Conventional Funds Research Articles

The power of religion: Islamic investing in the lab

Faith-based mutual funds have recently become a growing corner of the mutual fund industry. Morality and ethics are thought to exert an influence on investors' decisions in this segment, though their role in driving such investments is not clear as these funds are also attractive due to their distinct risk-return profile. If non-pecuniary motives are predominant, investors in such funds may be less sensitive to financial performance, resulting in different fund flows patterns relative to conventional funds. This paper fills the gap in the literature, by providing an express linkage between religious preferences and investment in an Islamic fund. Using an incentivized lab experiment, we compare the extent to which investors with religious preferences are likely to accept inferior financial performances to pursue investments aligned with their religious preferences. We show that those with stronger religious preferences are more likely to stick with their investment in Islamic funds when these funds underperform. We do not find that social preferences play a similar role in socially responsible funds, and we find that investors prefer religious investments over socially responsible investments, providing strong evidence that religious investors do not view socially responsible funds as substitutes for Islamic funds.

Spotting Portfolio Greenwashing in Environmental Funds

AbstractThis paper examines greenwashing practices in environmental funds. We utilize a unique data set of US equity mutual fund holdings between 2012 and 2021 to calculate the funds’ carbon footprints. Using a difference-in-differences analysis, we find that, following their commitments to sustainability, environmental funds fail to reduce their carbon footprints relative to a matched group of conventional funds. We also find, using an event study, a significant increase in the flows of environmental funds in response to these commitments. The combination of the failure to reduce carbon footprints and the surge in inflows provides evidence of greenwashing by environmental funds, raising concerns about their fiduciary duty. Our findings also show that greenwashers tend to initially have low flows and high portfolio carbon emissions suggesting that they announce their commitments to sustainability just to attract investors.

Does Islamic Mutual Fund Bear Higher Risk than Conventional Mutual Funds? An Empirical Analysis from Bangladesh

This study aims to identify whether Islamic mutual funds bear higher risk exposure than conventional mutual funds due to implementing their shariah screening criteria to select assets on the portfolio. For this purpose, monthly closing price data of Islamic and conventional funds operated in Bangladesh are collected from January 2016 to August 2023. A total of 2320 observations of each risk measure (e.g., standard deviation, semi-standard deviation, semi-standard deviation, and beta) are computed using a 12-month rolling window method to compare risk exposure between Islamic and conventional funds using univariable and multivariate analysis. The univariate analysis is conducted by performing an independent samples t-test, which confirms that overall, Islamic funds bear lower risk exposure than conventional funds. In multivariate analysis, the Feasible Generalized Least Square (FGLS) method, a dynamic panel data analysis model, is applied where the effects of macroeconomic variables such as deposit rate, GDP growth rate, exports, imports, broad money, and remittances are controlled. The results of the multivariate analysis also confirm that Islamic mutual fund risk exposure is lower than that of conventional mutual funds. This study will be helpful for practitioners and institutional investors in decision-making.

Investment funds are responsible for substantial environmental and social impacts

Sustainable investing is under risk of being watered down by greenwashing given the lack of standardized and reliable indicators for measuring impact at financial product level. Here we propose 13 environmental and 13 social life-cycle-based, ready-to-use, and policy-relevant impact indicators that can be adapted for sustainability assessment of financial products. These indicators are aligned primarily with the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) for investment funds. As practical application, we estimate the impacts of a sample of 230 self-labeled sustainable investment funds for all indicators. Their total estimated environmental impacts and social impacts are large and vary between 2.1 and 28.4 times the impacts associated with the consumption of a one million EU citizens, depending on the indicator. Moreover, we have found similar impact ranges within a sample of conventional funds, given the heterogeneity of funds. However, when comparing two funds that are equivalent sustainable/non-sustainable pairs, we find that the sustainable fund is better on specific impact categories, but not all of these, therefore hinting towards trade-offs in terms of impact categories also for sustainable funds.

