Domestic Institutional Investors Research Articles

Index Returns and Institutional Trading

It is acknowledged that only 2% of the Indian public invest in stock markets. This compares with 55% in the USA and about 25% in the EU. The Indian public is therefore a miniscule proportion of investors and the power of the Indian public to move markets is negligible.This means that most trading activity in Indian stock markets are by institutional investors consisting of Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) and Domestic Institutional Investors (DIIs). It seems reasonable to hypothesize that their trading activities influence market returns. This paper aims to verify whether this hypothesis can be sustained by analyzing historical data and calculating statistics such as correlations, regression coefficients and coefficients of determination between FII and DII trading activity and Nifty 500 returns. The key aspects that have been evaluated are buying and selling by these institutional investors. Buy/sell ratios of these institutional investors have also been evaluated since buy/sell ratios are a proxy indicator that indicates the strength of bullishness by these institutional investors.A similar analysis also been done on Mutual Fund trading activity although mutual fund trading activity is normally subsumed under DII trading activity. Since it can be assumed that Mutual Fund trading arises mostly from the ebb and flow of funds from the investing public, they are an important indicator of general public sentiment.Some significant unexpected results have been obtained as the result of the analysis. For example, it has been found that Domestic Institutional Investor buying has negative impact on Nifty 500 return. This is unexpected since it would normally be assumed that an increase in buying by an important constituency such as Domestic Institutional Investor would likely increase Nifty 500 returns on average.

Do domestic or foreign institutional investors matter? The case of firm information asymmetry in Korea

We examine the impact of institutional investors on the effectiveness of firms' governance in Korea, as evidenced by information asymmetry. We find that lagged institutional blockholdings are negatively related to future information asymmetry measures, primarily through long-term, domestic institutions. We attribute this finding to domestic institutions' proximity advantages in local markets. Our findings imply that policy initiatives aiming to resolve firm-level agency issues in emerging markets may maximize their effectiveness by promoting the active participation of domestic institutions.

Institutional Investors in China: Corporate Governance and Policy Channeling in the Market Within the State

The extraordinary rise of China’s economy has made understanding Chinese corporate governance an issue of global importance. A rich literature has developed analyzing the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) role as China’s largest controlling shareholder and the impact that this has on Chinese corporate governance. However, the CCP’s role as the architect—and direct and indirect controller—of institutional investors in China has been largely overlooked in the legal literature. This Article aims to take the first step in filling this gap in the literature by drawing on Chinese sources and fresh hand-collected empirical, interview, and case study evidence to analyze the meteoric rise of institutional investors in China. It provides a taxonomy of institutional investors in China and reveals how the market for institutional investors has grown and has become increasingly “atomized” as different types of institutional investors have proliferated. The Article reveals how the CCP has actively and gradually promoted the growth of domestic institutional investors, in terms of types and size, through the relaxation of policies and law reforms to improve corporate governance and stabilize the stock market, while limiting the influence of foreign institutional investors. It further analyzes all the Activist Campaigns undertaken by institutional investors in China and maps the network of government bodies, regulations, and tactics that the CCP has developed to directly and indirectly control State-Owned Institutional Investors (SOIIs) and Private-Owned Institutional Investors (POIIs) for the purpose of policy channeling. This Article concludes by taking a step back and briefly considering what this examination of institutional investors tells us about China’s unique form of capitalism and system of corporate governance. It suggests that the rise of institutional investors in China has been strategically developed in a way to reinforce the CCP’s ultimate control over the financial system. However, contrary to what some conceptions of “state capitalism” may suggest, the CCP does not micro-manage institutional investors on a day-to-day basis. Rather, institutional investors normally function according to free-market forces and increasingly perform an important corporate governance role—with the CCP using its policy channeling in a targeted way to stabilize the market in times of crisis, execute important legal and market reforms, and to maintain calm in society during critical political events: what this Article termed as the “market within the state” for institutional investors in China.

IMPACT OF OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE ON R&D INTENSITY: THE STUDY OF INDIAN FIRMS

Investment in R&D has become one of the crucial factors in the survival and competitiveness of firms. Using a sample of 139 Indian firms, the study examines the significance of ownership structure concerning R&D intensity. Results indicate that indeed concentration, as well as, the identity of the investor matters when it comes to strategic decisions like investing in R&D. In that respect ownership concentration has a positive impact, whereas by identity, family shareholders and FIIs exert a positive impact on R&D identity, however, domestic institutional investors of both short-term and long-term have no such effect.

