CAN FINANCIAL RATIOS INFLUENCE THE STOCK RETURNS OF FINANCIAL SECTOR COMPANIES IN AUSTRIA?

The stock prices of companies are influenced by many variables; two basic categories are macroeconomic and microeconomic factors. The objective of this paper is to analyze the existence of a relationship between select microeconomic variables and the stock returns of financial sector companies listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange. The institutions that were chosen are Immofinanz AG, Raiffeisen Bank International AG, Erste Group Bank AG, Uniqa Insurance Group AG and Vienna Insurance Group AG. The focus is on Austria due to the lack of empirical literature on problematics of linkages between stock prices and microeconomic factors. A time series with an annual frequency are used to examine the occurrence of long-term and short-term cointegration links using Johansen and Granger tests. The empirical estimates are calculated for the 2005 - 2015 period, which includes the global financial crisis. The findings indicate that select microeconomic factors do not belong to the group of economic fundamentals that affect the stock returns.