Domestic Institutional Investors Research Articles

Do Local Investors Exhibit Smart Value Investment? Empirical Evidence from India

We have studied the investment behaviour of ‘foreign institutional investors’ (FIIs) and ‘domestic institutional investors’ (DIIs) in the Indian stock market for positive feedback trading and smart money value investments. We have collected the daily investment of FII and DII in Indian stock markets along with NIFTY daily returns. We have used multivariate causality approach VAR and found that FII investments follow positive feedback trading approach whereas DII follow smart money value investments in the Indian stock market.

An Analysis of Trading Behaviour of Foreign and Domestic Institutional Investors in the Indian Stock Market : An Empirical Study

An Analysis of Trading Behaviour of Foreign and Domestic Institutional Investors in the Indian Stock Market : An Empirical Study

Political connections and income smoothing: Evidence of institutional investors’ monitoring in Malaysia

This study explores the association between politically connected firms (PCFs) and income smoothing. Using a Malaysian dataset from 2002 till 2015, this study finds that PCFs are more likely to engage in income smoothing activity, in comparison with non-PCFs. Further, smoothing income in PCFs is encouraged by institutional investors, as it is perceived as an attempt to convey useful private information to investors. However, the moderating effect of institutional investors are largely driven by domestic institutional investors. This study extends prior literature on income smoothing, by suggesting that political connection is a key determinant in engaging in income smoothing activity, particularly in countries where crony capitalism and political patronage is deeply entrenched.

Activism failure of state-owned pension funds with board seats in Brazil

There is no clear positive and significant impact of institutional investor activism in Brazil possibly due to lack of skills, portfolio diversification motivations (Sonza & Granzotto, 2018), and conflicts of interest (Maranho, Leal, & Bortolon, 2020). This article investigates two high profile activism cases to assess these conjectures and address two very large and widely held Brazilian companies, which had good corporate governance indicators and were not state-controlled or closely regulated. The cases involve the two largest Brazilian pension funds, both sponsored by state-owned companies because their size and importance would make a positive outcome more likely. Yet, in both cases, the pensions funds failed in their attempts, even when acting jointly with other foreign and domestic institutional investors. The conclusion suggests that these investors may lack skills to assess the likelihood and consequences of events that occurred soon after their investment and that changed the fundamental nature of their investees. This study places the lack of activism success under the general discussion of the challenge of costly active versus passive portfolio management. Finally, there was no evidence of conflicts of interest and political alignment of these state-related pension funds in these two activism situations

Examining Granger Causality in the Behavioral Reactions of Institutional Investors— Evidence from India

The study examines the behavioral reactions of foreign and domestic institutional investors in the Indian stock market. It poses some critical questions on whether these two types of institutional investors have common investing behavior, and whether foreign institutional investors (FIIs) affect domestic institutional investors’ (DIIs) strategies. Vector error correction model (VECM) is used to examine the trading and investing behavior of these institutional investors. Granger causality test is used to check if foreign institutional investment strategy influences domestic institutional strategy or vice versa. The results indicate that neither foreign institutional investors’ sell (FIISELL) activities affect domestic institutional investors’ sell (DIISELL) activities nor DIISELL affects FIISELL. This may have a crucial policy implication that both institutional investors have independent trading strategies, especially when it comes to selling stocks. But both institutional investors’ sale transactions do affect their own buy transactions implying that any of the institutions’ selling activities should be supported by their buying activities.

Institutional Investors and Corporate Performance: Insights from China

This study uses the annual data of Chinese A-share listed companies held by institutional investors during the period of 2005–2016 for empirical analysis. First, this study uses the panel regression model to explore the relationship between institutional ownership and stock return volatility. Then, the CAPM one-factor model and the Fama–French three-factor model are used to analyze the relationship between institutional ownership and idiosyncratic risks. Finally, we estimate the relationship between institutional ownership and corporate governance. Furthermore, we compare the empirical results before, during, and after the crisis. This study uses the Hausman test and the endogenous test to validate the results. The empirical results show that the management behavior of independent institutional investors is more obvious post-crisis. However, gray institutional investors have no impact on idiosyncratic risks. In the regression of the CAPM one-factor model, domestic institutional investors have effectively reduced the idiosyncratic risks before the financial crisis. Foreign institutions’ monitoring performance before, during, and after the crisis is not obvious. All institutional ownership has a significant positive impact on the top 10 shareholders, but independent and domestic institutional ownership has a significant negative impact on senior shareholders. Institutional ownership has little impact on the movement of the first shareholder and CEO.

