Passive Investment Research Articles

Reintermediation in FinTech: Evidence from Online Lending

AbstractWe document the unique structure of the peer-to-peer lending market. Originally designed as decentralized, the market has become highly, but not fully, reintermediated. The platforms’ software now performs essentially all tasks related to loan evaluation, whereas most lenders are passive and automatically fund most applications on offer. Yet unlike banks, and in contrast to theories predicting full reintermediation, the platforms provide detailed loan information, and some active loan pickers coexist with passive investors. We argue that while intermediation attracts unsophisticated passive investors, transparency in the presence of active investors resolves the lending platform’s moral hazard problem inherent in intermediated markets.

More Risk, More Information: How Passive Ownership Can Improve Informational Efficiency

Abstract We identify a novel economic mechanism through which passive ownership positively affects informational efficiency in the cross-section of firms. Passive investors’ inelastic demand lowers a firm’s cost-of-capital, inducing it to take more risk. The higher cash flow variance, in turn, incentivizes active investors to acquire more precise private information, pushing up price informativeness for firms with high passive ownership. High passive ownership also implies higher stock prices and higher stock-return variances. An increase in the aggregate size of passive investors amplifies these cross-sectional differences. We also document complementarities in firms’ real investment and investors’ information choices that can cause information crashes. Received May 31, 2020; editorial decision January 4, 2023 by Editor Holger Mueller. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online

The great sell-side sell-off: evidence of declining financial analyst coverage

PurposeMotivated by significant global developments affecting the sell-side industry, in particular a shift toward passive investments and growing regulation, this study examines whether financial analyst coverage declined over the past decade and if any loss of analyst coverage is associated with a change in forecast accuracy.Design/methodology/approachAfter investigating, and confirming, a general decline in analyst following, the authors calculate the loss of analyst coverage relative to the firm-specific maximum between 2009 and 2013. In multivariate analyses, the authors then examine whether this loss of coverage differs across geographic region, firm size and capital market development, and whether it is associated with consensus analyst accuracy.FindingsResults indicate that between 2011 and 2021, firm-specific analyst coverage globally declined 17.8%, while the decline in the EU was an even greater, 28.5%. Within the EU, results are most pronounced for small-cap firms. As a consequence of the loss of coverage, the authors observe a global decline in forecast accuracy, with EU small-cap firms and firms domiciled in EU non-developed capital markets faring the worst.Originality/valueThis study is the first to document a concerning global decline in analyst coverage over the past decade. The study results provide broad-based empirical support for anecdotal reports that smaller firms in the EU and those in EU non-developed capital markets bear the brunt of consequences stemming from changes in the sell-side analyst industry.

Trading Strategies Using Technical Indicators: An Active Portfolio Management Approach

The study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of active trading strategies developed using technical indicators against the buy-and-hold passive investment strategy. It uses the simple moving average (SMA), Bollinger band (BB), and moving average convergence divergence (MACD) as technical indicators to generate the buy and sell signals. The study uses the data of treasury bills as a proxy for a risk-free portfolio and the Nifty Total Return Index (TRI) as a proxy for a risky equity portfolio in daily frequency from June 30, 1999 to March 31, 2021. It creates the cumulative wealth index for the sample period using active portfolio management based on the buy and sell signals generated using various technical indicators. The findings suggest that SMA and MACD trading strategies provide better risk-adjusted returns than the buy-and-hold and Bollinger band trading strategies. Also, the shorter days moving average outperforms the longer days moving average trading strategy. The trading strategies perform better during the bear market than the bull market.

Active versus Passive: In the Bond Universe

The recent rapid growth of passive investment instruments in the fixed-income market raises the question of their relative outperformance compared to corresponding active investment strategies. This article analyzes an ample sample of actively managed global bond funds over the period from 2010 to 2020 and compares them with the performance of the passive instruments tracking the apposite bond market index, namely, the Bloomberg Barclays Multiverse Index. On average, the active bond managers and index are roughly in line. However, a closer look at the distribution of returns on active strategies shows that some managers are successful in beating the index frequently or over many years.

The impact of active and passive investment on market efficiency: a simulation study

ABSTRACT We create a simulated financial market and examine the effect of different levels of active and passive investment on fundamental market efficiency. In our simulated market, active, passive, and random investors interact with each other through issuing orders. Active and passive investors select their portfolio weights by optimizing Markowitz-based utility functions. We find that higher fractions of active investment within a market lead to an increased fundamental market efficiency. The marginal increase in fundamental market efficiency per additional active investor is lower in markets with higher levels of active investment. Furthermore, we find that a large fraction of passive investors within a market may facilitate technical price bubbles, resulting in market failure. By examining the effect of specific parameters on market outcomes, we find that that lower transaction costs, lower individual forecasting errors of active investors, and less restrictive portfolio constraints tend to increase fundamental market efficiency in the market.

