IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finana/v43y2016icp128-134.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does portfolio margining make borrowing more attractive?

Author

Listed:
  • Matsypura, Dmytro
  • Pauwels, Laurent L.

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of a change in the margin rules of the U.S. financial securities markets. These rules determine how much investors can borrow to leverage their investments. Since the 1929 stock market crash, margin loans have been tightly regulated by the Securities and Exchange Act Regulation T. Between 2005 and 2008, the Securities and Exchange Commission modified these margin rules because they were perceived as not adequately reflecting investment risk. The amended rules have made it more attractive for investors to borrow by opening new margin accounts and diversifying their investment positions. This paper tests the hypothesis that the change in the margin rules has increased margin debt across the U.S. securities markets. It provides statistical evidence that this structural change can be dated to the amendments in the rules.

Suggested Citation

  • Matsypura, Dmytro & Pauwels, Laurent L., 2016. "Does portfolio margining make borrowing more attractive?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 128-134.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finana:v:43:y:2016:i:c:p:128-134
    DOI: 10.1016/j.irfa.2015.11.006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521915001969
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.irfa.2015.11.006?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hardouvelis, Gikas A, 1990. "Margin Requirements, Volatility, and the Transitory Components of Stock Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(4), pages 736-762, September.
    2. Thomas Gale Moore, 1966. "Stock Market Margin Requirements," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 74(2), pages 158-158.
    3. Zeileis, Achim, 2006. "Implementing a class of structural change tests: An econometric computing approach," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 50(11), pages 2987-3008, July.
    4. D. Matsypura & V.G. Timkovsky, 2013. "Integer programs for margining option portfolios by option spreads with more than four legs," Computational Management Science, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 51-76, February.
    5. Zivot, Eric & Andrews, Donald W K, 2002. "Further Evidence on the Great Crash, the Oil-Price Shock, and the Unit-Root Hypothesis," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 25-44, January.
    6. Luckett, Dudley G, 1982. "On the Effectiveness of the Federal Reserve's Margin Requirement," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 37(3), pages 783-795, June.
    7. Hansen, Bruce E, 1997. "Approximate Asymptotic P Values for Structural-Change Tests," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 15(1), pages 60-67, January.
    8. Lupi, Claudio, 2009. "Unit Root CADF Testing with R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 32(i02).
    9. Gikas A. Hardouvelis & Stavros Peristiani, 1992. "Margin Requirements, Speculative Trading, and Stock Price Fluctuations: The Case of Japan," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(4), pages 1333-1370.
    10. Zeileis, Achim & Leisch, Friedrich & Hornik, Kurt & Kleiber, Christian, 2002. "strucchange: An R Package for Testing for Structural Change in Linear Regression Models," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 7(i02).
    11. Perron, Pierre, 1997. "Further evidence on breaking trend functions in macroeconomic variables," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 355-385, October.
    12. Hsieh, David A & Miller, Merton H, 1990. "Margin Regulation and Stock Market Volatility," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(1), pages 3-29, March.
    13. Perron, Pierre, 1989. "The Great Crash, the Oil Price Shock, and the Unit Root Hypothesis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(6), pages 1361-1401, November.
    14. Andrews, Donald W K, 1993. "Tests for Parameter Instability and Structural Change with Unknown Change Point," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(4), pages 821-856, July.
    15. Peter Fortune, 2000. "Margin requirements, margin loans, and margin rates: practice and principles," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Sep, pages 19-44.
    16. Grube, R Corwin & Joy, O Maurice & Panton, Don B, 1979. "Market Responses to Federal Reserve Changes in the Initial Margin Requirement," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 34(3), pages 659-674, June.
    17. Serena Ng & Pierre Perron, 2001. "LAG Length Selection and the Construction of Unit Root Tests with Good Size and Power," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(6), pages 1519-1554, November.
