From the Editor

Financial Services Review, Spring 2009 by Michelson, Stuart

1. Introduction

This issue begins Volume 1 8 and my second year as Editor of Financial Services Review (FSR). I would like to thank the board and members of the Academy of Financial Services for their continued support. Conrad Ciccotello has made the transition between editors as easy as possible as resubmissions continue from his years as editor. I continue to work in broadening the scope of articles, while still focusing on individual financial management and personal financial planning. I encourage authors to reach out when discussing implications of their findings in a more comprehensive way. As such, all articles in the Journal will more appropriately relate to financial planning issues.

The lead article in this volume is by Vladyslav Kyrychenko and Pauline Shum of MFC Global Investment Management and York University, respectively. They study individual investor behavior in hold directing investments in foreign stocks and bonds. They find home bias for U.S. investors and show that age, financial wealth, and investor confidence are positively related to direct ownership of foreign stocks and bonds.

The second article by Adam Y.C. Lei of Midwestern State University and Huihua Li of St. Cloud State University examine the impacts of stop loss strategies on the return and risk of individual common stocks. Their findings suggest that the value of stop loss strategies may come largely from risk reduction rather than return improvement.

The third article by S. Gowri Shankar University of Washington, Bothell, proposes a new investment strategy using TIPS and longevity insurance. Using simulations he shows that this investment strategy will guarantee real annual withdrawal rates in excess of 5% with very little risk of financial ruin.

The fourth article by Paul J. Bolster and Emery A. Trahan, both of Northeastern University, examine buy and sell recommendations made by Jim Cramer on his nightly Mad Money show on CNBC. Their results suggest that Cramer's recommendations impact share prices of the companies that he mentions, but the effects are short-lived and reverse for buy recommendations. In general his stock recommendations appear to be neither extraordinarily good nor unusually bad.

The final article in this issue by Bill Hu and Thomas Mclnish of The University of Memphis and Li Zeng of Arkansas State University investigates the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. This Act is intended to combat pump and dump stock spam email schemes aimed at individual investors. They find that only 60% stock spam emails follow these disclosure requirements and emails that disclose conflicts of interest have a lower market impact. Following the peak spam email day, stock prices decline, indicating that individual investors lose money.

Planning is currently taking place for next year's Academy of Financial Services Annual Meeting in Anaheim on October 9 and 10, 2009 in Anaheim. Further information on the meeting is provided on the last page of this journal. If you have any questions on the meeting, contact Halil Kiymaz at hkiymaz@rollins.edu. This meeting is, once again, taking place in conjunction with the Financial Planning Association and should be just as successful as the first.

Thanks to those who make the journal possible, especially the referees and contributing authors. Please consider submission to the Financial Services Review and rely on the style information provided to ease readability and streamline the review process. The Journal welcomes articles over the range of areas that comprise personal financial planning. While FSR articles are certainly diverse in terms of topic, data, and method, they are focused in terms of motivation. FSR exists to produce research that addresses issues that matter to individuals. I remain committed to the goal of making Financial Services Review the best academic journal in individual financial management and personal financial planning.

I would like to thank the Associate Editors of FSR for their assistance in reviewing papers this past year. A list of Associate Editors is on the front cover of the Journal. I feel that one of the hallmarks of AFS is collegiality and the Associate Editors and our reviewers reflect this quality. Whether the decision was to accept, revise, or reject, the suggestions were constructive and improved the papers. The peer review process continues to benefit our profession.

Along with the Associate Editors, below is a list of individuals who served as reviewers as articles during 2008. Thank you very much to those that contributed the quality of FSR through our peer review process.

Angela Fontes, Carl M. Hubbard, Catherine Phillips Montalto, Chris Hughen, Chris Tobler, Christian Koziol, Christine McClatchey, Christine X. Jiang, Christo A. Pirinsky, Dan WaIz, Daniel P. Klein, F. Larry Detzel, Gary Porter, Grady Perdue, Harold Bierman, Jr., Ilia Dechev, James A. Ligon, James F. Devlin, Jean M. Lown, Jennifer Koski, John B Mitchell, John Grable, Jonathan T. Guyton, Julie R. Dahlquist, Kathryn Holmes, KC Ma, Kenneth Yung, Kirt C. Butler, Lance Palmer, Larry J Lockwood, Larry J. Prather, Lars L. Norden, Lewis Johnson, Lloyd Blenman, Michael Hanke, Patricia Hatfield, Paul Gerrans, Ray Sturm, Rich Fortin, Richard J. Bauer, Jr., Robert Dubil, Robert Eisinger, Robert W. Faff, Ruth H. Lytton, Sharon A. DeVaney, Sudhakar S. Raju, Susan Coleman, Thomas S Salisbury, Tom Warschauer, Vladimir A. Gatchev, William Reichenstein, William Trainor Jr.