3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item A comparison of the forecasting accuracy of the downside beta and beta on the JSE top 40 for the period 2001-2011(2014-03-06) O'Malley, Brandon ShaunThe purpose of this research report is to determine whether the use of a Downside risk variable – the D-Beta – is more appropriate in the emerging market of South Africa than the regular Beta used in the CAPM model. The prior research upon which this report expands, performed by Estrada (1999; 2002; 2005), focuses on using Downside risk models mainly at an overall country (market) level. This report focuses exclusively on South Africa, but could be applicable to various other emerging markets. The reason for researching this topic is simple: Investors – not just in South Africa, but all across the world – think of risk differently to the way that it is defined in terms of modern portfolio theory. Beta measures risk by giving equal weight to both Upside and Downside volatility, while in reality, investors are a lot more sensitive to Downside fluctuations. The Downside Beta takes into account only returns which are below a certain benchmark, thereby allowing investors to determine a share’s Downside volatility. When the Downside Beta is included as the primary measure of systematic risk in an asset pricing model (such as the D-CAPM), the result is a model which can be used to determine cost of equity, and make forecasts about share returns. The results of this research indicate that using the D-CAPM to forecast returns results in improved accuracy when compared to using the CAPM. However, when comparing goodness of fit, the CAPM and the D-CAPM are not significantly different. Even with this conflicting result, this research shows that there is indeed value in using the D-Beta in South Africa, especially during times of economic downturn.Item Reviving Beta? Another look at the cross-section of average share returns on the JSE(2012-07-05) Page, DanielVan Rensburg and Robertson (2003a) stated that the CAPM beta has little or no relationship with returns generated by size and price to earnings sorted portfolios. This study intends to demonstrate that a reformulated CAPM beta, estimated using return on equity as opposed to share returns, unravels the size and value premium. The study proves that the “cash-flow” generated beta partially explains the cross-sectional variation in share returns when measured over the long run, specifically when portfolios are sorted on book to market, however the cash flow beta is less successful when attempting to explain the small size premium. The premise of the study is that the cash flow dynamics of share returns eventually dominate the first and second moments and thus result in cash flow based measures of risk and return that should succeed in explaining the cross-sectional variation in share returns. The study makes use of vector autoregressive models in order to examine the short term effect of structural shocks to the cash flow fundamentals of a stock or portfolio through impulse response functions as well as quantifying a long-term relationship between cash flow fundamentals and share returns using a VECM specification. The study further uses fixed effects, random effects and GMM/dynamic panel data cross-sectional regressions in order to examine the ability of the cash flow beta explaining the value and size premium. The results of the study are mixed. The cash flow beta does well in explaining the returns of portfolios sorted on book to market, but fails to do the same with size sorted portfolios. In the cash flow betas favour, it performs far better than the conventionally measured CAPM beta throughout the study.