reduce the segmentation can potentially bring considerable benefits by improving price discovery and market efficiency.

This paper explores the determinants of B-share discounts in the Chinese stock market based on a unique regulatory change in 2001. We find that the B-share discounts declined substantially after the lifting of restrictions on foreign ownership in China, but the H-share discount remained virtually unchanged. Using the intraday data, we find that information flows from the B-share markets to the A-share markets increase significantly after the event, because domestic investors rush into the B-share markets. Using various cross-sectional analyses, we also find that relative supply and behavior factors such as relative spread (or liquidity) and relative risk affect the discounts throughout the sample period.

This paper explores the determinants of B-share discounts in the Chinese stock market based on a unique regulatory change in 2001. We find that the B-share discounts declined substantially after the lifting of restrictions on foreign ownership in China, but the H-share discount remained virtually unchanged. Using the intraday data, we find that information flows from the B-share markets to the A-share markets increase significantly after the event, because domestic investors rush into the B-share markets. Using various cross-sectional analyses, we also find that relative supply and behavior factors such as relative spread (or liquidity) and relative risk affect the discounts throughout the sample period.

In this paper, I apply the GARCH-class models to Chinese stock market. And I analyze the characteristics of the volatility of Chinese stock market .By comparing the models, I conclude that EGARCH model and EGARCH-M model have almost the same efficiency in Shanghai Stock Exchange (SHSE) and Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE). Then I use the estimated model to forecast the volatilities for these two stock exchanges.

While the vast majority of the literature reports momentum profitability to be overwhelming in the U.S. market and widespread in other countries, this paper finds that the pure momentum strategy in general does not yield excess profitability in the Chinese stock markets. We find instead strong mean reversion with an average half-life slightly shorter than one year. A pure contrarian investment strategy produces positive excess returns and in general outperforms the pure momentum strategy. Furthermore, momentum may interact with mean reversion. A strategy based on the rolling-regression parameter estimates of the model combining mean reversion and momentum generates both statistically and economically significant excess returns. The combined strategy outperforms both pure momentum and pure contrarian strategies. We conduct a number of robustness tests and confirm the basic findings. Collectively, our results seem to support the overreaction hypothesis.

Previous studies find mixed results on the relation between exchange rate movement and stock return. We revisit the issue by exploring the effect of market efficiency and heterogeneous investor’s reaction to exchange rate changes using the recent event of Chinese currency appreciation. Our results show that different investor groups react differently to the exchange rate appreciation and that this can be explained by the differences in information access and demand elasticity. In addition, we find that investors with limited investment opportunities react more positively to exchange rate appreciation. Our results suggest that it is important to consider the issues of market efficiency and the differences among investors when one analyzes the relation between exchange rate movement and stock return.

We examine the effect of illiquidity discount on stock prices on the warrants prices in China. We construct measures of liquidity based on market microstructure models, and find that they explain a significant portion of the cross-section variation in the warrants pricing biases and implied stock discounts in the market. We conclude that, due to the T+1 rule in Chinese stock market, equity market is illiquid relative to the warrants market that doesn’t bear the T+1 rule. This imposed illiquidity cause the discount on the stock price, which is not reflected in the warrants market. Thus the illiquidity in stock market contributes to the pricing bias in warrants market.