Accessing the Equity Return Volatility Effect of East and South Asian Nations: The Econometrics Modelling Method

In financial management, the equity market performance is the critical element of equity market returns volatility wherever the shareholder’s resilience around the instability subsists. The data is collected from the authenticated secondary sources for the analysis. This paper shows that the 2008economicpredicament, as well as the effect above proceeding developing financial prudence of the globe, is found in the equity return instability connation of developing financial prudence (2004-2015). By the GARCH model, it can be examined that as the information from the U.S.A. stock market news has an essential consequences on the earnings of the S&P 500 stock market index, the indices of the east, as well as south Asian nations, has also influenced by the news of U.S.A. The GARCH model is estimated for the U.S.A. stock market news has a substantial effect or not on East and South Asian nation's daily share market returns. The outcomes show that market earnings in the equity market in east and south Asian nations are incredibly reliant on their historical earnings. It is found that Tokyo Topic (4.8929) is a highly volatile stock index among the East and South Asian stock returns, and the low volatile stock index is DSEX (0.0068). The news of the U.S.A. stock market has affected the equity market of India, Japan, China, and Korea, which are included in the East and South Asian stock market. In all the country’s share markets, found most significant variance in the equity income instability. This study is essential for the shareholders looking for the diversification in the portfolio, domestic institutional investors and foreign institutional investors

Investors and dividend yields

This paper examines investor preferences for holding stocks with different dividend yields in a low market interest rate environment. Using a unique dataset reflecting the ultimate stock ownership in publicly traded Swedish firms, we examine if different categories of investors have specific preferences for dividends and the size of the dividend yield. We find that domestic institutional investors, unlike foreign investors, have higher holdings in stocks with a high dividend yield. Using multivariate analysis, we document that stock portfolios with dividend-paying stocks outperform those with non-dividend-paying stocks. After controlling for the size of the dividend yield, we obtain mixed results involving stock performance for dividend-paying stocks and the results indicate no strong difference in the period following cuts in market interest rates.

How does firms’ integrated market power affect upstream trade credit and institutional ownership? Evidence from Taiwan

This paper investigates how a firm's integrated market power affects upstream trade credit and institutional ownership in emerging markets. Using data from the Taiwan Economic Journal (TEJ) for the period 1996–2017, and combining factor analysis as well as a variety of regression models, we show that firms' integrated market power (IMP) is negatively correlated to the use of upstream trade credit. We also document that highly integrated market power firms can attract not only foreign institutional investors but also domestic institutional investors. Furthermore, the effect of market power is consistent across the electronic and traditional sectors; however, the impact of market power is larger in the electronic sector than in the traditional sector.

Price Momentum in Korea and the Effect of Investors’ Trading

This study investigates domestic individual, institutional and foreign investors’ trading, to test Hong and Stein (1999)’s behavioral explanation that momentum profit is generated as some uninformed investors underreact to information on medium-term prices. Using Hvidkjaer (2006)’s methodology, we examine the respective investors’ trading tendencies reflected in their active price-setting orders. We analyze a special database compiling details on every transaction for the stocks listed on the KSE during 1996:12~2009:08. During 2001~2007, individual investors’ underreaction in trading large-size winner stocks contributes to positive momentum profits. They seem to induce weak negative profits to emerge in 1997~2000, too. Foreign investors underreact to small-size loser stocks, incurring positive momentum profits during 2001~2007. They engage in positive feedback trading, when they trade large-size winner stocks. This trading tendency does not seem to be based on information on firm fundamentals, as we find those winner stocks’ returns are not sustained. Institutional investors’ trading seems to be relatively in line with future returns, but evidences are not strong enough to support they are informed investors. Overall, the behavioral hypothesis on investors’ underreaction seems to explain medium-term momentum profits in Korea, but evidences differing across subsamples suggest possibility of other unknown influences.

Board Quality and Earnings Management: Evidence from India

This article examines whether board qualities influence the earnings management behaviour of firms in a large emerging market set-up by using panel data of 783 Indian private manufacturing firms over a period of 7 years (April 2009–March 2016). The study finds that it is board quality that helps in curbing earnings manipulation and not just board independence. Results reveal that diligent and busy boards help in reducing earnings management, CEO duality affects the quality of reported earnings and promoters’ influence on boards increases earnings management. Domestic or foreign institutional investors do not have any independent impact on earnings management. However, domestic institutional ownership reduces earnings management when promoters’ influence exists. The article contributes to the literature by focusing on whether corporate governance (CG) mechanisms are important in curbing earnings management in an emerging market context. The findings are expected to be helpful to policymakers and regulators while framing appropriate CG policies and regulations.

