The Effect of Invisible Intangibles on Volatility of Stock Prices

Abstract

The study seeks to investigate the effect of invisible intangible assets on volatility of stock prices as an important indicator of firm value. Valuations of volatility of share prices have become a major challenge for firms; several literature evidences suggests that firm value is not only restricted to physical assets value but also to non-physical assets. The study examines whether invisible intangible assets represented by the amount of costs incurred on research and development, marketing and compensation affects the volatility of stock price. The study relies on secondary data of 59 publicly traded companies in Jordan selected from different economic groups for the period from 2012 to 2016. An OLS regression was run and the results of the entire data set gives significant positive correlation between marketing costs and volatility of stocks; whilst compensation costs was positively negative correlated to stock prices and finally the costs of research and development did not prove any effect on volatility of stock prices.