This paper examines the capital structure implications of market timing. I isolate timing attempts in a single major financing event, the initial public offering, by identifying market timers as firms that go public in hot issue markets. I find that hot-market IPO firms issue substantially more equity, and lower their leverage ratios by more, than cold-market firms do. However, immediately afte...

Existing literature has found no evidence of market-timing ability by mutual funds using tests based on fund returns. This paper proposes alternative market-timing tests based on observed fund holdings. The holdings-based measures are shown to be more powerful than the return-based measures, and are not subject to “artificial timing” bias. Applying the holdings-based tests, we find strong evide...

We propose market timing strategies aiming to exploit the aggregate accruals’ return forecasting power. We examine several performance metrics of the aggregate accruals based market timing strategy such as excess portfolio return, Sharpe ratio, and Jensen’s alpha. We provide robust evidence that, relative to the passive investment strategy of buying and holding the stock market, the market timi...

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