Market timing skill of foreign portfolio investors in India

This study examines the market timing skill of foreign portfolio investors (foreign institutional investors or FIIs) in India as a group. A simulated portfolio is constructed that invests in the market index replicating the patterns of aggregate net FII flow. Similar portfolios are constructed replicating the trading behaviour of domestic institutional investors (DIIs) and investors of other categories. The performance of these portfolios is compared with the performance of two benchmark portfolios. The results based on bootstrapped modified internal rate of return of investment portfolios suggest that the FII portfolio does not outperform the benchmark portfolios, nor the portfolios representing investment strategies of DIIs and other investors. Our results suggest that the FIIs do not have superior market timing skills.

Analyst tipping: Evidence on Finnish stocks

Market analysts typically present their views on firms through publicly released recommendation reports and revisions, in which they ‘upgrade’ or ‘downgrade’ their stock picks. Traders can earn substantial profits if they have access to the information in these reports in advance of their public release. Analysts have an incentive to tip their major clients by earning commission on informed trades. Using data from the Nasdaq Helsinki between 2001 and 2014, we find evidence of analyst tipping. Trading patterns reveal that domestic institutional investors buy recommended stocks from four days prior to upgrades and sell from one day prior to downgrades. We also find evidence that the Market Abuse Directive slightly reduced analyst tipping in the two years following its implementation.

Impact of Foreign and Domestic Institutional Investors on Indian Stock Market

In a market, investors belong to a versatile category, as they may be classified as retail investors or institutional investors. Institutional Investors can be Domestic Institutional Investors (DIIs) and Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs). Both the segments of investors pursue a distinct strategy of investment. Many studies have been conducted on the FIIs trading pattern but very less has been conducted on the DIIs. So, in this study the impact of domestic institutional investors along with foreign institutional investors is examined with respect to Indian Stock Market. BSE is one of the most traded stock exchange; so to complete the study SENSEX is taken as a bench mark index of BSE. To find the said relationship, net trading data on daily frequency has been taken for DIIs and FIIs. Data has been collected from April 2007 to April 2018. Various tools like Correlation, VAR and Granger Causality test have been applied.

Ethnic board diversity, earnings quality and institutional investors: evidence from Malaysian corporate boards

AbstractMotivated by calls to examine the issue of board diversity in emerging economies, this study explores the association between ethnic board diversity and earnings quality; and the moderating effect of institutional investors’ ownership. In a sample of Malaysian firms, we find that boards with higher ethnic diversity are associated with higher earnings quality. Consequently, our findings suggest that institutional investors prefer boards to be ethnically diverse. Consistent with geographical proximity theory, this effect is primarily driven by domestic institutional investors. Finally, we find that political connection attenuates the association between ethnic board diversity and higher earnings quality.

Does domestic institutional ownership increase return volatility? The French context

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the impact of domestic ownership on the stock return volatility. The authors use a detailed panel data set of 89 French companies listed on the SBF 120 over the period 2006-2013. The empirical results show that the domestic institutional investors have low stock price volatility in the French stock market. This result implies the stabilizing factor of domestic investors in France stock markets, which can be considered as one of the potential favor of growing the exhibition of domestic stock markets to institutional investors. This study employs a variety of econometric models, including feedbacks, to test the robustness of our empirical results.Design/methodology/approachTo explain the relation between stock return volatility and domestic institutional investors (DIIs), the authors used two complementary methods: two-step generalized method of moments analysis as well as panel vector autoregressive framework and two-stage least squares (2SLS) method.FindingsThe authors’ empirical results show that the proportion of DIIs with advanced local degrees stabilizes the stock price volatility. However, firm’s size and the turnover have a positive effect on the volatility of the stock returns. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that the firm’s size and the turnover will increase price volatility during a financial crisis as a result of the deterioration of the monitoring mechanism and the reduction of the investors’ confidence in firms.Originality/valueThis result also indicates that the variables (the firm’s size, total sales and debt ratio) are poor corporate governance and have a role in the increased the stock return volatility.

