Abstract:
To study the factors affecting the stock return and the decomposition of the unexpected excess stock return. It is assumed that the unexpected excess stock return can be decomposed into 2 components: changes in cash-flow expectations (know as cash-flow news) and changes in return expectations (know as expected return news). Vector autoregressive model (VAR) is employed in this study. Stock return can be explained by lag return (-1), book-to-market ratio, return on equity, leverage and size. However, relationship between stock return and these factors are not constant. According to the results, there might be some constraints that influence the relationship. These constraints are defined as economic environment, quantity of information and interest of investors. The conclusions can be drawn as followed. Variance of unexpected excess stock return is mainly driven by cash flow news, which is proxied by return on equity. The variance of cash flow news is more than 3 times that of expected return news. The result confirms the argument. Moreover, the results show that constraints have affected variance of unexpected excess stock return. During the crisis period, this variance is less than that of usual growth period. Both quantity of information and investor's interest affects the variance of unexpected excess stock return in the same direction. In other words, firms that have more information and are of interest to investor show less unexpected excess stock return. It might be concluded that the variance of unexpected excess return can be explained by economic environment, quantity of information and interest of investors.