Network Structures for Asset Return Co-Movement: Evidence From the Chinese Stock Market

Abstract

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This article focuses on the detailed network structure of the co-movement for asset returns. Based on the Chinese sector indices and Fama-French five factors, we conducted return decomposition and constructed a minimum spanning tree (MST) in terms of the rank correlation among raw return, idiosyncratic return, and factor premium. With the adoption of a rolling window analysis, we examined the static and time-varying characteristics associated with the MST(s). We obtained the following findings: 1) A star-like structure is presented for the whole sample period, in which market factor MKT acts as the hub node; 2) the star-like structure changes during the periods for major market cycles. The idiosyncratic returns for some sector indices would be disjointed from MKT and connected with their counterparts and other pricing factors; and 3) the effectiveness of pricing factors are time-varying, and investment factor CMA seems redundant in the Chinese market. Our work provides a new perspective for the research of asset co-movement, and the test of the effectiveness of empirical pricing factors.

Keywords

• Chinese stock market
• asset pricing
• sector index
• minimum spanning tree
• co-movement