Do institutional investors perform better in emerging markets?

Emerging markets with their imperfections, low liquidity, and dominance of naive retail investors are likely to provide attractive profit-making opportunities for sophisticated and resourceful institutional investors. The institutional investors traditionally had low participation in these markets, but it has grown tremendously during recent years. Therefore, these markets provide a natural experimental setting to understand the implications of their activities on asset pricing and to evaluate their market timing and stock-picking skills. In this study, we compare the performance of foreign institutional investors (FIIs) and domestic institutional investors (DIIs) in one of the important Asian emerging markets.We observe that the institutional investors (FIIs and DIIs) prefer to invest in low-risk (low beta, low book-to-market ratio, and high market capitalization) stocks. The portfolios of the stocks with higher FII holdings have lower returns than those with lower FII holdings, particularly after risk adjustments. Similarly, the portfolio of the stocks bought in a quarter by FIIs offers inferior returns in the next quarter compared to the portfolio of the stocks sold by them. Institutional investors are momentum traders. Their trading activities are negatively autocorrelated, indicating short-termism and cyclicality in their trading behavior. We do not observe any superior market-timing and security picking skills among them.

How volatility affects the behaviour of institutional investors in emerging markets

The investments made by domestic institutional investors (DII) have turned out to be a dynamic force for the development of Indian stock markets. This situation has motivated me to study the nexus between DII's capital flows and stock market volatility. Most studies have taken mutual funds as the proxy for DII. This paper has considered the disintegrated data of DII, which includes mutual funds and insurance companies, banks, and development financial institutions (DFI). The study discloses that out of four DII, insurance companies increase the market volatility. On the other hand, trading of banks, mutual funds, and DFI are helping to decrease the volatility in stock markets. Thus, they contribute to correct the overreaction in stock markets resulting from noise trading. Moreover, all the DII's act as informed traders because they take advantage of the volatile markets for investments.

The Informational Response of Different Investor Types on Futures Return Fluctuations: Evidence from Taiwan’s Index Futures Market

This article examines the price impact of different types of investors' trading activities in the Taiwan index futures market on the market, and explores the information roles of different types of investors. We find the trading volumes of different investors in the index futures market affect futures returns through information. The impact on index futures returns in the current period is small, showing the ability of foreign institutional investors to quickly respond to negative news and obtain information advantages. Further, from the MSE and QLIKE loss functions, individual investors use EGARCH(1,1), domestic institutional investors TGARCH(1,1), and foreign institutional investors GARCH(1,1). Further, the imbalance of buy and sell orders is suitable for the fluctuation of futures returns using EGARCH(1,1).

Institutional investors and the value of excess cash holdings: empirical evidence from Pakistan

PurposeThis study examines the effects of foreign and domestic institutional investors on the value of excess cash holdings in the context of Pakistan where the institutional setting is broadly considered as non-friendly to outside shareholders due to family control.Design/methodology/approachA panel sample of 220 listed firms on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) was employed over the period 2007–2018. Data on institutional ownership are collected from the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) Capital IQ Public Ownership database, while the financial data are collected from Compustat Global. The study uses ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with year and firm fixed effects as the main econometric specification. Moreover, the application of models with alternative measures, high-dimensional fixed effects and two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression are also conducted for robustness.FindingsRobust evidence was found that unlike domestic institutional investors, which do not influence the value of excess cash holdings, foreign institutional investors positively affect the contribution of excess cash holdings to firm value. The positive effect on excess cash holdings' value is mainly driven by foreign institutions domiciled in countries with strong governance and high investor protection. Moreover, this effect is stronger in firms that are less likely to have financial constraints.Originality/valueThis study provides novel evidence on the effect of institutional investors on the value of excess cash holdings in an emerging market like Pakistan. It also adds to the literature by revealing that the effect of different groups of institutional investors on the value of excess cash holdings is not homogenous.

