Portfolio concentration and performance of institutional investors worldwide

Using data on security holdings for 10,771 institutional investors from 72 countries, we test whether concentrated investment strategies result in excess risk-adjusted returns. We examine several measures of portfolio concentration with respect to countries and industries and find that portfolio concentration is directly related to risk-adjusted returns for institutional investors worldwide. Results suggest, in contrast to traditional asset pricing theory and in support of information advantage theory, that concentrated investment strategies in international markets can be optimal.     

Law,culture and investment performance: A cross-country analysis

This study investigates the investment performance of U.S. investors in foreign equity markets with different law origins and cultural characteristics and the investment performance of foreign investors in the U.S. markets. The finding is consistent with the information asymmetric hypothesis that investors perform better in foreign countries which have a similar legal system and cultural characteristics to their home markets than in counterparty countries. Differences in country-specific factors create information asymmetric barriers which slow information flow and result into poor investment performance.     

Foreign Investment in Emerging Markets: International Diversification or Familiarity Bias?

This study empirically tests whether foreign investors take advantage of international diversification when investing in emerging Asian markets. Using the 2007–2008 financial crisis as identification, we find that firms with higher foreign ownership had better stock returns during the financial crisis. Moreover, the diversification effect exists in five out of the eight emerging markets and is stronger in markets with a lower dynamic conditional correlation with the global market index. We also find that foreign investors prefer firms with a lower international sales ratio. In conclusion, the evidence consistently suggests that foreign investors take advantage of diversification effects.     

Market States and the Effect on Equity REIT Returns due to Changes in Monetary Policy Stance

This study investigates the effect of changes in monetary policy on US equity real estate investment trust (EREIT) returns in lower and higher return ranges during bull, bear, and volatile stock market states using quantile regression. Results show that EREIT returns are sensitive to changes in monetary policy at different EREIT return ranges in different market states. During bull markets, changes in monetary policy have a significant negative impact on EREIT when investors have lower expectations of real estate price increases, but are not effective when investors have higher expectations of real estate price increases. During volatile and bear markets, EREIT returns are not sensitive to changes in monetary policy stance. Results also show that EREIT returns respond positively to stock returns in various states and conditions.     

Home bias in portfolio choices: social learning among partially informed agents

Using an ‘incomplete information’ model, we explore the role of social learning in the global portfolio choices of stock market investors. When partially informed followers attempt to estimate true domestic (home) mean returns, they likely acquire private domestic signals from partially informed leaders. However, the calibration results indicate the existence of home bias when partially informed agents have poor quality information. Partially informed agents are prone to a learning bias; they overreact to new domestic information due to overconfidence in their domestic private signals, but they demonstrate a conservative response to new information in foreign markets. Links between the private signals of partially informed agents may lead to correlated foreign investment strategies among such agents through social learning. We suggest the acquisition of private signals, along with the dissemination of information, affect international portfolio decision rules and are determinants of the phenomenon of home bias.     

Can advanced markets help diversify risks in frontier stock markets? Evidence from Gulf Arab stock markets

This study examines global diversification benefits from the perspective of local investors in the frontier markets in the Gulf Cooperation Council using two diversification measures: the correlation index and return dispersion. The findings suggest a strong link between market volatility and both diversification measures in all markets, with the exception of Bahrain, indicating that investors in these frontier markets will face significant challenges achieving desired levels of diversification using domestic stocks only. However, I also find that significant amount of market risk in these countries can be eliminated by supplementing domestic portfolios with positions in advanced markets. Finally, I show that risk minimization strategies using foreign traded assets also lead to favorable risk adjusted returns for investors in these markets, stressing the potential benefits of financial liberalization in developing markets.     

