Present scholarship targets to examine the robustness of EVA in Pakistan and information content while controlling prior research ignored firm-specific factors towards excess stock returns. The design of this research used panel data analysis whereby relevant, incremental information content and event analysis of EVA and conventional accounting performance measure via share prices is done by employing nested panel data analysis for 70 non-financial PSX listed companies from 13 industries for a study period of 2006-2015. Against prior research, EVA doesn’t add to the incremental information content of the model. Moreover asymmetric results were revealed using nested and separate regression analysis. This study is aimed to benefit stakeholders in the context of prudent investment choice. This study identifies ROA as the most important financial performance metric for local investor’s decision making. However firm-specific characteristics like financial leverage, liquidity, and firm size also play a pivotal role.

Theory of overconfidence states that investors are highly overconfident when valuing the stocks. Self-attribution has been found by the researchers as the root cause for overconfidence bias in investors. Investors attribute the high stock prices and returns with their own art of picking up the stocks, and thus they trade more frequently. In order to test overconfidence and self-attribution Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model has been employed to find out the long-term relationship between endogenous variables: market return and market turnover and exogenous variables: volatility and dispersion. Results revealed that there exists a strong positive relationship between market returns and trading turnover. Also, the crosssectional standard deviation in market prices i-e volatility and the cross-sectional variation in stock returns i-e dispersion has a very strong impact on trading pattern and returns. Since investment decisions made by Pakistani investor largely depend upon psychological factors, giving less weightage to all the fundamentals, the trading pattern exhibited may collectively tend the market behave in an irrational manner.

The macroeconomic version of the APT is of great significance in examining the return on assets. It analyzes the estimated security return with reference to various macroeconomic variables. Despite availability of research studies related to the developed and emerging stock markets of the world, still a research gap exists for exploring the frontier markets like equity market of Pakistan. The study examines the long and short term impact of macroeconomic variables on the KSE 100 index for the period of July 1996 - June 2015. Cointegration technique and VECM models have been applied. Among these variables, GDP, inflation, exchange rate, unemployment rate, labor force cost and stock market of US were found significant for explanation of effects on return of stock market of Pakistan. The study findings have potential implications for both policymakers and investors pertaining to macroeconomic factors and stock market volatility.