Founder ownership and value relevance of IFRS convergence: Role of institutional investors

We examine how founder shareholders switch between alignment and entrenchment and thereby shape the value relevance impact of IFRS convergence. Using a sample of Indian firms adopting the IFRS converged standards in the first phase, we find that founder ownership affects the ability of IFRS to improve value relevance non-monotonically and this effect holds even after addressing the endogeneity concern in founder ownership. However, we find that the non-monotonic effect is limited to domestic owners and not foreign owners. Further analysis shows that the non-monotonic founder effect is present only in large-size firms and high-leverage firms which are experiencing higher equity adjustment post convergence. We also find that active(passive) institutional investors have a positive (negative) effect on the relationship between founder shareholding and IFRS impact suggesting that monitoring incentives rest with active investors and not passive investors. On solving for the turning points, we find that founders facilitate effective IFRS implementation only when they hold enough equity which qualifies as significant influence but not exceeding the super-majority level (around 60%), indicating an alignment effect. However, entrenchment prevails at extreme levels of founder shareholding leading to opportunistic IFRS implementation which deteriorates value relevance. Our results advocate that a minimum public shareholding at around 35% is desirable to promote financial transparency and disclosure.

Active fund managers and the rise of passive investing: Epistemic opportunism in financial markets

Financial markets have witnessed a dramatic shift in financial flows in recent years from Active fund management where professional investors attempt to beat the market (generate ‘alpha’) to Passive investment where portfolios are assembled that follow existing market indicators (track ‘beta’). This transition has important implications for both corporate governance and wider society, with potentially significant distributive effects. Passive investing is predicated upon different bodies of knowledge and is suggestive of an epistemic shift of sorts in financial markets. In such circumstances, field theory suggests that incumbent groups like Active players will try to adapt to the new rules of the investment game. However, drawing from an empirical study which explores the views of the Active investment community in both the United Kingdom and the United States, we document significant defensiveness vis-à-vis the rise of Passive investing. Whereas behavioural approaches might explain this defensiveness in terms of irrationality, the conceptual approach advanced here instead emphasizes the epistemic opportunism (convoluted and self-serving attempts to demonstrate superior knowledge) that communities strategically engage in to justify their position. As such, we conclude that financial markets should be understood as constituted by slowly evolving communities of practice whose habits, routines and ways of knowing can be difficult to shift, even when faced with overwhelming evidence that what they are doing doesn’t work most of the time.

Profitable timing of the stock market with the senior loan officer survey

The loan standards question in the Federal Reserve's quarterly Senior Loan Officer Survey is shown to be predictive of quarterly stock returns a month or two after its release. This is an apparent violation of semi-strong form stock market efficiency. Out-of-sample, we use this signal and develop a simple risk and alpha model to market time the S&P 500. It outperformed the S&P 500 with a Sharpe (1966) ratio of 1.9 versus 0.34 for passive investment.

Is There Value in Large Cap Index Selection?

The rise of passive investing is shining a new light on the world of Indexing. Indexing is all around us today, whether being discussed by a media outlet showing the movements of the day or a newly launched passive ETF that tracks a recently created index. But there is little research on whether picking one index over another provides value to the investor when the indexes all share very similar index construction methodologies. Is there value in selecting one over the other or should investors choose the one that is the most accessible or cheapest to access? This article aims to fill that gap by conducting a comparative analysis of US Large Cap indexes that are substantially similar in their construction methodologies. As expected, the indexes selected perform very similar to one another based on the quantitative methods used within the analysis. Other than number of securities, the largest difference among the indexes is their exposure to Mid-Cap stocks. The decision of which index to select is dependent on the application being selected. This article focuses on the four purposes outlined by DiBartolomeo (2019) which are: journalistic, representation of an asset class, a fair benchmark, and basis of passive investment. In most cases, each index is a reasonable substitution for the others. Given that risk and return profiles are similar, factors such as number of securities, licensing costs, and brand value are the most significant to consider. This is especially true when selecting an index as the basis of a passive product, where those factors affect the product cost and capacity that can determine the success or failure of a passive product.