Study of Stock Market Management in Reference to Institutional Investment

The institutional investors, whether the DII (Domestic Institutional Investor) or FII (Foreign Institutional Investor) contribute to the growth and management of stock market. The stock market is very dynamic in nature and the volatility is prevalent across. It is important to understand the relation of different institutional investors on the stock market. Foreign institutional investors and Domestic institutional investors are two major sources from which the stock market receives its investment. Thereby, it is necessary to understand the cause and effect of these investments on the stock market. The flow of fund from the foreign investors is one of the reasons for the growth of Indian Stock Market. The cause-and-effect study gives us a better picture of the stock market movement and this study focuses on finding the same. The study will help investors and stockbrokers to understand the movement of the stock market in a better way. In this study, cause and effect between the FIIs, DIIs and Stock Market returns is analysed. The statistical tools used for analysis are Granger Causality test and Johansen Co-integration test. Both the statistical tool used are reliable and the expected results will be highly beneficial for the investors at large. The results shows that there is cause and effect relation between the FII and DII, but the co-integration between the FIIs, DIIs and stock market is absent. The study will contribute in understanding the behavior of stock market.

Departmental stores in India: financial performance analysis

Learning outcomes After completion of the case, students will be able to understand the following: how to understand financial statements, income statements and cash-flow statements with the help of ratios; understand the concept of shareholding pattern along with different entities, namely, non-promoters, foreign institutional investor, domestic institutional investor and others; financial ratio analysis with traditional DuPont and extended DuPont analysis; understand the differences between comparable firms; how to analysis return, risk, covariance, correlation, market risk and capital assets pricing model (CAPM) and how to suggest an appropriate investment strategy. Case overview/synopsis The case presents company background and financial statements of four companies listed under departmental stores in India, namely, Vmart retail, V2 retail, Avenue Supermarts (known as DMart) and future retail. Students are asked to determine, which company is performing better to make a recommendation for investment. Students learn the tools of financial ratio i.e. profitability, efficiency, liquidity and market-based ratio along with the traditional DuPont decomposition and the extended DuPont analysis. Students also learn how to measure stock return, standard deviation, covariance, correlation, market risk and CAPM. Complexity academic level This case is suitable for management accounting, financial analysis and security analysis and portfolio management courses at the post-graduate or graduate levels. The case can be used in similar courses such as in financial statement analysis courses or security analysis and portfolio management courses. Supplementary materials Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes. Subject code CSS: 1 Accounting and finance.

An Examination of the Weekdays’ Anomaly in the Trading Behavior of Institutional Investors in the Post-Demonetization and GST Regime in India

This study analyzed the trading activities of foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) and Indian mutual funds (IMFs) across weekdays. The present study aimed to enrich the literature related to the efficient market hypothesis and day-of-the-week anomaly present in the trading behavior of FPIs and IMFs across weekdays. The study examined the daily purchasing, selling, and net investing activities of FPIs and IMFs in equity instruments of the Indian capital market for 3.1 years, beginning November 1, 2016 and ending November 30, 2019. During this period, the Indian capital markets adjusted to the up-and-down sentiments of market players in the context of demonetization and GST regimes. This study aimed to achieve two objectives, that is, examining the day-of-the-week effect on trading activities of FPIs and IMFs and comparing the trading patterns of FPIs and IMFs on individual trading days with the rest of the weekdays with the help of autoregressive dummy variable regression, ANOVA, and independent-sample t - test. It was empirically determined by the present study that there was a day-of-the-week effect present in the behaviors of both foreign and domestic institutional investors. Monday, Thursday, and Friday were ascertained to have the most significant impact on the trading activities of institutional investors. Hence, individual investors can avail the opportunities to reap extraordinary returns from the Indian capital markets by closely monitoring institutional investors’ trading activities.

Stock market liberalization and institutional herding: Evidence from the Shanghai-Hong Kong and Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connects

Using the Shanghai-Hong Kong and Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connects (the Connects) as exogenous shocks to the liberalization of China's A-share markets, we study the impact of stock market liberalization on the herding behavior of domestic institutional investors. We find a robust and negative impact of the Connects on the level of institutional herding in connected Chinese A-share stocks. The impact is more pronounced for firms with smaller market capitalizations, less analyst coverage, or higher stock illiquidity, i.e., firms with higher information asymmetry. Moreover, the Connects improve the transparency of connected firms by improving audit quality, decreasing earnings management, and reducing stock price synchronicity. The improvement is greater for stocks that are more intensively traded by Hong Kong investors. Finally, the Connects amplify the price impact of institutional herding without causing price reversals. Overall, our results suggest that the Connects reduce the institutional herding in connected A-share stocks by reducing information asymmetry.

