Conflicts of interest in stock recommendations of foreign security firms

[[abstract]]本文以台灣股票市場為例，研究外資機構的投資建議是否存在利益衝突，以及調查營業員對外資股票推薦的反應。結果發現在研究期間的13家外資機構中，瑞士信貸有多次達到利益衝突指數的最高值，平均而言，台灣摩根士丹利、美商高盛、瑞銀證券、摩根大通的利益衝突指數偏高，而德意志亞洲的利益衝突指數最小。在營業員對30種外資股票推薦的反應調查中，選擇「買進」最多的是「調高每股盈餘」(約占46%)，選擇「賣出」最多的是「劣於大盤」(約占57%)。建議一般投資人不宜過度依賴外資的股票推薦，否則可能成為外資利益衝突下的獲利來源。[[abstract]]Using data from Taiwan stock exchange this paper studies whether conflicts of interest exist in stock recommendations of foreign institutions and investigates the responses of stockbrokers to stock recommendations of foreign institutions It shows that among 13 foreign institutions Credit Suisse attained the highest level in the conflict of interest index several times during the study period On average the conflict of interest index was relatively high for Morgan Stanley Taiwan Goldman Sachs UBS Securities and JP Morgan Chase; Deutsche Securities Asia had the lowest level In the survey of stockbrokers’ responses to 30 stock recommendations of foreign institutions most stockbrokers (about 46% of them) choose “buy” when they see “increasing in earnings per share” in the stock recommendation and most of them (around 57% of stockbrokers) choose “sell” when they see “worse than the market” The results suggest that investors should not totally rely on the stock recommendations of foreign institutions otherwise they would be the source of profits of conflicts of interest of foreign institution