Insights

While Part I establishes that news events generate identifiable market reactions, the informational content of news varies widely—from industry developments and financial disclosures to management changes and corporate crises. Event intensity alone is insufficient to explain these differences. Accordingly, this section decomposes news events into five categories (A, I, M, F, R) and examines whether markets respond systematically differently across news types.

Introduction: News as an Event-Based Market Signal In today’s highly real-time and information-saturated markets, news media no longer merely serve as post-hoc explanations of price movements. Instead, they have become a critical channel through which market expectations are formed and sentiment spreads. Compared with structured disclosures such as regulatory penalties or official disclosures via the […]

Burton G. Malkiel is the Chemical Bank Chairman’s Professor of Economics at Princeton University. He previously worked in the investment banking division of Smith Barney & Co. and has served as a director of several large investment institutions, including The Vanguard Group and The Prudential Insurance Company of America. He was also appointed as a member of the U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisers. In both academic and investment circles, he is a highly respected and influential figure.

This study examines whether incorporating the Short Interest Ratio (SIR) can improve the performance of a 52-week high momentum strategy in Taiwan. By comparing a baseline momentum model with two SIR-enhanced versions—one using SIR as a filter and another integrating it into a composite score—we find consistent gains in returns, lower volatility, and reduced drawdowns. The results show that SIR strengthens momentum strategies by identifying stocks under institutional short-selling pressure.

Taiwan’s short-selling signals are often misleading because the market operates under a dual-track system: retail investors short stocks through margin accounts, while institutional investors use securities borrowing and lending (SBL). Only SBL-based short selling reflects informed institutional sentiment, while margin shorting introduces noise. This study isolates SBL to construct the Short Interest Ratio (SIR) and evaluates its ability to predict cross-sectional returns and reveal size-dependent patterns in informed short-selling behavior.

This strategy is based on tracking the flow of so-called "smart money" in the market, referring to the positions of the three major institutional investors in Taiwan: foreign investors, investment trusts, and proprietary traders. The strategy assumes that when these three institutions hold a strong and consistent view of the market direction, following their lead has a higher probability of success.

Market makers, equipped with high-frequency trading capabilities, institutional-grade cost structures, and real-time creation/redemption privileges, are the primary participants in ETF premium–discount arbitrage. In contrast, Non-Institutional Participants face multiple constraints—including information latency and higher transaction frictions—which make it difficult to capture arbitrage opportunities promptly or profitably. 

TCRI Watchdog classifies all events into 5 major categories: Accounting, Industry Prospects, Management & Governance, Market Transactions, and Crisis Events. We analyze how each category affects stock prices, compare their reaction magnitudes and persistence, and highlight which types of information serve as the most important early-warning signals for investors.

Discover how TCRI Watchdog quantifies material announcements and reveals the asymmetric market impact of event intensity. Learn why negative events drive deeper, longer price reactions and how investors can use event-based signals to enhance risk monitoring and strategy design. We find that higher-ranked portfolios deliver significant short-term excess returns, while predictive power weakens over longer horizons. The results highlight the practical value of Point-in-Time financial data for quantitative factor investing and underscore its role in building replicable, data-driven investment strategies.