Scale economies in pension fund investments: A dissection of investment costs across asset classes

Using a unique dataset of 225 Dutch occupational pension funds with a total of 928 billion euro of assets under management, we provide a comprehensive cross-sectional analysis of the relation between investment costs and pension fund size. Our dataset is free from self-reporting biases and decomposes investment costs for 6 asset classes in management costs and performance fees. We find that a pension fund that has 10 times more assets under management on average reports 7.67 basis points lower annual investment costs. Economies of scale differ per asset class. We find significant economies of scale in fixed income, equity and commodity portfolios, but not in real estate investments, private equity and hedge funds. We also find that large pension funds pay significantly higher performance fees for equity, private equity and hedge fund investments.     

Investment beliefs of endowments

United States university and college endowments now hold close to one‐third of their portfolios in private equity and hedge funds. We estimate the implied beliefs of endowments on these alternative assets’ returns relative to equities and bonds. At the end of 2012, the typical endowment believes that its private equity investments will outperform a portfolio of conventional assets by 3.9% per year, and hedge funds will outperform by 0.7% per year. Taking into account the implied equity exposures in alternative asset positions, the effective equity holding of endowments is approximately 60%.     

Dynamic Interactions Between Private and Public Real Estate Markets: Some International Evidence

This study evaluates long-run relationships and short-run linkages between the private (unsecuritized) and the public (securitized) real estate markets of Australia, Netherlands, United Kingdom and the United States. Results indicate the existence of long-run relationships between the public and private real estate markets of each of the countries under consideration. This implies that for all countries, investors would not have realized long-term portfolio diversification benefits from allocating funds in both the private and public real estate markets since these assets are substitutable over the long run. Short-run analyses also reveal significant causal relationships between private and public markets of all countries under consideration. As expected, it was found that price discovery occurred in the public real estate market in that it leads but is not led by its private real estate market counterpart.     

Chinese jigsaw: Solving the equity market response to the COVID-19 crisis: Do alternative asset provide effective hedging performance?

Against COVID-19 risks, this paper examines the hedging performance of alternative assets including some financial assets and commodities futures for the Chinese stock market in a multi-scale setting. Dynamic conditional correlations and optimal hedge ratios of the Shanghai stock exchange with Bitcoin, Dow Jones Industrial Average, Gold, WTI, Bonds and VIX returns are estimated before and during the pandemic crisis. In the short-term, the use of wavelet decomposition shows that Bitcoin provides the best hedge to the Shanghai stock market. In the long-term, commodities dominate. Whereas WTI offers the highest hedging effectiveness, Gold ranks second by a slight margin. These results allow investors to choose the highest returns and protecting tail risk during the current sanitary crisis. Our findings suggest particularly more pronounced economic benefit of diversification including alternative financial assets while commodities futures serve as good hedge assets especially during unpredictable crisis like the current sanitary crisis relating to the covid-19.     

Diversification benefits of commodity futures

The finance literature seems to be in support of the diversification benefits of adding commodity futures to an existing portfolio. Yet no empirical work has been performed to test whether the benefits are indeed statistically significant. This paper addresses several unresolved issues concerning the potential diversification benefits of commodities. First, we attempt to ascertain whether the alleged diversification benefits exist and are statistically significant. Second, to what extent are the diversification benefits unique to US investors? Would investors of a resource-based economy like Canada also benefit from adding commodities to their portfolios? Third, recent studies indicate that correlations among international equity returns are higher during bear markets than during bull markets. This type of regime-switching correlation behavior will mean lower diversification benefits from international investments when investors face a bearish environment at home. Do commodity futures display the same type of regime-switching behavior? To what extent do commodity futures offer real diversification benefits that are robust over time and across regimes? Finally, commodities may appear to be an asset for the more adventurous investors with higher risk tolerance. We want to know what type of investors should hold commodities. We demonstrate that the diversification benefit of commodities is a far more complex phenomenon than often understood in the finance literature.     