Climate uncertainty and information transmissions across the conventional and ESG assets

This paper examines the effect of climate uncertainty on the spillover effects across the European conventional and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) financial markets via novel measures of physical and transitional climate risk proxies obtained from textual analysis. Analyzing daily data for stocks in the MSCI Europe ESG Leaders Index and various Euro based ESG bond indexes over the period January 3, 2014–September 30, 2021, we show that the shock transmissions between the conventional and ESG assets are significantly lower during periods of high climate uncertainty, suggesting that ESG investments can offer conventional investors diversification benefits against climate-driven shocks. Further comparing a forward-looking investment strategy conditional on the level of climate risk against the passive investment strategy, we show that investors who are worried about physical climate risks could utilize ESG equity sector portfolios as a diversification tool against physical climate uncertainty. In contrast, ESG bonds are found to be particularly useful in managing transition risk exposures that are associated with policy uncertainty and/or business transitions with respect to environmental policies. The findings have important implications regarding the role of climate uncertainty as a driver of informational spillovers across the conventional and ESG assets with important insights to manage climate risk exposures.

Non-Passive Securities Lending by Passive Investors

Non-Passive Securities Lending by Passive Investors

Perception and awareness levels of retail investors on corporate governance practices in an emerging economy.

Many criteria encompass the concept of corporate governance. There is an apprehension that it’s the non-retail investors who would be interested in such governance of firms rather than retail investors, as they hold a small fraction of ownership, usually being passive investors and not in a capacity to influence the management. This study is an attempt to understand the attitude and perception of retail investors in India toward corporate governance practices and for that purpose, a questionnaire was served to consist of a range of corporate governance factors. The data was studied through percentage analysis and chi-square was run. It was established, that retail investors pay attention to corporate governance factors, more importantly to the board of directors, this finding supports the results of Chakraborty et al. (2023). But there is no strong course of action that they prefer to resolve any of their governance-related issues. India, where promoter groups are dominant, has a long way to go to bring out shareholder activism at par with developed markets

Passive Investors in Primary Bond Markets

Passive Investors in Primary Bond Markets

Passive Investing and Market Quality

Passive Investing and Market Quality

The Rise of Passive Investing and Active Mutual Fund Skill

The Rise of Passive Investing and Active Mutual Fund Skill

Are Passive Investors Biased Voters?

Are Passive Investors Biased Voters?

The Death of Active Management Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

Over the past decade, the asset management industry witnessed a significant migration of capital from active investment strategies into passive investment strategies. Undoubtedly, the structural change is shaking the active management–dominated mutual fund industry to its core. A closer scrutiny of active management suggests that the performance of active managers is mainly a function of both stock selection and portfolio construction. As other studies have already provided evidence of successful stock selection strategies via factor premiums, the author focuses on examining the impact of portfolio construction on portfolio performance. The author finds that active managers’ failure to incorporate risk during portfolio construction overwhelms the expected return signal from stock selection.

Profile and Financial Behaviour of Crypto Adopters – Evidence from Macedonian Population Survey

Abstract Regulators and policymakers in many developing countries are facing challenges on how to create opportunities for the crypto industry to grow, but at the same time protect investors and consumers. This study aims to better understand the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of crypto adopters and their financial behavior. Our study advances the knowledge within an array of recent contributions to the token economy and covers the geographical and contextual research gaps through survey data from a developing country in South Eastern Europe. We use descriptive statistics and chi-square analysis and we find that Macedonian crypto-adopters are more men of younger age, employed, with higher education and living in their own apartments in an urban area, and are mainly passive investors. We compare the findings with studies from other countries to provide valuable insights for policymakers and regulators.

Is the cryptocurrency market efficient? Evidence from an analysis of fundamental factors for Bitcoin and Ethereum

Abstract This article sheds new light on the informational efficiency of the cryptocurrency market by analyzing investment strategies based on structural factors related to on-chain data. The study aims to verify whether investors in the cryptocurrency market can outperform passive investment strategies by applying active strategies based on selected fundamental factors. The research uses daily data from 2015 to 2022 for the two major cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). The study applies statistical tests for differences. The findings indicate informational inefficiency of the BTC and ETH markets. They seem consistent over time and are confirmed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research shows that the net unrealized profit/loss and percent of addresses in profit indicators are useful in designing active investment strategies in the cryptocurrency market. The factor-based strategies perform consistently better in terms of mean/median returns and Sharpe ratio than the passive “buy-and-hold” strategy. Moreover, the rate of success is close to 100%.