Financial performance of mutual and pension funds focused on the natural resources sector

The natural resource sector plays a critical role in advancing sustainable development. However, fossil fuels, precious metals, and mineral extraction require large investments, which mutual and pension funds may assume when allowing fund managers to fulfil their fiduciary duties. This study examines the financial performance of conventional, natural resource, energy, and precious metal-related mutual and pension funds, considering the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. We adopted a five-factor model with a sample of 42 natural resource funds, 45 energy funds, 45 precious metal funds, and 2172 conventional funds from January 2016 to December 2022. The results indicate that driven by fund managers’ reverse stock-picking skills, the precious metal fund category reaches the lowest mean risk-adjusted return in relation to the energy, natural resources, and conventional fund categories. Additionally, the COVID-19 global health crisis negatively affected the mean risk-adjusted returns on the energy, precious metals, and conventional funding categories. A similar effect is observed in the natural resource pension fund category, while its matching mutual fund category achieves similar financial performance during the non-crisis and crisis periods.

On the superior performance of SRI funds

We compare the performance of 1126 US mutual funds deemed socially responsible to that of a matching sample of conventional funds over the three-decade period January 1980–December 2019. The comparisons are made over the entire period as well as the descending (bear) and ascending (bull) market subperiods, classified either according to the NBER method or the regime switching model. Our results indicate that SRI funds outperform their peers over the entire sample period. Additionally, regardless of the method used to the identify market condition or the asset pricing model employed, SRI funds as a group significantly outperform their conventional counterparts during bull markets but insignificantly so during bear markets. However, all-equity SRI funds and those that includes Equity and Fixed Income funds, significantly outperform their peers under either regime, with both methods and for all asset pricing specifications. Further examination indicates that the main driver of differences in the performance of SRI funds and their conventional peers can be attributed to their superior selection ability.

Islamic, ethical and conventional mutual funds: a comparative study (1990–2022)

Purpose This study aims to test mutual fund superiority, comparing the performance of 646 Islamic mutual funds with 475 ethical funds and conventional proxies. Design/methodology/approach This study uses statistical methods including paired t-statistics of independent samples, one-way Bonferroni test–analysis of variance–F-statistic for testing means equality, the chi-squared test for median equality and regression models corrected for heteroscedasticity. These methods are used to identify superiority of mutual funds and to validate the significance of the results. Findings The findings confirm the superiority of conventional funds over ethical funds and ethical funds over Islamic funds. Both ethical and Islamic funds, however, outperform conventional proxies during some recessionary periods. Moreover, stronger performance is recorded for Islamic funds in Europe and North America regions and across age and asset allocation categories, but limited support for reversal fund size, composition focus and reversed price effect. Research limitations/implications These findings should assist investors when deciding to invest and motivate Islamic and ethical funds to improve their portfolio formation and asset allocation strategies set by their professional managers. Originality/value The originality of this study is in its comprehensive approach in that it compares the performance of funds after accounting for such characteristics as fund objectives, size, age, asset allocation, geographical investment focus, fund composition focus, share price levels and the effect of global crises. This study approach is not only original and productive in documenting Islamic funds’ performance for the past three decades (1990–2022) but can also update the literature on these characteristics collectively and individually.

Exponential growth of ESG funds: a comparison of funding speed and profitability

In this paper, the general objective is to investigate and compare the speed of fundraising and the profitability of ESG Funds in relation to traditional investment funds in the Brazilian financial market between 2010 and 2021. To achieve this goal, we focused on three specific objectives: analyzing the growth rate of ESG Funds' net assets, evaluating the profitability of these funds and examining the impact of macroeconomic variables such as GDP, IPCA and interest rate (CDI) in this context. Using a quantitative methodology, the research analyzed comprehensive financial data on the funds, including information on asset value and profitability indicators. The results show an exponential growth in the ESG Funds' assets over the period studied, setting them apart from traditional funds. In addition, the profitability of ESG Funds proved to be competitive, often surpassing that of conventional funds, suggesting a paradigm shift in the Brazilian financial market. This study provides valuable insights into the evolution of ESG Funds in Brazil, highlighting their growing importance and potential for economic sustainability. The analysis of macroeconomic variables also revealed that ESG Funds not only remain resilient in different economic scenarios, but can also offer a sustainable and profitable path for investors aware of environmental, social and governance challenges.