Dynamic prediction of Indian stock market: an artificial neural network approach

PurposeArtificial neural network (ANN) is a powerful technique to forecast the time series data such as the stock market. Therefore, this study aims to predict the Indian stock market closing price using ANNs.Design/methodology/approachThe input variables identified from the literature are some macroeconomic variables and a global stock market factor. The study uses an ANN with Scaled Conjugate Gradient Algorithm (SCG) to forecast the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensex.FindingsThe empirical findings reveal that the ANN model is able to achieve 93% accuracy in predicting the BSE Sensex closing prices. Moreover, the results indicate that the Morgan Stanley Capital International world index is the most important variable and the index of industrial production is the least important in predicting Sensex.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings of the study have implications for the investors of all categories such as foreign institutional investors, domestic institutional investors and investment houses.Originality/valueThe novelty of this study lies in the fact that there are hardly any studies that use ANN to forecast the Indian stock market using macroeconomic indicators.

Institutional Investors and Home-Biased REITs

Real estate investment trusts (REITs) are frequently considered an investment opportunity for institutional investors due to their above-average returns with respect to other financial instruments. Due to the unique characteristics of the real estate market, geographically specialized (home-biased) REITs can normally benefit from higher-quality information for selecting investment opportunities and from a reduction of the cost of monitoring and servicing asset owners. Home-biased REITs can be particularly appealing for institutional investors because the addition of this type of asset to an already diversified investment portfolio can optimize the risk–return of their investment strategy and mitigate the concentration of real estate investments. This paper considers all the REITs in Standard & Poor’s Global REIT Index and evaluates the percentage of investment released by (domestic and foreign) institutional investors and its change over time. Focusing on REITs’ international real estate exposure, this paper shows that geographical diversification matters for investment decisions made by international investors and the results are robust with respect to the time horizon and the proxy for ownership concentration.

Domestic Institutional Investors and Sectoral Indices of India: A Toda Yamamoto Approach

The study investigates the behavioural dependence of domestic institutional investors (DIIs) with the sectoral indices of the national stock exchange of India. For the first time in the Indian context, the domestic institutional investors are studied in a broad sense, i.e. the study not includes merely mutual funds, but financial institutions, insurance companies and venture capital funds also. The results reveal positive and strong behavioural dependence of many sectoral indices in the national stock exchange on financial institutions, insurance companies and mutual funds. The Correlation results support the results of Toda Yamamoto model by showing strong and positive correlations of sectoral indices vis a vis financial institutions, insurance companies and mutual funds. The results of the Toda Yamamoto model for venture capital fund, on the other hand, are insignificant with weak correlation. In contrast to the findings of many previous studies that mutual funds do not affect future stock returns the current study reports that causality runs from financial institution, insurance companies and mutual fund investments to sectoral indices of national stock exchange of India. These results illuminate the important role played by domestic institutional investors in Indian stock markets.

Does share‐holding pattern affect firm performance? Evidence from India

In this paper, we investigate the impact of promoters and institutional investors' equity ownership on the firm performance in the Indian context. Using a sample of 1583 firms during 2010–2019, our results suggest a positive relation between promoter ownership and firm performance, supporting the alignment effect, where the interests of promoters and managers align in the same direction. On the one hand, our results support the global advantage hypothesis in that the foreign institutional investors (FIIs) positively impact the firm performance, implying that the FIIs are vigilant shareholders, and actively monitor the firm performance. On the other hand, we reject the hometown advantage hypothesis since the domestic institutional investors (DIIs) like banks and other financial institutions are found to have negative relation with firm performance. Overall, we conclude that shareholding pattern does affect the firm performance. Our results are insensitive to various robustness tests.

Are the shareholding and trading behaviors of diverse investors affected by the relaxation of day trading?