Dissecting hedge funds' strategies

This paper dissects the dynamics of the hedge fund industry with four financial markets, including the equity market, commodities, currencies, and debt market by employing a large number of assets from these markets. We employ four main representative hedge fund strategy indices, and a cap-weighted global index to estimate an asymmetric dynamic conditional correlation (ADCC) GJR-GARCH model using daily data from April 2003 to May 2021. We break down the performance, riskiness, investing style, volatility, dynamic correlations, and shock transmissions of each hedge fund strategy thoroughly. Further, the impact of commodity futures basis on hedge funds' return is analyzed. Comparing the dynamic correlations during the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC) with COVID-19 pandemic reveals changing patterns in hedge funds' investing styles. There are strong and pervasive shock spillovers from hedge fund industry to other financial markets, especially to futures commodities. An increase in the futures basis of several commodities drives up hedge funds' performance. While hedge fund industry underperforms compared to equity market and commodities, the risk-reward measures show that hedge funds are superior to other markets, and safer than the bond market.     

Diversification with volatility products

Recent changes to clearing-house regulations have promoted exchange-traded products offering risk premia previously accessible only over-the-counter. Thus, as correlations increase between equity, bonds and commodities, a new strand of research questions the benefits of home-grown diversification using volatility products. First we ask: “What expected returns will induce equity and bond investors to perceive ex-ante diversification benefits from adding volatility?” We call this the optimal diversification threshold. We derive the theoretical thresholds for minimum-variance, mean-variance and Black–Litterman optimization. Empirical analysis of US and European markets shows that volatility diversification is frequently perceived to be optimal, ex-ante, but these apparent benefits are almost never realized, being eroded by high roll and transaction costs. Exchange-traded volatility only proved an effective diversifier during the banking crisis. At other times long equity and bond portfolios diversified with volatility futures have not performed as well as those without diversification, or even those diversified with commodities.     

The performance and diversification benefits of funds of hedge funds

We examine the performance and diversification potential of 332 funds of hedge funds (FOHFs) for the period from January 1990 to May 2003. Consistent with prior studies, we find that FOHFs appear to underperform the hedge fund index on a risk-adjusted basis. However, FOHFs have characteristics that offset their apparent underperformance. Their returns do not suffer from negative skewness that is a feature of many hedge fund strategies. Relative to the hedge fund index, we find that FOHFs have lower correlations with stock indices in both bull and bear markets, making them a better diversification tool in equity portfolios. For bond portfolios, however, FOHFs have no diversification advantage over hedge fund indexing.     

The effect of downside risk reduction on UK equity portfolios included with Managed Futures Funds

The concept of asymmetric risk estimation has become more widely applied in risk management in recent years with the increased use of Value-at-risk (VaR) methodologies. This paper uses the n-degree lower partial moment (LPM) models, of which VaR is a special case, to empirically analyse the effect of downside risk reduction on UK portfolio diversification and returns. Data on Managed Futures Funds are used to replicate the increasingly popular preference of investors for including hedge funds and fund-of-funds type investments in the UK equity portfolios. The result indicates, however that the potential benefits of fund diversification may deteriorate following reductions in downside risk tolerance levels. These results appear to reinforce the importance of risk (tolerance) perception, particularly downside risk, when making decisions to include Managed Futures Funds in UK equity portfolios as the empirical analysis suggests that this could negatively affect portfolio returns.     

Performance analysis of a collateralized fund obligation (CFO) equity tranche

This article examines the performance of the junior tranche of a collateralized fund obligation (CFO), i.e. the residual claim (equity) on a securitized portfolio of hedge funds. We use a polynomial goal programming model to create optimal portfolios of hedge funds, conditional to investor preferences and diversification constraints (maximum allocation per strategy). For each portfolio, we build CFO structures that have different levels of leverage, and analyze both the stand-alone performance as well as potential diversification benefits (low systematic risk exposures) of investing in the equity tranche of these structures. We find that the unconstrained mean-variance portfolio yields a high performance, but greater exposure to systematic risk. We observe the exact opposite picture in the case of unconstrained optimization, where a skewness bias is added, thus proving the existence of a trade-off between stand-alone performance and low exposure to systematic risk factors. We provide evidence that leveraged exposure to these hedge fund portfolios through the structuring of CFOs creates value for the equity tranche investor, even during the recent financial crisis.     