Sustainable finance disclosure regulation insights: Unveiling socially responsible funds performance during COVID‐19 pandemic and Russia–Ukraine war

AbstractThe transition towards a more sustainable financial market demands transparency and trust from investors, objectives also pursued by the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR). Specifically, carefully assessing the risk‐adjusted performance of sustainable funds empowers investors to make informed decisions in alignment with their ethical and financial objectives. This article contributes to the debate on the performance of socially responsible investment (SRI) funds in times of crisis by evaluating the risk‐adjusted performance of a sample of SRI and conventional funds, ranked in light of the SFDR, during the COVID‐19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war. Using a two‐step analysis, the results of the study show that funds with clear sustainability objectives, as defined by Article 9 of the SFDR, were able to outperform conventional funds, but only a few months after the onset of the crisis periods, thus demonstrating poor performance persistence. At the same time, sustainable funds with a focus on financial materiality, as defined by Article 8, were never able to generate significantly different risk‐adjusted performance from conventional funds. Our results show that the lack of performance persistence of Article 9 funds prevents an effective hedging role for investment strategies that consider extra‐financial criteria. They also confirm that the classification criteria introduced by the SFDR still need to be more specific and create more transparency in financial markets.

Performance Comparative Analysis of Sharia Mutual Funds and Conventional Mutual Funds

This study aims to compare the performance assessment of Islamic and conventional mutual funds for 2017-2021. This study uses quantitative research, which analyzed the performance of Islamic and conventional mutual funds for 2017-2021. This study relies on secondary data collected from the official website of the Financial Services Authority (OJK). The research compares the performance of Islamic stock mutual funds, mixed mutual funds (comprising both Islamic and conventional funds), and mixed conventional mutual funds using the Sharpe, Treynor, and Jensen methods. Among these methods, the Sharpe method stands out as providing a superior performance evaluation compared to Treynor and Jensen. Both Islamic and conventional stock mutual funds receive a positive assessment, deemed as "good." However, in the case of mixed sharia mutual funds and conventional mutual funds, the former is considered to have a better assessment due to its perceived safety, offering a more secure alternative compared to conventional mutual funds, which carry higher risk.

Are green and socially responsible funds more efficient than conventional funds? A DEA approaches

PurposeThe main goal of this paper is better understand the risk/return trade-off of investing in socially responsible investment funds (SRIF) and green investment funds (GIF).Design/methodology/approachTo achieve our aim a green investment fund portfolio, a socially responsible investment portfolio and a conventional fund (CF) portfolio from the United States of America (USA) were selected to compare the efficiency of these three different portfolios, by using Value-Based Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methodology.FindingsThe results point out that SRIF and GIF are more efficient than CF. For five years, the CFs have not outperformed the GIF.Originality/valueThe results suggest that there is a growing awareness on the part of investors that sustainable companies are the companies that will allow a better quality of life and a more sustainable environment. It seems that somehow managers and investors are aware that the market will compensate them for thinking about a cleaner and more equitable world.

Conventional or Shariah Compliant Investment: Performance Evaluation of Mutual Funds in Pakistan

The current study was initiated to compare the performance of conventional and Shariah-compliant mutual funds in Pakistan, keeping in view the contradictory opinions found in the literature in this regard. The data utilized to conduct the analysis covered the time span 2013-2021. Assessment of risk and return tradeoff was made with three ratios, namely Jenson’s alpha, Treynor ratio, and Sharpe ratio by evaluating the monthly returns of conventional and Shariah-compliant mutual funds. The findings revealed that Shariah-compliant mutual funds outperformed conventional funds in terms of absolute risk measure, higher Sharpe ratio, and low coefficient of variation. While, in terms of funds’ exposure to systematic risk, mixed results were obtained for both types of funds. The results produced sufficient information about the risks and returns associated with the two kinds of mutual funds which would enable fund managers and investors to make informed decisions while selecting the best mutual fund, thus generating maximum returns and with minimum risks.