投资者教育发挥作用了吗?——来自公募基金个人投资者调查数据的证据

投资者教育是保障资本市场平稳运行、良性发展的重要举措,也是我国资本市场重要的基础性制度建设。本文利用20000多份全国公募基金个人投资者调查数据,分析了投资者教育对基金投资收益的影响,并基于行为金融学框架探究了其背后的作用机制。以往文献研究表明,金融知识水平对投资收益会产生显著影响,本文研究发现,获取金融知识的渠道也会影响投资收益。相对于自己学习金融知识、相关工作经验累积金融知识、向亲戚朋友学习金融知识,投资者教育(如参加金融机构的投资教育活动、接受金融经济类课程或培训)更有助于投资者缓解趋势追逐、频繁交易、处置效应等交易行为偏差,从而获得更高的投资收益。进一步分析表明,投资者教育通过提高“理性程度”来提升基金投资盈利概率、投资总收益率和年均收益率的中介效应分别为19.41%、17.09%和12.75%。此外,不同群体参与投资者教育的积极性和受教育效果存在显著差异,投资者教育要更多采取“分类教育”的形式。本文研究对进一步加强投资者教育、更好地推动资本市场发展具有一定的参考意义。     

The determinants of domestic and foreign bond bias

This paper studies the determinants of the domestic and the foreign bond biases and their evolution over time using aggregate bond allocation data from CPIS. Our results show that the home bias is prevalent across all countries, despite the decreasing of the domestic bias in most countries in the 1997–2009 period. We find that the domestic bond bias is lower in countries with higher economic development, higher restrictions on foreign capital transactions, more developed bond markets, higher familiarity, and higher efficiency of the judicial system. When investing overseas, investors also prefer to allocate their investments in countries with higher economic development, lower restrictions on capital flows, more developed bond markets, stronger judicial systems, and higher past returns. Additionally, we find that familiarity (i.e. geographic proximity, common language, and bilateral trade) is a major determinant to decrease the foreign bias. Finally, there is no evidence that investors’ bond allocations are explained by diversification opportunities as proxied by bond markets correlations.     

Momentum and Foreign Investors: Evidence from the Korean Stock Market

Abstract:

We examine whether the price impact of foreign investors on the Korean stock market from December 2000 to February 2007 generated a momentum phenomenon. In our empirical results, foreigners seem to have exerted a significantly positive impact on prices in “up” markets (periods of positive stock returns), but have had little impact on prices in “down” markets (periods of negative returns). We document that the impact of foreigners’ trades is concentrated in large companies. Most importantly, when the market is in the up state, the returns of stocks of large companies that were positively affected by foreign investors in the previous six-month period continue to increase in the subsequent six-month period. As a result, the subsequent six-month return on a past “winner” stock portfolio is significantly higher than that on a past “loser” stock portfolio. This brings to mind a momentum phenomenon that has been reported not to exist in the Korean stock market.     

我国股票市场“聪明投资者”投资绩效归因研究

不同于寻找具有超额收益“证券”的股票市场主流投资方法,根据历史投资绩效来“选人”,即寻找“聪明投资者”可为构建有效的投资策略提供新思路。本文利用我国投资者全账户交易信息,根据历史投资绩效界定“聪明投资者”,并探索其获得超额收益的原因。结果显示,我国股票市场存在“聪明投资者”,在牛熊市中均可获得显著的超额收益;相比其他投资者,“聪明投资者”风险偏好较低但能获得超额收益,即不是因为他们高杠杆融资和配置更多风险资产承担风险而获得风险溢价,而是因为这类投资者具有更好的仓位管理能力、市场风格适应能力及显著的选股能力。本研究拓展了对我国这一部分特殊群体投资者行为的探索,结论可以用于构建具有实践意义的投资策略。     

Time-varying stock returns and labor income risks in the US and UK

I propose and estimate conditional asset pricing models where the risk premiums of the markets are related to the conditional covariance of the markets with labor income growth within and across countries and the volatility of the markets are related to the shocks and interactions of stock returns and labor income growth. I document that the risk premiums for the US and UK stock markets are more related to the conditional covariance of returns with the labor income growth within countries than across countries. I also find significant interactions of volatilities between stock returns and labor income within countries but not across countries. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that prices of domestic stocks are determined to a greater extent by stochastic discount factors of domestic investors than foreign investors and vice versa.     