The day trading in Taiwanese stock market expands considerably at the beginning of 2016, which increases the transactions of stocks consequently and sparks our interest in exploring the issue of day trading. In this study, we use the data of Taiwan Stock Exchange listed firms to investigate whether the day trading volume over total trading volume (hereinafter referred to as the day trading ratio) and the turnover ratio enhanced by the increase of day trading volume would affect the shareholding and trading behaviors of diverse institutional and individual investors. Unquestionably, we bring out several impressive findings. First, foreign institutional investors would not prefer holding or trading the stocks with high day trading ratios, whereas individual investors would prefer holding these kinds of stocks. We infer that this finding might result from the fundamental and the speculative concerns of these various investors. Second, domestic institutional investors and security dealers would prefer trading the stocks with high turnover ratios, but foreign institutional investors still lack of interest in trading these stocks, implying that the investment strategies would be dissimilar among various institutional investors. Since foreign institutional investors are regarded as the successful institutional investors in Taiwan, we argue that our revealed results may help market participants trace the behaviors of diverse investors, especially the foreign institutional investors, after day trading relaxation in Taiwan.

Do Lower Foreign Flows and Higher Domestic Flows Reduce Indian Equity Market Volatility?

This study examines the relationship that both domestic and foreign institutional net equity flows have with the India stock markets. The motivation behind is the study to examine whether increased net equity investments from domestic institutional investors has reduced the influence of foreign equity flows on the Indian stock market volatility. Our results indicate that only during periods in which domestic equity inflows surpass foreign flows by a significant margin, as seen during 2015–2018, is the Indian stock market volatility not significantly influenced by foreign equity investments. However, during periods of re-emergence of strong foreign net inflows, the Indian market volatility is still being impacted significantly, as has been observed since 2019. Furthermore, we find that both large-scale net buying and net selling by domestic funds increased the stock market volatility as observed during 2015–2018 and COVID-impacted year 2020 respectively. The implications of this study are multi-fold. First, the regulators should discuss with industry bodies before enforcing major structural changes like reconstituting of mutual fund investment mandate in 2017 which forced domestic funds to quickly change portfolio allocation amongst large-cap, mid-cap and small-cap stocks resulting in higher stock market volatility. Second, adequate investor educational and awareness programmes need to be conducted regularly for retail investors to minimize herd behaviour of investing during market rise and heavy redemptions at times of fall. Third, the economic policies should be stable and forward-looking to ensure foreign investors remain attracted to the Indian stock markets at all times.

Payouts and stock ownership

Using a unique Swedish database that records the ultimate stockholdings in public firms, we decompose stock ownership by domiciles using votes rather than cashflows. We then study the impact of variables related to the lifecycle theory of dividends and the catering theory of dividends. We also examine the propensity of firms to pay dividends and/or activate a stock buyback program. Univariate analysis reveals a positive association between a firm’s maturity and its likelihood to pay dividends. Logistic regression finds a positive relation between payouts and retained earnings to total assets. Foreign institutional investors are less likely to hold dividend-paying stocks than domestic institutional investors. The analysis finds no support for the catering theory of dividends. After controlling for stock ownership, our evidence is consistent with the lifecycle theory of dividends, which states that more mature firms are associated with dividends. It also supports the transaction cost hypothesis claiming that foreign investors face additional administrative costs when holding dividend-paying stocks.

Impact of Ownership Structure on Dividend Policies of Indian Non-Financial Firms

Our work is based on how ownership structure influenced and impacted dividend payment decisions of Indian non-financial companies that are listed and part of NIFTY 100. Dividend payment is one of the major financial decisions, which has potential to influence the value of companies. As part of ownership structure, which is the main independent variable of the study, we considered shareholding of promoters, foreign institutional investors (FIIs), and domestic institutional investors (DIIs) and investigated the impact of their shareholding on dividend payout decisions, which is the dependent variable in this study. We used return on assets (ROA), debt equity ratio, and size of companies as instrument variables. Our results indicated that ownership structure of Indian non-financial companies is of concentrated type and chiefly concentrated in the hands of promoters and groups. Using two-stage least squares regression model and with the help of instrument variable method, we found promoters, foreign institutional investors, and domestic institutional investors – all to be sharing a significant negative relationship with dividend payment decisions of companies, demonstrating the dominant shareholding type of companies engaged in sharing profits with shareholders in the form of dividends at lower rates and preferring to retain major chunk of profits for future investments and capital requirements.