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.

A trading halt is a measure conducted by a securities exchange in order to reduce information imbalances between market participants, thus enabling a higher level of market efficiency. A market is said to be efficient when new information concerning a company is instantly reflected in its stock price, implying that abnormal Stock returns cannot be systematically achieved in an efficient market. The purpose of this study is to examine the occurrence of abnormal Stock returns following trading halts on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. The study is based on a sample of 64 trading halts executed between January 2003 and February 2008. Historical daily prices for stocks subject to trading halts during the period have been gathered from the Datastream Advance database, while information on date and time of trading halts have been collected from the Stockholm Stock Exchange website.

This study aims at examining if abnormal returns have existed on theSwedish stock market surrounding the ex-dividend period between the years2002 and 2006. The ex-dividend period that is studied is the ex-dividend dayplus the following five days. The stocks that have been studied are the thirtymost traded stocks which together constitute the index OMXS30.Furthermore, the study investigates if the size of the dividend has an effecton the size of the abnormal returns.Previously performed studies on both the Swedish stock market and foreignstock markets have shown that abnormal returns exist during the ex-dividendperiod. However, the results from these studies are not unambiguous, why itis interesting to follow up these studies with a new study.The method used for investigating the existence of abnormal returns aroundthe ex-dividend period has taken its starting point in the previouslyperformed studies. However, some changes have been made in order tocalculate for differences in risk between different stocks (using beta) whichhas been neglected in the previous studies.The results of our study are that abnormal returns have existed for four outof six days in the ex-dividend period when calculating a mean value over allfive years.

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.

The primary purpose of this paper is to find the determinants of first-day returns on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. Our research will cover the 1996 ? 2004 periods. Our secondary purpose is intended to find a profitable trading strategy with regard to future IPOs on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. By using regression analysis, focusing on company specific factors and the IPO process, we hope to find a function exhibiting statistical significance, determining future first-day returns from which construction of a profitable trading strategy will be possible.

Forecasting stock market returns is an interesting topic since more and more Swedes enter and invest in this market. Theory implies, however, that such exercises should be impossible. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the possibility to forecast future Stock returns by looking at macroeconomic variables? history. The study is limited to the Swedish market as it is based on the OMXS30-index which represents the 30 most exchanged stocks on Stockholms¬börsen, the Swedish stock exchange.

The purpose of the study is to investigate whether insiders generate an abnormal return compared with other investors on the Swedish Stock Market. This abnormal return is defined as the cumulative average abnormal return (CAAR). The other purpose is to investigate whether it would be profitable for ?outsiders? to mimic the transactions of insider trades. The results indicate several significant abnormal returns on insider trades, especially on buy transactions.

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..

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether abnormal Stock returns could be identified as a result of a layoff announcement during weak economy.Method: An event study methodology.Theory: Efficient market hypothesis, signal theory.Empirical results: Quantitative data from observations of stock prices in thirty two companies listed on the Nasdaq OMX Stockholm, in the period 2008 -2012.Conclusion: The results indicate that the market reaction was negative because there were negative abnormal returns on the Stockholm Stock Exchange during the period 2008-2012 in connection with the layoff announcements. The market reaction was milder when staff reductions were carried out as a result of a restructuring and stronger when staff reductions were carried out as part of a cost reduction program.The layoff announcements elicited different market reactions depending on the company's industry affiliation. The most negative reaction was in the Healthcare industry. Negative abnormal returns were lower in industries Industrials, Consumer Services and Consumer Goods. There were no abnormal returns for shares of companies in the industry Financials.

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.

This thesis studies the stock price reaction around 68 announcements of special dividends and share redemptions on the Swedish stock market between the years of 2003 and 2007. We show that for the Swedish private investor, the tax effect of a share redemption is lower than that of a special dividend. Moreover, a share redemption could be interpreted as a signal of undervaluation. These two factors lead us to assume that the stock market would react more positively in connection to the announcement of a share redemption. We test this hypothesis through an analysis of the risk-adjusted abnormal return for the observations in the sample.

The question of whether financial analysts can forecast stock movements or not has been widely debated for many years. This study examines if an investor has been able to receive an excess return by following financial analysts? recommendations. We continue by studying if an investor has been able to earn a different excess return by following different types of recommendations. The study includes more than 15,000 recommendations made by 10 first tier banks and brokerages on the Swedish market during the years 2003-2007.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine whether hedge funds generate higher risk-adjusted returns than traditional managed funds in Sweden.Methodology: This study was based on quantitative data about the funds historical returns. The funds historical returns were taken from the database Morningstar and the risk-free rate from the Swedish central bank. Random samples of 36 funds have been divided into three portfolios in the form of a hedge fund portfolio, stock portfolio and mix fund portfolio.Result & Conclusion: The study concluded that the stock portfolio has shown the highest average yield for the study period where all portfolios below market index. Hedge fund portfolio has achieved the highest risk-adjusted return calculated by the portfolios Sharpe Ratio. Of all hedge strategies, arbitrage had the highest average return and risk-adjusted returns..

Background: The value of stock recommendations have been debated for a century andthe debate has escalated since Alfred Cowles (1933) published his research in ?Can StockMarket Forecasters Forecast?? As of late, savings in stocks has increased and the householdsare managing their savings more actively. The consequence of the increased interestin stocks has resulted in a growing market for stock recommendations. Not just financialmedia but daily newspapers have embraced this new found interest, hence stock recom-mendations can be found in almost all large newspapers in Sweden. Furthermore, this phe-nomenon has also lead to intensified research within stock recommendations.

We acknowledge the lack of empirical studies of the performance of analyst target prices in the Swedish stock market by examining the profitability of target prices for stocks publicly traded on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. We use consensus target prices issued between 2006-2010 and create two different strategies to observe the abnormal returns generated during this period. Going long in the top decile stocks with the best target prices and going short in the bottom decile stocks with the worst target prices generates a statistically significant abnormal buy-and-hold return of 8.9%. An active strategy with daily portfolio rebalancing and a timely response to target price changes generates a less significant monthly alpha of 1.4% against CAPM. The results show to be robust against the size effect discovered by Fama and French.