Uncovered Equity Parity and rebalancing in international portfolios

Portfolio rebalancing is a key driver of the Uncovered Equity Parity (UEP) condition. According to UEP, when foreign equity holdings outperform domestic holdings, domestic investors are exposed to higher exchange rate exposure and hence repatriate some of the foreign equity to decrease their exchange rate risk. By doing so, foreign currency is sold, leading to foreign currency depreciation. We examine the relationship between U.S. investors' portfolio reallocations and returns and find some evidence consistent with UEP: Portfolio shifts are related to past returns in the underlying equity markets. But we argue that a motive other than reducing currency risk exposure is likely behind this rebalancing. In particular, U.S. investors rebalance away from equity markets that recently performed well and move into equity markets just prior to relatively strong performance, suggesting tactical reallocations to increase returns rather than reduce risk.     

Does a Held-to-Maturity Strategy Impede Effective Portfolio Diversification for Islamic Bond (Sukuk) Portfolios? A Multi-Scale Continuous Wavelet Correlation Analysis

There is a critical gap in the literature in studying the portfolio diversification opportunities available to sukuk investors and evaluating these in light of held-to-maturity strategies usually adopted by these investors. This article has made an initial attempt to study the portfolio diversification strategies for sukuk portfolios across heterogeneous investment horizons. Our findings critically indicate that returns between local currency sukuk in different markets generally have low levels of correlations across different investor holding periods, thus enabling both short and long-run portfolio diversification benefits. However, in contrast, international currency sukuk issued in different markets exhibits high levels of correlations in the longer-term investor holding periods. Also, in the domestic market context, returns on different classes of domestic sukuk are found to exhibit strong correlations in the longer-holding periods. Our findings critically highlight the feasibility of held-to-maturity sukuk investment strategies from a portfolio diversification perspective.     

Global commodities and African stocks: A ‘market of one?’

Owing to frequent fluctuations in global markets, diversifying across emerging markets is increasingly becoming a necessity. Despite this, a cloud of uncertainty surrounds the relative capacities of emerging markets to provide the required shields for international investors, especially during extreme market conditions. In this paper, we explore the relative potentials of African equities to provide opportunities for hedging and diversification for global commodity investors by using data of daily periodicity on close-to-close basis from January 3, 2003 to December 29, 2014. The findings indicate the presence of non-linear relationships between some African stocks and returns on global commodities. Thus, global commodity market investors react differently towards investment potentials in African stocks during tranquil and crisis periods. Additionally, from the mean–variance stand-point, we observe that including African equities in a diversified portfolio has the effect of lowering risk whiles simultaneously increasing expected returns. However, any such investment strategies may have to be informed by volatility persistence, as well as past and present market conditions.     

Random Walks and Market Efficiency Tests: Evidence from Emerging Equity Markets

We use the multiple variance-ratio test of Chow and Denning (1993) to examine the stochastic properties of local currency- and US dollar-based equity returns in 15 emerging capital markets. The technique is based on the Studentized Maximum Modulus distribution and provides a multiple statistical comparison of variance-ratios, with control of the joint-test's size. We find that the random walk model is consistent with the dynamics of returns in most of the emerging markets analyzed, which contrasts many random walk test results documented with the use of single variance-ratio techniques. Further, a runs test suggests that most of the emerging markets are weak-form efficient. Overall, our results suggest that investors are unlikely to make systematic nonzero profit by using past information in many of the examined markets, thus, investors should predicate their investment strategies on the assumption of random walks. Additionally, our results suggest exchange rate matters in returns' dynamics determination for some of the emerging equity markets we analyzed.     

