Empirical evidence of systemic tail risk premium in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange

This paper assesses the impact of systematic tail risk of stocks, defined as a stock’s exposure to market tail events, on the cross section returns of an emerging stock exchange, especially the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) from January 2002 through June 2018. If stock market investors are crash-averse, then holding stocks that experience high exposure to market tail events should be rewarded with a premium. The paper therefore sets out to determine whether high exposure to market tail events translates into higher returns of stocks traded on the JSE. To achieve this objective, the study extends on the work of Chabi-Yo, Ruenzi and Weigert (2015) based on extreme value theory (EVT) and copula models as well as the traditional asset pricing tools of portfolio formation and cross-sectional regressions. The results of the empirical analysis support the existence of a systematic tail risk premium in the JSE. Interestingly, the effect of systematic tail risk on the cross section of JSE returns is time-varying and independent from that of risk measures such as beta and downside beta and firm characteristics such as book-to-market (BTM) ratio, size and past returns. In addition, the study provides evidence on the impact of financial crises on crash aversion.