Are SRI funds financing carbon emissions? An input-output life cycle assessment of investment funds

Indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (scope 3) generally represent more than half of the total life cycle impact attributable to a company or an investment. However, widely used sustainability assessment tools for investment funds fail to take these into account. Building on best practices from the industrial ecology field, we develop an input-output life cycle assessment (IOLCA) methodology to estimate life cycle GHG emissions of companies and investment funds. We apply our method to a sample of 1340 sustainable (SRI) and conventional equity funds domiciled in Europe and their 11,275 unique holdings. We extend our application to a case study of funds self-classified as Article 8 and Article 9 funds under the recent European Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR, 2019). Our model estimates life cycle emissions for 94% of the companies held – compared to 17% coverage in the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). When including scope 3, the exposure to GHG emissions of both SRI and conventional funds is two to three times larger than when considering only direct impacts from holdings' operations. Finally, 24% of the sampled Europe-domiciled SRI funds are more exposed to life cycle carbon emissions than the ETF tracking the conventional market index MSCI Europe.

Islamic Fund Managers' Market Timing Abilities and their Impact on Fund Performances

This study examines Shariah-compliant fund's financial performance compared to conventional funds based on managerial timing abilities. Compared with traditional fund managers' timing skills, the study focuses on the most neglected area of Shariah-compliant manager timing abilities, liquidity, and volatility timing abilities. The study uses 69 funds whose significant exposure is the equity between January 2010 and June 2022, consisting of three investment styles: equity, asset allocation, and balanced funds. The study incorporates volatility factors based on Busse (1999) and liquidity factors from Amihud (2002) into the Carhart (1997) four-factor model. The study found that Islamic fund managers have better liquidity and volatility timing skills than conventional fund managers. The results are robust for analyzing individual funds based on different liquidity measures. There is no substantial evidence that Islamic and traditional fund managers can predict market returns.

Spillover Effect in Islamic and Conventional Fund Family: Evidence from Emerging Countries

This study examines star and poor funds belonging to fund families in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia from 2007–2020. The analysis is divided into two parts. The first part examines how Islamic and conventional star and poor funds contribute to the overall flow of their respective fund families. Second, it examines and compares the spillover effect of Islamic and conventional star (poor) funds to peer funds. These effects are estimated using pooled fixed- and random-effects regression analysis. Overall, we find that having at least one-star fund leads to new money growth for families, whereas there is no effect from having at least one poor fund. The presence of star (poor) funds has mixed effects on new money flow to peer funds. To be precise, the spillover effect is found only in the presence of Islamic star funds. These findings have important implications for investors because they mainly choose funds based on the reputation of the fund family to which they belong, not on their fundamentals. This is especially pronounced in emerging markets, where funds are young and have short track records, and so they provide little information to investors to make sound investment decisions.

Analysis of Selectivity, Timing, Persistence and Correlation of Islamic vs. Conventional Saudi Mutual Funds

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the selectivity and timing performance and persistence in active Saudi mutual funds through a comparative work involving 100 Islamic funds against 51 conventional funds trading in Saudi TADAWUL stock Exchange from 2010 to 2015. We have split each group based on 6 regional investment categories: Local, International, Arab, Asian, European and American (US). We employed specific models to assess selectivity and timing performance. Then we investigated their persistence. Findings indicated superior selectivity with Arab Islamic funds compared to conventional peers and similar negative selectivity in both Islamic and conventional International funds. In addition, there was evidence of selectivity with US conventional funds, and none with Islamic peers. Furthermore, results showed significantly higher timing with local and Arab conventional funds compared to their respective Islamic peers. As for the performance persistence, there were signs of selectivity and timing persistence for both Islamic and conventional funds, mostly on local, International and Arab levels. Nevertheless, Islamic funds’ performance persistence in both skills was longer. Finally, both Islamic and conventional selectivity and timing were negatively correlated overall, indicating skills’ mutual exclusiveness and specialization. We recommend studying a larger sample, for a longer period. Different grouping may be applied, based on asset classes, i.e. Equity, Bond, Balanced, Income, etc. The study can even extend to a multi-market or multi-regional investigation i.e. MENA region.