Risk–Return Profiles of Islamic Equities and Commodity Portfolios in Different Market Conditions

Motivated by the recent phenomenal growth in Islamic finance and the financialization of commodities, this study makes an initial attempt to investigate the risk–return profiles of optimized portfolios combining (a) Islamic equities with commodities and (b) conventional equities with commodities during the crises and noncrises periods. The findings tend to indicate that Islamic equity–commodity portfolios provide relatively higher diversification benefits than the conventional equity–commodity portfolios during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis triggered by the financial sector compared to the 2008 global financial crisis triggered by the real housing sector. The findings further suggest that except for a few cases, commodities in general and gold in particular improve diversification benefits.     

International portfolio diversification is better than you think

Using aggregate data on bilateral cross-border equity holdings, we investigate whether investors correctly hedge their over-exposure to domestic risk (the well-known equity home bias) by investing in foreign stock markets that have low correlation with their home stock market. To deal with the endogeneity of stock return correlations, we instrument current correlations with past correlations. Controlling for many determinants of international portfolios, we find that, all else equal, investors do tilt their foreign holdings towards countries, which offer better diversification opportunities. The diversification motive that we uncover is stronger for source countries exhibiting a higher level of home bias.     

International Real Estate Mutual Fund Performance: Diversification or Costly Information?

We investigate the net effect between diversification benefit and information cost of international real estate mutual funds from three dimensions: whether investors can benefit from investing in international real estate mutual funds, whether managers of international real estate mutual funds possess superior market knowledge and timing abilities, and whether investors are motivated by returns or diversification. Our findings are threefold. First, the results show that international real estate mutual funds perform better and are less risky than domestic real estate mutual funds before Jun 2007. That is, diversification benefits outweigh the information costs, and investors therefore gain from investing in international real estate mutual funds. However, the benefit is reduced because of the economic shock of sub-prime financial crisis. Second, on average, neither international mutual fund managers nor domestic mutual fund managers possess market timing abilities. Finally, we find that fund flows are driven by investors’ return-chasing behaviors and fund size, but not by diversification purpose.     

Hedge fund liquidity and performance: Evidence from the financial crisis

We investigate how share restrictions affect hedge fund performance in crisis and non-crisis periods. Consistent with prior research, we find that in the pre-crisis period more illiquid funds generate a share illiquidity premium compensating investors for limited liquidity. In the crisis period, this share illiquidity premium turns into an illiquidity discount. Hedge funds with more stringent share restrictions invest more heavily in illiquid assets. While share restrictions enable funds to manage illiquid assets effectively in the pre-crisis period, they seem insufficient to ensure effective management of illiquid portfolios in the crisis. In a crisis period, funds holding illiquid portfolios experience lower returns and alphas, also when share restrictions are controlled for. Funds with an asset–liability mismatch perform particularly poorly and experience the strongest outflows. Share restrictions are also a proxy for incentives as investors cannot immediately withdraw their money after poor performance. We show that higher incentive fees can offset the share illiquidity discount in the crisis period.     

Equity Home‐Bias: A Suboptimal Choice for UK investors?

In spite of the popularity of international portfolio diversification theory, extant empirical literature shows that investors prefer domestic assets and as a result, many studies argue that investors' portfolios are largely suboptimal. This paper examines whether British investors need to diversify their portfolios internationally to gain performance benefits from international markets or can they obtain these benefits by mimicking the portfolios with domestically traded assets. The results confirm that it is possible to mimic the performance of foreign equity with domestic equity. Indeed, the pay‐offs from homemade portfolios outperform those from international portfolios regardless of the periodic variation in the overall performance of the UK market vis‐à‐vis foreign markets. The superiority of homemade portfolio is more prominent in recent years and is enhanced by the increased internationalisation of developed capital markets. Therefore, investors' home bias is not suboptimal.     

Is gold a safe haven against equity market investment in emerging and developing countries?

