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The turn-of-the-month (TOM) effect is observed as one of the seasonalities in many markets. The author examines the TOM effect in the KOSDAQ market and finds that the effect is significant. The TOM effect in the KOSDAQ market is not due to size, turn-of-the-year, turn-of-the-quarter or index rebalancing effect. The author also finds that individual and institutional traders do not trade and buy more stocks at the TOM than on the rest days, not consistent with existing explanations of the increased liquidity by individual investors or institutional window-dressing activity. When the author investigated the net buying volume and net turnover of each investor, the net volume and turnover of individual investors at the TOM were significantly lower than those on the other days, rejecting the hypothesis of their increased demand. Interestingly, net foreign volumes at the TOM are significantly higher than on the other days. Finally, using panel regressions, the author finds that stocks with a higher net buying volume of foreigners for the TOM period tend to have higher returns, while stocks with a higher net buying volume of individual traders for the TOM period are likely to have lower returns. The results confirm that the TOM effect is not due to the increased demand of individual investors. Instead, higher net buying volume by foreigners may partially cause the TOM effect. Therefore, this study contributes to the literature by revealing the presence of the TOM effect in the KOSDAQ market and the foreign role in the anomaly in the market even mainly traded by retail investors.

Although it has often been studied in finance research, the relationship between dividend yields and stock returns remains an unresolved issue, especially in the Korean stock market. When firms continue to pay non-decreasing dividends for three or five years, they may establish a dividend reputation, which could affect this relationship. The author found firms that pay more dividends, larger firms, older firms, more profitable firms, less leveraged firms, firms with less volatile returns, firms with foreign holdings of more than 5%, and firms with more concentrated ownership build dividend reputations. The author also found that the relationship between dividend yields and future stock returns depends on a firm’s dividend reputation. The evidence shows that when firms with higher yields have dividend reputations, they produce higher future returns, whereas there is no significant relationship between yields and returns for firms with no reputation. These results are inconsistent with the findings of studies that use developed market data. In addition, when larger firms with higher growth potential and firms with less concentrated ownership have dividend reputations, future returns are higher.

The authors examine the effect of split environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings on information asymmetry, corporate value and trading behavior. The authors test the risk-based hypothesis and the optimism-bias hypothesis on the relationship between diverging opinions and future stock prices. The authors results show that split ESG ratings is positively related to idiosyncratic volatility, an alternative measure for information asymmetry. Further, the negative effect of split ESG ratings on cumulative abnormal return under short-selling constraints is consistent with the optimism bias hypothesis. The authors find a negative relationship between split ESG ratings and the net purchase ratio (NPR) of pension funds. Considering that the NPR is a direct measure of net demand, ESG disagreement may hinder socially responsible investing (SRI) in a firm. This study directly demonstrates the negative effect of ESG disagreement on firm value and investment by Korea's National Pension Service (NPS). The results offer valuable insights into policymakers, as the wide divergence in ESG ratings requires urgent attention to expand SRI.

Using the next-day and next-week returns of stocks in the Korean market, we examine the association of option volume ratios – i.e. the option-to-stock (O/S) ratio, which is the total volume of put options and call options scaled by total underlying equity volume, and the put-call (P/C) ratio, which is the put volume scaled by total put and call volume – with future returns. We find that O/S ratios are positively related to future returns, but P/C ratios have no significant association with returns. We calculate individual, institutional, and foreign investors’ option ratios to determine which ratios are significantly related to future returns and find that, for all investors, higher O/S ratios predict higher future returns. The predictability of P/C depends on the investors: institutional and individual investors’ P/C ratios are not related to returns, but foreign P/C predicts negative next-day returns. For net-buying O/S ratios, institutional net-buying put-to-stock ratios consistently predict negative future returns. Institutions’ buying and selling put ratios also predict returns. In short, institutional put-to-share ratios predict future returns when we use various option ratios, but individual option ratios do not.