IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2402.04775.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Cyber risk and the cross-section of stock returns

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel Celeny
  • Loic Mar'echal

Abstract

We extract firms' cyber risk with a machine learning algorithm measuring the proximity between their disclosures and a dedicated cyber corpus. Our approach outperforms dictionary methods, uses full disclosure and not devoted-only sections, and generates a cyber risk measure uncorrelated with other firms' characteristics. We find that a portfolio of US-listed stocks in the high cyber risk quantile generates an excess return of 18.72% p.a. Moreover, a long-short cyber risk portfolio has a significant and positive risk premium of 6.93% p.a., robust to all factors' benchmarks. Finally, using a Bayesian asset pricing method, we show that our cyber risk factor is the essential feature that allows any multi-factor model to price the cross-section of stock returns.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Celeny & Loic Mar'echal, 2024. "Cyber risk and the cross-section of stock returns," Papers 2402.04775, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2024.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2402.04775
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.04775
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1992. "The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 427-465, June.
    2. Rustam Jamilov & Hélène Rey & Ahmed Tahoun, 2021. "The Anatomy of Cyber Risk," NBER Working Papers 28906, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Chris Florackis & Christodoulos Louca & Roni Michaely & Michael Weber, 2023. "Cybersecurity Risk," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 36(1), pages 351-407.
    4. Whitney K. Newey & Kenneth D. West, 1994. "Automatic Lag Selection in Covariance Matrix Estimation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(4), pages 631-653.
    5. R. David Mclean & Jeffrey Pontiff, 2016. "Does Academic Research Destroy Stock Return Predictability?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(1), pages 5-32, February.
    6. Lewellen, Jonathan & Nagel, Stefan & Shanken, Jay, 2010. "A skeptical appraisal of asset pricing tests," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 175-194, May.
    7. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 2015. "A five-factor asset pricing model," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 1-22.
    8. Antoine Bouveret, 2018. "Cyber Risk for the Financial Sector: A Framework for Quantitative Assessment," IMF Working Papers 2018/143, International Monetary Fund.
    9. Daniel, Kent & Titman, Sheridan, 1997. "Evidence on the Characteristics of Cross Sectional Variation in Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 1-33, March.
    10. Tosun, Onur Kemal, 2021. "Cyber-attacks and stock market activity," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    11. Gibbons, Michael R & Ross, Stephen A & Shanken, Jay, 1989. "A Test of the Efficiency of a Given Portfolio," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(5), pages 1121-1152, September.
    12. Kamiya, Shinichi & Kang, Jun-Koo & Kim, Jungmin & Milidonis, Andreas & Stulz, René M., 2021. "Risk management, firm reputation, and the impact of successful cyberattacks on target firms," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(3), pages 719-749.
    13. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    14. Francisco Barillas & Jay Shanken, 2018. "Comparing Asset Pricing Models," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(2), pages 715-754, April.
    15. Fama, Eugene F & MacBeth, James D, 1973. "Risk, Return, and Equilibrium: Empirical Tests," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 607-636, May-June.
    16. Claire Lending & Kristina Minnick & Patrick J. Schorno, 2018. "Corporate Governance, Social Responsibility, and Data Breaches," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 53(2), pages 413-455, May.
    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. Clarke, Charles, 2022. "The level, slope, and curve factor model for stocks," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 159-187.
    2. Cujean, Julien & Andrei, Daniel & Fournier, Mathieu, 2019. "The Low-Minus-High Portfolio and the Factor Zoo," CEPR Discussion Papers 14153, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Loic Mar'echal & Nathan Monnet, 2024. "Disentangling the sources of cyber risk premia," Papers 2409.08728, arXiv.org.
    4. DeMiguel, Victor & Martin-Utrera, Alberto & Nogales, Francisco J. & Uppal, Raman, 2017. "A Portfolio Perspective on the Multitude of Firm Characteristics," CEPR Discussion Papers 12417, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Lu Zhang, 2017. "The Investment CAPM," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 23(4), pages 545-603, September.
    6. Fletcher, Jonathan, 2018. "Betas V characteristics: Do stock characteristics enhance the investment opportunity set in U.K. stock returns?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 114-129.
    7. Ma, Tian & Leong, Wen Jun & Jiang, Fuwei, 2023. "A latent factor model for the Chinese stock market," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    8. Robert F. Stambaugh & Yu Yuan, 2017. "Mispricing Factors," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(4), pages 1270-1315.
    9. Kelly, Bryan T. & Pruitt, Seth & Su, Yinan, 2019. "Characteristics are covariances: A unified model of risk and return," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(3), pages 501-524.
    10. Long, Huaigang & Zaremba, Adam & Zhou, Wenyu & Bouri, Elie, 2022. "Macroeconomics matter: Leading economic indicators and the cross-section of global stock returns," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    11. Kim, Soohun & Skoulakis, Georgios, 2018. "Ex-post risk premia estimation and asset pricing tests using large cross sections: The regression-calibration approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 204(2), pages 159-188.
    12. Mbengue, Mohamed Lamine & Ndiaye, Bara & Sy, Oumar, 2023. "Which factors explain African stock returns?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    13. Stephen A. Gorman & Frank J. Fabozzi, 2021. "The ABC’s of the alternative risk premium: academic roots," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 22(6), pages 405-436, October.
    14. Maysam Khodayari Gharanchaei & Prabhu Prasad Panda & Xilin Chen, 2024. "Quantitative Investment Diversification Strategies via Various Risk Models," Papers 2407.01550, arXiv.org.
    15. Ciciretti, Rocco & Dalò, Ambrogio & Dam, Lammertjan, 2023. "The contributions of betas versus characteristics to the ESG premium," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 104-124.
    16. Chris Florackis & Christodoulos Louca & Roni Michaely & Michael Weber, 2023. "Cybersecurity Risk," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 36(1), pages 351-407.
    17. Daniel Celeny & Loic Mar'echal & Evgueni Rousselot & Alain Mermoud & Mathias Humbert, 2024. "Prioritizing Investments in Cybersecurity: Empirical Evidence from an Event Study on the Determinants of Cyberattack Costs," Papers 2402.04773, arXiv.org.
    18. Ruanmin Cao & Lajos Horváth & Zhenya Liu & Yuqian Zhao, 2020. "A study of data-driven momentum and disposition effects in the Chinese stock market by functional data analysis," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 54(1), pages 335-358, January.
    19. Cong, Lin William & George, Nathan Darden & Wang, Guojun, 2023. "RIM-based value premium and factor pricing using value-price divergence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    20. Kathrin Tauscher & Martin Wallmeier, 2016. "Portfolio Overlapping Bias in Tests of the Fama–French Three†Factor Model," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 22(3), pages 367-393, June.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:2402.04775. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.