Fund flows and performance: New evidence from retail and institutional SRI mutual funds

In this paper we provide a comprehensive analysis of the performance of US SRI mutual funds as well as its relation to the flow of new money that those funds experience in the context of investors sophistication. In particular, we compare the performance of SRI funds with their conventional peers, matched by both managers and characteristics criteria, using several performance measures. We investigate the role of investors sophistication and its influence on the flow-performance and performance-flow relations within the retail and institutional SRI fund shareclasses. For the analysis of the flow-performance relation we use portfolio approach along with monotonic relation test, while the shape of the flow-performance relation is studied using piecewise linear panel regressions. For the performance-flow relation, the flow and unexpected flow portfolios are formed and their risk-adjusted performance is evaluated. We find that SRI mutual fund sector earns positive abnormal returns before expenses and retail SRI funds outperform their institutional peers both, before and after fees. No differences in performance when we consider SRI and conventional funds run by the same management companies. Moreover, we find a positive flow-performance relation which is convex for retail SRI funds but no convexity is found for the institutional ones. We cannot confirm the smart money effect for retail SRI funds, instead we find a dumb money effect for SRI institutional funds. Our paper provides new insights into the role of the investors sophistication for those relations in the presence of sustainability preferences.

In Search of Sustainability and Financial Returns: The Case of ESG Energy Funds

The world is facing several challenges, and the problem of sustainable development is one of the most important. It is worth considering that European countries are playing a significant role as pioneers in building a sustainable world, such as those promises made by signing the Paris Agreement and European Taxonomy. To achieve ambitious targets within sustainable development, a huge amount of capital is necessary, while financial and capital market participants are expected to demonstrate a high level of engagement in the domain of sustainability. Facing growing interest and demand, a relatively new product—the ESG (environmental, social, and governance) investment fund—was introduced. Scientific literature is providing some controversial views regarding the overall evaluation of this product. Therefore, additional research providing different angles would contribute to a better understanding. This study examines European ESG funds in the energy sector, from the perspective of news flows and investors. It is worth noting that the authors use the word “European” to refer to members of the European Union (EU). The paper consists of the following parts. In the introduction, the current state of this issue is discussed. The following section offers a literature review and a news flow analysis that contributes to a deeper understanding of these issues. A description of the methodology applied for the data analysis follows this, and the final section presents the research results and conclusions. The authors apply statistical analysis and the Carhart model to determine the differences in the performance of the ESG and conventional funds and use their own tool for text analysis to examine the relevance of the topic of ESG to attract client interest. The authors claim that the performance of the European ESG equity funds do not show a statistically significant difference from the non-ESG equity funds in the majority of the periods examined. The application of the adjusted Carhart model demonstrates that the factor of sustainability has a non-significant and negative effect on the fund performance. Finally, the authors highlight the urgent necessity for the unified usage of keywords and terminology, such as “ESG”, “sustainability”, etc., to ensure comparison and attribution possibilities.

Financial performance persistence in islamic and conventional fund family: Developing market evidence

The paper investigates performance persistence in both Islamic focused (IFFs) and conventional focused fund families (CFFs) in four emerging markets (Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Pakistan) from 2007 to 2021 using contingency tables. In the overall sample, we find that positive (negative) persistence in IFFs (CFFs) exists only in the short-run (one-month). At the country level, IFFs demonstrate positive persistence up to one month in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia and six months in Malaysia. For CFFs, negative persistence appears up to one month in Malaysia and six months in Indonesia. Surprisingly, the positive persistence of Indonesian IFFs changes to negative persistence in six months, before disappearing completely later. This result confirms the existence of short-run persistence for both IFFs and CFFs. This study presents new evidence for the persistent performance of fund families in emerging markets.

The green and Brown performances of mutual fund portfolios

The past decade has seen an increasing interest in socially responsible investing (SRI) in the mutual fund industry. Central to this development is whether SRI funds underperform conventional funds. Using a novel approach and a sample of 2,255 mutual funds, we decompose fund portfolios into socially responsible (green) and non-socially responsible (brown) components. We find that, in comparison to the non-socially responsible component, the socially responsible portion exhibits a lower raw return, lower risk-adjusted return (alpha), lower Sharpe ratio, and similar degree of performance reversal. The magnitude of this underperformance is, however, relatively small. The results align with SRI having a limited negative impact on fund performance while potentially offering some diversification benefits.