Previous research has shown that the market reacts on stock recommendations. As the Internet has made financial information more available and cheaper to assess one could believe that the market reflects more available information today. If this is true the market will react less on recommendation made by journalists, which generally consists of processed public information. The Stock market should thus be more efficient according to the efficient market hypothesis. This study examines initially if we can conclude that stock recommendations made by journalists generate returns above the expected returns, hence abnormal returns.

This study examines how the stock prices are affected when articles, which negatively describe the companies? incentive programs, are published. According to the efficient market hypothesis, only new information should have an effect on the stock price. Furthermore, this study aims to examine whether this reaction is dependent of the economic climate. During the period of September 2005 to September 2009, stock price data was collected from the NasdaqOMX stock exchange and 75 articles were gathered from leading Swedish newspapers.

Background: Low Price-Earnings ratio, low Book-to market ratio and low stock prices can give the impression that a stock is ?cheap?. Is it through systematic use of these portfolio strategies possible to beat the market index ? in other words does financial illusions exist? Purpose: To examine if the Stockholm Stock Exchange is an efficient market. Limitations: The efficiency is tested solely through the chosen portfolio strategies: low Price-Earnings ratio, low Book-to-market ratio and low stock prices.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of joint venture announcements on stock prices behavior and simultaneously to test the German Stock market (Frankfurter Wertpapierbörse) for efficiency. We tried not only to analyze the general impacts of a JV-announcement but also to look for differences in the market response to announcements of different types of joint ventures, namely: domestic, international, horizontal and vertical. Our expectations of efficient market were confirmed during our paper, which employed the technique of the standard event study. The calculation of abnormal returns which are the signals for market efficiency or inefficiency respectively were based on the market model, establishing linear relationship between the return on the market and the return on an individual security. The parameters of the model were obtained through regression analysis..

Previous research has found an increased transmission of stock movements in Europe, partly caused by the establishment of institutions as the EU and the EMU. The purpose of this paper is to find the possible impact from the EU and the EMU concerning the evolution of international transmission of Stock market movements, on four Scandinavian markets, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The research is based on primary data, existing theories and earlier studies regarding international transmission of Stock market movements. The examined method is a VAR (Vector autoregressive model) including a 10x1 vector of variables. Furthermore the tests considered are correlation, granger-causality, variance decomposition and impulse response.

We investigate if the size of goodwill compared to total assets has any effect on the shareholders return on companies listed on the Swedish Stock market. We put up two different hypotheses with a foundation from previous research and later dismiss one of them. Our evidence does not show any indicators that the size of goodwill have an effect on the shareholders return, which brings us to believe that there, from a share holders point of view, isn?t any need for concern regarding the standards about accounting for goodwill as stated by IFRS. .

The purpose of this Bachelor thesis is to analyze if there is a correlation between stock prices and the amount of searches of the companies names on Google. The theories used in the study were Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH). Regressions analysis is used as the statistical method to see if there is a significant correlation between the stock prices and the amout of searches of the company name on Google. The data used were the rate of return of three companies (ABB, Oriflame and Sandvik) on the Nasdaq OMX Nordic Stock market, the rate of return of the Nasdaq OMX Nordic Stock market index (OMX Stockholm_PI) and the Google search frequency from Google Trends on each company. The result showed no significance and the conclusion of the thesis is that there is no significant correlation between the three studied companies and their search frequency on the search engine Google..

Stock lending is primarily a professional activity. The supply of stocks in the lending market comes mainly from pension funds and insurance companies, while intermediaries provide valuable services by taking positions as borrowers as well as lenders. Borrowers use stock lending for various reasons. For instance, hedge funds usually borrow stocks to cover a short position. There has been a lot of controversy in the stock lending industry and the debate has mainly concerned its effects for the Stock markets.

Stock lending is primarily a professional activity. The supply of stocks in the lending market comes mainly from pension funds and insurance companies, while intermediaries provide valuable services by taking positions as borrowers as well as lenders. Borrowers use stock lending for various reasons. For instance, hedge funds usually borrow stocks to cover a short position. There has been a lot of controversy in the stock lending industry and the debate has mainly concerned its effects for the Stock markets.

It is easy to see that oil has a big part in our economy, by looking at the repeated news from the media and at the Stock market, where they follow the oil price very closely. Behavioral finance is about investors making small or big mistakes in the Stock market. Behavioral finance describes the importance of understanding your own faults, as well as others investor?s faults. Behavioral finance emphases the importance of not assuming that the financial market is a flawless environment, but to understand the psychology behind investment decisions.

Forest as an investment alternative has become more and more popular over the last few years. Between the years 2004 and 2007 increased the price level on forest land with 70 percent in Jämtland. In this thesis a comparison has been conducted between forest in Jämtland and an investment in the Stock market. The risk in the two investment alternatives has been included in the comparison. The thesis includes two different studies between the two alternatives.

The study tries to increase the understanding of the phenomenon known as the Big bath, on the question whether the market accepts Big bath accounting principle or not. Big bath is an accounting theory meaning that a company is likely to increase its impairment in a specific year. This could be as a reaction on a change in the leadership, a depreciation of the result or maybe an external decrease in demand. Through a quantitative survey of the market it is examining whether the companies themselves are inclined to use the procedure and if the Stock market accepts it. The study concludes that Big bath similar procedures are a fairly common accounting practice and that the Stock market does not seem to mind. .

The purpose of this paper is to study whether or not stock returns increase abnormally over month ends on the Swedish stock exchange. Previous research has proven an international so called ?Turn-of-the-Month? effect where stock returns increase significantly over a few days around month ends. If the effect exists, it is a violation of Fama?s Efficient Market Hypothesis.

Introduction: Interplay between all the different subsystems of the financial markets is currently considered as an important internal force in the market. In a financially liberalized economy exchange rate stability is a basis for a wellbeing Stock market. If these interactions between all the different subsystems of the financial markets are not detected, this means that there is information inefficiency in the markets.Problem: Can we find any correlation between changes in currency, interest rate and bonds with the Stock market index? If so, how do these changes affect the Stockholm Stock Exchange?Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine if there is any linkage between the interest rate, currency and bonds with the Stock market. The researchers wanted to find out how these variables affect the Stock market index OMX S30 which consists of the 30 largest companies on the Stockholm Stock Exchange.Method: This research has been based on a quantitative approach.

Background:It is always fascinating to observe the events that affect the Stock market, especially as the numbers of influencing factors are so many and various. Political elections are important events in society and affect the corporate environment in different ways depending on which political party that is in power. This brings up the question of whether political elections are important enough to affect the Stock market; and it is this question we intend to analyse in this paper.Purpose:The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether political elections affect the Stock market and to discuss the reasons for any possible affect that might be found.Procedure:An appropriate and thoroughly tested method to investigate if an event affects the Stock market or not, is to do an event study. Subsequently we chose to do an event study on whether the Swedish general elections in 2002 and 2006 affected the Stockholm Stock Exchange. In order to give the analysis more depth we have also chosen to interview people with knowledge of the Stock market.