Foreign Under‐Investment in US Securities and the Role of Relational Capital

Over 70 academic papers attempt to explain why foreigners invest in US securities. All ignore the vital role of the US broker‐dealer. Macroeconomic factors like a trade balance or corporate governance may guide foreign investors toward certain markets. But US broker‐dealers provide information to foreign investors and execute the actual trades. We hypothesize that particular foreign investors under‐invest in US securities because of a lack of relational capital with US broker‐dealers. We find that broker‐dealer marketing intensity in foreign markets partly explains foreigners’ decisions to invest in US securities. We also estimate “pent‐up” demand for US securities in developing countries – like China, Argentina, Turkey and Russia –equals roughly half‐a‐trillion dollars. Such pent‐up demand – represented as a convergence gap with investment‐to‐GDP ratios in highly developed capital markets – helps predict which markets these broker‐dealers are likely to invest marketing effort in the future. As such, broker‐dealers interested in assisting foreign investors find the right securities for their portfolios should not focus on big, rich economies. They should focus on economies with the largest convergence gaps. We also find that broker‐dealers must take in account the effect their marketing effort has on the typical variables (like relative returns, risks, asymmetric shocks and communication with the US) when they use these screening variables in deciding where to build their relational capital (and place their sales effort) in any year.     

中国艺术品投资收益:离岸与在岸市场的特征和互动

文物艺术品既是一个国家的历史印记和文化瑰宝,也是情感资产和动产。本文基于2000-2017年全球艺术品核心市场——北京、香港、纽约和伦敦核心拍卖行中国书画的微观数据,使用特征价格法构建全球中国艺术品市场价格指数,展示全球中国艺术品拍卖市场发展的全貌,同时创新性地使用重复交易数据探讨离岸和在岸中国艺术品市场投资特征和互动关系。研究表明:北京和香港市场作为中国艺术品最大的在岸和离岸拍卖市场价格相互联动,走势基本一致;艺术品财务收益和精神回报是艺术品投资收藏和消费的主要原因,不同市场间财务收益和风险分散的差异是艺术品市场资产配置和资金流动的动力;纽约和伦敦市场中国艺术品投资收益率低于北京和香港,香港是全球中国艺术品投资收益率最高的地区,重复交易中的北京-香港交易策略占优,离岸香港市场得天独厚的环境优势使香港中国艺术品市场未来发展前景可期。     

Optimal investment under multi-factor stochastic volatility

We consider a model for multivariate intertemporal portfolio choice in complete and incomplete markets with a multi-factor stochastic covariance matrix of asset returns. The optimal investment strategies are derived in closed form. We estimate the model parameters and illustrate the optimal investment based on two stock indices: S&P500 and DAX. It is also shown that the model satisfies several stylized facts well known in the literature. We analyse the welfare losses due to suboptimal investment strategies and we find that investors who invest myopically, ignore derivative assets, model volatility by one factor and ignore stochastic covariance between asset returns can incur significant welfare losses.     

Testing stock market linkages for Poland and Hungary: A multivariate GARCH approach

This paper examines the linkages between the emerging stock markets in Warsaw and Budapest and the established markets in Frankfurt and the U.S. By using a four-variable asymmetric GARCH-BEKK model, we find evidence of returns and volatility spillovers from the developed to the emerging markets. However, as the estimated time-varying conditional covariances and the variance decompositions indicate limited interactions among the markets, the emerging markets are weakly linked to the developed markets. The implication is that foreign investors may benefit from the reduction of risk by adding the stocks in the emerging markets to their investment portfolio.     

Ownership Restrictions and Stock Prices: Evidence from Chinese Markets

In this paper, I test a one-period capital asset pricing model (CAPM) under share ownership restrictions to explain differences in prices and expected excess returns between the classes of shares that can be bought and traded by domestic and foreign investors, respectively, in the Chinese stock markets. I find that cross-sectional variability in the spread between the expected domestic and foreign share excess returns is related to differences in individual shares' market betas. The empirical results are by and large consistent with the CAPM. After the betas are controlled for, idiosyncratic variance and firm size have no effect.