The hedge and safe haven properties of gold in advanced economies’ financial markets are well documented in the literature. Studies of how this issue relates to emerging markets and developing countries are, however, very limited. This paper aims to fill this gap by empirically analyzing the hedge and safe haven properties of gold against equity market investment for a large group of emerging and developing countries from the perspective of both domestic and foreign investors. We also check whether our findings differ in the post-global crisis period. Our results show that for domestic investors, gold is both a hedge and a safe haven in most of these countries. This result also holds in the post-2008 crisis period. In addition, when falls in equity markets become more severe, gold acts as a safe haven in a larger set of countries for both domestic and foreign investors.     

Do Alternative Real Estate Investment Vehicles Add Value to REITs? Evidence from German Open-ended Property Funds

Besides the more commonly used REITs, German investors can also invest in a lesser-known real estate vehicle, Open-ended Property Funds. OPFs are considered a compromise between listed and direct real estate investments. OPF fund managers generally provide daily (perfect) liquidity. However, if liquidity falls below 5%, share redemptions in these funds can be temporarily suspended for a period of up to two years. During this time, investors will only be able to sell shares on the secondary market (exchange), and are thus subject to significant liquidity risk. The objective of this paper is to analyze whether OPFs add value to investor portfolios above that provided by REITs. We show that OPFs have a diversification advantage over REITs in low-risk portfolios, despite their larger potential liquidity risk. REIT liquidity is comparable to that of ordinary common stock, but OPFs exhibit an average initial discount to funds’ NAV of about 6% when share redemptions are temporarily suspended. However, in the long-run, this potential redemption suspension does not negatively influence OPF performance (in case OPFs reopen again). This makes OPFs an attractive investment alternative to REITs for investors who have a high level of risk aversion and a long-term investment horizon, such as endowments, insurance companies, and pension funds.     

Do commodities make effective hedges for equity investors?

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate whether commodities are effective hedges for equity holders. We employ three different methodologies to calculate time varying hedge ratios. First, we examine time-varying hedge ratios and how much portfolio risk can be reduced relative to a long position in the S&P 500. We calculate hedge ratios from realized variances and covariances; second, we estimate a recursive multivariate GARCH (BEKK) model and calculate the hedge ratios from the estimated covariances; and thirdly, we calculate the hedge ratios by estimating recursive OLS regressions. The results of our paper are very clear. First, commodities are not effective hedges for the S&P 500. Equity market investors and asset managers looking for a way to manage and reduce portfolio risk will be well advised to search for alternative hedges for the S&P 500 than commodities. Second, our results do not support the claim that commodities were a good hedge for the equity market during the financial crisis.     

A three-tiered nested analytical approach to financial integration: The case of emerging and frontier equity markets

This study investigates the patterns of integration of emerging and frontier equity markets with the US stock market during the period 2002–2014 characterised by financial turmoil and instability. To add rigour to the study, to overcome the limitations of simple correlation analysis of integration, and to produce more robust results, we propose a nested analytical approach based on a three-tiered research design. The first level uses the smooth transition conditional correlations among the US, emerging, and frontier markets. The second tier uses the results of the smooth transition approach to creating different international portfolios, which, based on alternative investment strategies, account for the time-varying correlations among markets and exploit the scope of international diversification with less integrated markets. Finally, the last tier of analysis uses returns and risks of these different international portfolios and applies structural models to explore characteristics and integration patterns in turbulent times. The three nested approaches indicate that the global financial crisis has produced a permanent increase in the degree of integration among the US and frontier markets. Conversely, the crisis's effect seems to have been only temporary in the case of integration among the US and emerging equity markets. Despite the changes brought by the crisis, the degree of integration among emerging markets and the US market is considerably more significant than the degree of integration among frontier and US markets. The novelty of this methodological approach enables us to provide some original contributions and empirical results that are robust and relevant to investors in international markets.     

A Web Of Shocks: Crises Across Asian Real Estate Markets

The behaviour of real estate markets during the 1997–98 Financial crisis in Asian economies has received little attention despite the extensive research on other asset markets over this time. This paper examines the transmission of shocks across national real estate markets prior to and during the Asian crisis using a multivariate latent factor framework. The results reveal that diversification opportunities prior to the crisis are much reduced during the crisis. A comparison with regional equity markets shows that the transmission of shocks differs across the real estate and equity markets, providing evidence that investment in multiple asset classes provides some protection from large market downturns.