The Journal of Finance publishes leading research across all the major fields of finance. It is one of the most widely cited journals in academic finance, and in all of economics. Each of the six issues per year reaches over 8,000 academics, finance professionals, libraries, and government and financial institutions around the world. The journal is the official publication of The American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics.
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Rational Prepayments and the Valuation of Collateralized Mortgage Obligations
Published: 07/01/1994 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1994.tb00082.x
JOHN J. MCCONNELL, MANOJ SINGH
This article presents a procedure for evaluating collateralized mortgage obligation (CMO) tranches. The solution procedure is in the spirit of a dynamic programming problem in which an individual mortgagor's decision to prepay is the feedback control variable―the mortgagor seeks to minimize the value of the mortgage subject to refinancing costs. We employ a two‐step procedure to solve this dynamic programming problem. The first step uses an implicit finite difference backward solution procedure to determine the “optimal” prepayment boundary for a class of mortgagors, each of whom confronts the same proportional refinancing cost. This step is repeated for several different classes of mortgagors that differ in the level of refinancing costs that they confront. The outcome of this first step is a series of prepayment boundaries―one set of boundaries for each level of refinancing costs (i.e., one set of boundaries for each refinancing cost category of mortgagors). In the second step, the prepayment boundaries determined in the first step are used in conjunction with Monte Carlo simulation to value the CMO tranches. The essence of the second step is that when the simulated interest rate hits the boundary for a particular class, it triggers a prepayment scenario for that class of mortgagors. We conduct extensive sensitivity analysis to determine the robustness of this approach (and our solution procedure) to alternative single‐factor models of the term structure of interest rates and to alternative specifications of the distribution of refinancing cost levels confronted by mortgagors. The sensitivity analysis indicates that CMO tranche valuation is not particularly sensitive to alternative models of the term structure so long as the models are consistent with the current yield curve, but, even when alternative specifications of the refinancing cost categories generate nearly identical values for the collateral underlying the CMO (i.e., the generic mortgage‐backed securities), the resulting tranche values can differ widely between the two specifications. The results point out the importance of accurate estimation of the distribution of refinancing costs when the rational valuation model is used for the analysis of CMO tranches.
Seasonalities in NYSE Bid‐Ask Spreads and Stock Returns in January
Published: 12/01/1992 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1992.tb04694.x
ROBERT A. CLARK, JOHN J. McCONNELL, MANOJ SINGH
Using end‐of‐month bid‐ask spreads for 540 NYSE stocks over the period 1982–1987, we document a seasonal pattern in which both relative and absolute spreads decline from the end of December to the end of the following January. Cross‐sectional regressions do not, however, provide evidence of a significant correlation between changes in spreads at the turn of the year and January stock returns. Either there is no cause and effect relation between the coincidental seasonals in bid‐ask spreads and January returns for NYSE stocks or the data are too “noisy” to reveal any relation.