As Tesla prepares to join the S&P 500, research by Rene Stulz, the Everett D. Reese Chair of Banking and Monetary Economics, and his colleagues reveals being listed on the index does not provide the same return as it used to.

Tesla could be the latest example of how inclusion in the S&P 500 weakens a company’s stock performance. According to research from Rene Stulz, the Everett D. Reese Chair of Banking and Monetary Economics, and his colleagues, beginning around a decade ago, getting added to the S&P 500 began to cause a company's stock to drop. This information has caused some to hypothesize that the S&P 500 could become easier to time and to beat.

It used to be good for stocks to be added to indexes, but that is changed in the past decade or so, according to new research from Rene Stulz, the Everett D. Reese Chair of Banking and Monetary Economics, and his colleagues. 

International coverage of research by Itzhak Ben-David, the Neil Klatskin Chair in Finance and Real Estate, reveals that because fund managers invest in a scattered portfolio of hedge funds and because of the jumps from fund to fund, investment profits are greatly diminished.

A new study from Rene Stulz, the Everett D. Reese Chair of Banking and Monetary Economics, and a colleague shows how profits are distributed — and it has some surprising conclusions. Total payouts to shareholders rose from 19 percent of operating profits from 1971-1999 period to 32 percent in 2000-2017; and buybacks alone accounted for 55 percent of the distribution in the 2000-2017 period, up from 22 percent in the 1971-1999 period. To emphasize: Stock repurchases soared.

Research from Itzhak Ben-David, the Neil Klatskin Chair in Finance and Real Estate, and Justin Birru, assistant professor in finance, shows that investors end up paying high fees for poor returns while managers accumulate personal fortunes.

There’s a two-out-of-three chance U.S. stocks will climb over the next six months — which is right about average. Research by Kewei Hou, the Ric Dillon Endowed Professor in Investments, and Lu Zhang, the John W. Galbreath Chair in Finance, illustrates just how difficult it is to replicate market conditions or effectively time the market. 

Research by Itzhak Ben-David, the Neil Klatskin Chair in Finance and Real Estate at Fisher, and Associate Professor of Finance Justin Birru, effectively shows that investors subsidize underperforming fund managers to the tune of $7 billion a year.

Research by finance professors Itzhak Ben-David, the Neil Klatskin Chair in Finance and Real Estate, and Justin Birru provide insights into how the "performance" fees that hedge-fund managers charge can walk off with most of your return.

Research from Rene Stulz, the Everett D. Reese Chair of Banking and Monetary Economics, and his colleagues is cited as being helpful in determining if there is a way of forecasting which Chinese companies would most likely be hurt the most by any eventual delisting from the U.S. Stock Exchange.

The stock market and the economy have been intertwined in the American psyche since the 1929 stock crash and the onset of the Great Depression. But stocks are not a reliable gauge of overall economic health, said Rene Stulz, the Everett D.

A new working paper by Rene Stulz, the Everett D. Reese Chair of Banking and Monetary Economics, and his colleagues has quantified the divide between the haves and have-nots when it comes the riskiest of all corporate asset classes -- equity -- and has found that when the going gets tough, the financially flexible get going.

The virus outbreak supercharged a continuing shift in the markets, with a few giant companies now exerting the most influence over the direction of stocks since the tech boom. Research by Rene Stulz, the Everett D. Reese Chair of Banking and Monetary Economics, shows as bigger companies have steadily grown, they’ve also snagged a larger share of profits.

This is not the first time the stock market has had to deal with a pandemic, and studying past pandemics, says Tod Schneider, a senior lecturer in finance, can provide important clues.

As the popularity of Bitcoin, XRP and Ethereum rise, scammers may take advantage of investors looking to buy, sell and "mine" cryptocurrencies. One problem is market manipulation. Large holders of a cryptocurrency, called “whales,” can bid up the price of, say, Bitcoin, drawing in new investors eager to get in on the action. As the currency rises, the whales take their profits and leave new investors with losses, according to University of Texas professor John Griffin and Fisher's Amin Shams.

The correlation between CEO turnover and gross domestic product is robust, and research from Assistant Professor of Finance Jack Liebersohn and his colleague, Heidi Packard, of the University of Michigan, demonstrates the relationship.

How can someone go from Powerball winner to completely bankrupt? Matt Sheridan, senior lecturer in finance, weighs in on how you can keep the wealth you accrue.

Itzhak Ben-David, the Neil Klatskin Chair in Finance and Real Estate at Fisher, and his colleagues studied the impact of large institutional ownership on stock prices in the US market. The researchers showed that ownership by large institutions increases volatility in the underlying securities, and that this increase reflects a rise of noise in stock prices.

Most mutual fund investors trade on noise rather than fundamentals. Research by Itzhak Ben-David, the Neil Klatskin Chair in Finance and Real Estate, and his colleagues, shows that many mutual fund investors "naively rely on external rankings as a way to chase past winners."

Researchers including Fisher's Itzhak Ben-David, the Neil Klatskin Chair in Finance and Real Estate, and René M. Stulz, the Everett D. Reese Chair of Banking and Monetary Economics, find that financially distressed banks don’t try to gamble their way out of trouble by making riskier loans or investments, but instead act to decrease their debt and raise additional equity. 

Warren Buffett has snubbed KBW’s Meyer Shields from participating in his annual conclave for years. Why? The answer may lie in a difference of investing philosophies. Lu Zhang, the John W. Galbreath Chair in Real Estate at Fisher, points out that Buffett’s stock picking is value-oriented, a countercyclical style that has been out of fashion for much of the past decade. “Ten years is just too short to suggest Buffett should change his strategy,” Zhang says. “Over the long term, Berkshire has beaten any index, any index, hands down.”

Lu Zhang, the John W. Galbreath Chair in Real Estate,  andhis research have challenged the status quo of traditional finance and have led to a better understanding of how assets are priced. He has also shown that many of the factors that investors rely on may not hold up as well as we think in the real world. He shares why that is and discusses his research into what drives stock returns.

While most literature finds that individuals lose on average from trading, a few studies show that some individuals consistently outperform the benchmarks. Research by Itzhak Ben-David, the Neil Klatskin Chair in Finance and Real Estate, illustrates how much of an advantage familiarity with the stocks and industries can be.

Research by Itzhak Ben-David, the Neil Klatskin Chair in Finance and Real Estate, and his colleagues shows that the asset management industry is getting more concentrated. Share of U.S. stock ownership by institutions has increased from around five percent in 1980 to about 22 percent in 2015.

Itzhak Ben-David, the Neil Klatskin Chair in Finance and Real Estate, and his colleagues share their research into the effectiveness and accuracy of portfolio rankings.