    18. Gikas A. Hardouvelis & Panayiotis Theodossiou, 2002. "The Asymmetric Relation Between Initial Margin Requirements and Stock Market Volatility Across Bull and Bear Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(5), pages 1525-1560.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zhang, Ting & Li, Honggang, 2013. "Buying on margin, selling short in an agent-based market model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(18), pages 4075-4082.
    2. Sheng Guo, 2014. "Margin requirements and portfolio optimization: A geometric approach," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 15(3), pages 191-204, June.
    3. Giorgio Canarella & Rangan Gupta & Stephen M. Miller & Stephen K. Pollard, 2019. "Unemployment rate hysteresis and the great recession: exploring the metropolitan evidence," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 56(1), pages 61-79, January.
    4. Tibor Neugebauer & Sascha Füllbrunn, 2013. "Deflating Bubbles in Experimental Asset Markets: Comparative Statics of Margin Regulations," LSF Research Working Paper Series 13-14, Luxembourg School of Finance, University of Luxembourg.
    5. Mohitosh Kejriwal & Claude Lopez, 2013. "Unit Roots, Level Shifts, and Trend Breaks in Per Capita Output: A Robust Evaluation," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(8), pages 892-927, November.
    6. Ramzi Issa & Robert Lafrance & John Murray, 2008. "The turning black tide: energy prices and the Canadian dollar," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(3), pages 737-759, August.
    7. Travaglini, Guido, 2007. "The U.S. Dynamic Taylor Rule With Multiple Breaks, 1984-2001," MPRA Paper 3419, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 15 Jun 2007.
    8. Marta Gómez-Puig & Simón Sosvilla-Rivero, 2015. "“On the bi-directional causal relationship between public debt and economic growth in EMU countries”," IREA Working Papers 201512, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised May 2015.
    9. Perron, Pierre & Rodriguez, Gabriel, 2003. "GLS detrending, efficient unit root tests and structural change," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 1-27, July.
    10. Sang Bin Lee & Tae Yol Yoo, 1991. "Margin Regulation And Stock Market Response: Further Evidence From The U.S. And Some Pacific‐Basin Countries," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 1(1), pages 79-98, September.
    11. Xuan Zhou & Honggang Li, 2019. "Buying on Margin and Short Selling in an Artificial Double Auction Market," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 54(4), pages 1473-1489, December.
    12. Pitarakis, Jean-Yves, 2014. "A joint test for structural stability and a unit root in autoregressions," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 577-587.
    13. Bruce E. Hansen, 2001. "The New Econometrics of Structural Change: Dating Breaks in U.S. Labour Productivity," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 117-128, Fall.
    14. Skrobotov, Anton, 2020. "Survey on structural breaks and unit root tests," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 58, pages 96-141.
    15. Makin, Anthony J. & Ratnasiri, Shyama, 2015. "Competitiveness and government expenditure: The Australian example," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 154-161.
    16. Pierre Perron, 2017. "Unit Roots and Structural Breaks," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 5(2), pages 1-3, May.
    17. Monika Blaszkiewicz-Schwartzman, 2007. "Explaining Exchange Rate Movements in New Member States of the European Union: Nominal and Real Convergence," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2006 144, Money Macro and Finance Research Group.
    18. Domian, Dale L. & Racine, Marie D., 2006. "An empirical analysis of margin debt," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 151-163.
    19. Gómez-Puig, Marta & Sosvilla-Rivero, Simón, 2014. "Causality and contagion in EMU sovereign debt markets," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 12-27.
    20. Cavaliere, Giuseppe & Harvey, David I. & Leybourne, Stephen J. & Taylor, A.M. Robert, 2011. "Testing For Unit Roots In The Presence Of A Possible Break In Trend And Nonstationary Volatility," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(5), pages 957-991, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Margin debt; Margin requirements; Portfolio margining; Financial regulations; Structural change; U.S. securities markets;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:finana:v:43:y:2016:i:c:p:128-134. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620166 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.