Geopolitical Risk and Trading Patterns of Foreign and Domestic Investors: Evidence from Korea

AbstractWe examine how geopolitical risk affects investors’ investment strategies in the Korean market. The information advantage hypothesis predicts that foreign investors become more reluctant to invest in the portfolios of foreign countries due to increased information asymmetry following geopolitical risk escalation while the international diversification hypothesis predicts that foreign investors will not reduce the size of their foreign portfolios because their wealth portfolios are sufficiently diversified. Using a novel measure of geopolitical risk, we find evidence consistent with the information advantage hypothesis: when North Korea risk is highly escalated, foreign investors reduce while domestic investors increase the value of their Korean portfolios, and domestic institutional investors significantly outperform foreign investors due to increased information asymmetry.

Pricing models of shares of Russian companies and their practical application

The article analyzes the problems of applying stock pricing models in the Russian stock market. The novelty of the study lies in the peculiarities of the methodology used and the substantive conclusions on the specifics of the influence of fundamental factors on the pricing of shares of Russian companies. The study was conducted using its own 5-factor basic pricing model based on a sample of the most complete number of issues of shares of Russian issuers and a long time horizon, from 1997 to 2017. The market portfolio was the widest for a set of issuers. We consider the factor model as a kind of universal indicator of the efficiency of the stock market performance of its functions. The article confirms the significance of factors of a broad market portfolio, size, liquidity and, in part, momentum (inertia). However, starting from 2011, the significance of factors began to decrease as the qualitative characteristics of the stock market deteriorated due to the outflow of foreign portfolio investment, combined with the low level of development of domestic institutional investors. Also identified is the cyclical nature of the actions of company size and liquidity factors. Their ability to generate additional income on shares rises mainly at the stage of the fall of the stock market. The results of the study suggest that as domestic institutional investors develop on the Russian stock market, factor investment strategies can be used as a tool to increase the return on investor portfolios.

The Early Returns to International Hedge Fund Activism: 2000–2010

In this summary of their recent article in the Review of Financial Studies, the authors provide an overview of the methods and findings of the first comprehensive study of worldwide hedge fund activism—one that examined the effectiveness of some 1,740 separate “engagements” of public companies by 330 different hedge funds operating in 23 countries in Asia, Europe, and North America during the period 2000‐2010.The study reports, first of all, that the incidence of shareholder activism is greatest in companies and countries with high institutional ownership, particularly U.S. institutions. In virtually all countries, with the possible exception of Japan, large holdings by institutional investors increased the probability that companies would be targeted by activists. Nevertheless, in all countries (except for the United States), foreign institutions—especially U.S. funds investing in non‐U.S. companies—have played a more important role than domestic institutional investors in supporting activism.The authors also report that those engagements that succeeded in producing “outcomes” were accompanied by positive and significant abnormal stock returns, not only upon the announcement of the activist's block purchase, but throughout the entire holding period. “Outcomes” were identified as taking one of four forms: (1) increases in dividends or stock buybacks; (2) replacement of board members; (3) corporate restructurings such as sales or spinoffs of businesses; and (4) takeover (or sale) of the entire company. But if such outcomes were associated with high shareholder returns, in the many cases where there were no such outcomes, the eventual, holding‐period returns to shareholders, even after taking account of the initially positive market reaction to news of the engagement, were indistinguishable from zero.The authors found that activists succeeded in achieving at least one of their proposed outcomes in roughly one out of two (53%) of the 1,740 engagements. But this success rate varied considerably across countries, ranging from a high of 61% for North American companies, to 50% for European companies, but only 18% engagements of Asian companies—with Japan, again, a country of high disclosure returns but unfulfilled expectations and disappointing outcomes. Outcomes also tended to be strongly associated with the roughly 25% of the total engagements that involved two or more activists (referred to as “wolfpacks”) and produced very high returns.

Information‐Processing Costs and Breadth of Ownership

ABSTRACTUsing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's mandate of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) as a natural experiment, this study investigates whether and how the decreased information‐processing costs brought about by XBRL influence firms’ breadth of share ownership. We find that the XBRL mandate is associated with an increase in the total number of a firm's shareholders. This finding is consistent with the notion that XBRL facilitates a more transparent environment and decreases information‐processing costs, thereby attracting more shareholders in general. More interestingly, we find that while XBRL adoption is associated with an increase in share ownership of individual and non‐U.S. foreign institutional investors, it is associated with a decrease in share ownership of U.S. domestic institutional investors. Further evidence shows that this asymmetric shift in share ownership is more pronounced for more complex firms. Our findings, taken together, suggest that the decreased information‐processing costs brought about by XBRL help firms establish a level playing field by reducing the information disadvantages of individual and foreign institutional investors over domestic institutional investors. Our results are robust to potential endogeneity concerns and alternative research designs.