Contemporaneous and asymmetric volume-return relationship: cross-product evidence from an emerging market

  • Published March 4, 2016
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  • DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/imfi.13(1).2016.09
  • Article Info
    Volume 13 2016, Issue #1, pp. 92-111
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This paper demonstrates that both Taiwan’s exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and equities exhibit an asymmetric volume-return relationship in which the ETF display a mixed, negative or positive, asymmetry and the equity exhibits primarily a positive asymmetry. The positive asymmetry in equities and its decline with the progressive elimination of the short-sale restriction on equities support the costly short-sale hypothesis, which considers a costly short-sale restriction or asymmetric transaction costs on long and short trading to be the source of the asymmetry. The part of a less positive asymmetry in ETFs also consists with what the costly short-sale hypothesis predicts. The later information models that consider asymmetrically-informed traders or the heterogeneity of traders to be the source of the asymmetry explain the negative asymmetry in ETFs and the upward trend in the magnitude of volume-return correlation with the grow of volume quintiles. An important conclusion is that not a single hypothesis can be a universal explanation for the asymmetric volume-return relationship. Which hypothesis may explain the volume-return asymmetry depends largely on whether the short-sale restriction is present

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