The thesis main objective is to establish the determinants for granting executive stock options and to examine their impact on performance for firms listed on OMXS30. The analysis is based on accounting data gathered from annual reports and Thomson Datastream. The empirical results display that firms grant stock options to mitigate the principal-agent problem. Furthermore, risk proves to be positively significant with executive stock options, implying that either executives increase the level of risk after being granted stock options or influence the decision of the remuneration towards stock options when the firm increase the level of risk, in purpose to boost the expected value of their options. No relation between executive stock options and firm performance could be established..

The purpose of this essay is to evaluate stock index bonds return to risk ratio in order to investigate to which degree an investor in a stock index bond take part of the underlying index return and what the investor must pay for the security of not losing his funds. In order to carry out this evaluation an average return per year and the Sharpe ratio will be calculated and a mean- standard deviation analysis will be made. All investigated stock index bonds are based on a Swedish underlying asset.The results show that the stock index bonds haven?t generated a higher risk adjusted return than its underlying asset. The stock index bonds took part of 57 % of the underlying assets return, and the loss of 10 percentage points per year for the stock index bonds compared to its underlying asset can be seen as the cost for the guarantee a stock index bond gives..

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.

This thesis conserns stock options. The writers major task has been to analyse and to show under which circumstanses, according to swedish law, options are considered to be stock options..

Purpose: We have three purposes that will answer our problem questions. Our first purpose is to identify how diversification effects for investors changed between emerging markets and developed markets in the period 1996-2010. Our second purpose is to examine the two crises, IT and financial crisis, and if the correlations between these two crises have changed. Our third purpose is to examine to what extent the Swedish stock market was influenced by other markets in the period 1996-2010, the IT and financial crisis.Methodology: The method is based on an analytic model consisting of two tools; Regression- and Correlation analysis. The Regression analysis will be used when investigating if a change in a foreign stock market affects a change on the Swedish stock market.

Background: Oil is the most dominating source of energy of today, it constitutes for more than 40 per cent of the worlds total energy consumption. This together with the fact that stock in oil companies has soared on the stock exchanges around the world makes oil a very interesting topic to write within. In order to gain knowledge in how to value oil companies, the authors will collect information from theory and through a questionnaire. By applying the information gathered to three companies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange the authors will reach an objective picture of valuation of oil companies.Purpose: To investigate how shares of stock are valuated in the oil exploring and producing industry, and what specific measures and metrics that are used in the valuation of stocks in Exploring and Producing (E&P) companies.Method: By using a qualitative approach for this thesis, the authors will investigate how the valuation of oil companies works and what measures that should be applied. The authors will use a part descriptive and part explorative study.

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.

Objective: The objective of this study is to examine the extent to which the London stock exchange and the US stock exchange Nasdaq respectively contributes to the price discovery of Swedish stocks listed on the Stockholm stock exchange, the London stock exchange and the US stock exchange Nasdaq.Method: The study is a replicate study of the studies by Grammig, Melvin and Schlag (2000) and Eun and Sabherwal (2003). The methodology is based on the methodology of the latter study. The data material consisting of quoted stock prices for three Swedish stocks on the three stock exchanges at five-minute intervals during a 49-day-period in 2003 has been run through different statistical tests in a five-step process.Conclusion: The evidence of this study shows that prices on SSE, LSE and NASD are cointegrated and mutually adjusting. The evidence suggests that in all three cases, price discovery takes place on the home stock exchange SSE. Moreover, LSE contributes more to price discovery than Nasdaq.

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..

The purpose of this study is to examine the expiration day effect on a stocks volatility due to stock option expiration, which is every third Friday in the month on Stockholm stock exchange. Volatility is the standard deviation of a stock. It measures the uncertainty about a stocks future movement. When volatility increases, the chance or probability of a stock going up or down increases. It?s a common rumor among stock traders that stock volatility tends to increase nearby expiration day.

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..

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.

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.

The aim of this study was to develop a simple model for calculating stock costs for bio fuel at Billerud Karlsborg and subsequently recommending a suitable stock level of bio fuel. The stock components considered in the model are GROT (branches and tops), bark, dry wood chips, raw wood chips from barking and sawdust. The calculations are based on a probability distribution of historical deviations between ordered and delivered volumes. The model presents two different ways to manage the supply in case of irregular deliveries. The first way is to stock enough volume to cover the deviations and the second way is to compensate with a quick purchase from the spot market (at extra high purchase prices).

The swedish rule concerning the treatment of employee stock-options have changed and the new wording of the rule will be applicable for the first time in 2010. The previous wording of the rule stated that the employee shall be taxed for the stock-option when moving abroad, even if the option is not exercised. The Swedish Skatteverket and Regeringsrätten have found that this rule is in conflict with the free movement of persons within the European Union. The new wording of the rule states that the employee shall be taxed when the option is excercised, no matter where the employee is situated. A state`s right of taxation of a stock-option determines wheter and to what extent the employee stock-otion derives from that state..