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Tag Archives: Portfolio Choice
Comparing the Performance of Active and Passive Mutual Funds in Developing and Developed Countries
By Nalini Gupta
This paper seeks to test the hypothesis that developing countries or informationally inefficient countries should see higher returns for active mutual funds on average than passive funds and the trend should be reversed in developed nations or informationally efficient economies. This analysis is done using a cross section of eight countries, four developed and four developing. Using a fund universe of 20 active and 20 passive funds per country and controls such as volatility, market return, financial market development and Human Development Index among others, we see that there is no clear systematically dominant strategy between active and passive investment universally. While developing countries are associated with lower returns, we do not find a significant difference between active and passive based on development classification. A key finding is that an increase in liquidity, acting as proxy for informational efficiency, leads to a co-movement of active and passive returns in each country. The paper also lends itself to further analysis regarding confounding factor such as noise trading and movement of foreign capital which impact the effect of increased liquidity on mutual fund returns.
Advisors: Professor Connel Fullenkamp, Professor Kent Kimbrough | JEL Codes: G1, G11, G14
Evaluating Stock and Bond Portfolio Allocations using CAPER and Tobin’s Q
By Jayanth Ganesan
I test whether an investor can increase the returns on their portfolio over the long-term by timing the market using measures of market value, such as the Tobin’s q ratio and the Cyclically Adjusted Price Earnings (CAPE or Shiller-CAPE). To test this proposition, I examine contrarian investor strategies proposed by Smithers and Wright (2000) and investor strategies based on different equity-fixed income combination portfolios. I seek to determine whether these strategies produce higher risk-adjusted returns than buy-and-hold equity strategies such as those proposed by Siegel (2014) for long-term portfolios. I also examine whether Siegel’s theory that stocks are better investment vehicles than bonds for investment horizons greater than 20 years. In my study, buy-and-hold portfolios composed of the S&P 500 have additional annualized returns of 1.5% than portfolios which reallocate funds in alternative securities based on CAPE and q thresholds. I conclude that for long-term investment horizons, an investor is unlikely to increase portfolio returns by reallocating funds to an alternative asset class when stocks are overvalued. However, I do not find that stocks are better investment vehicles compared to bonds as portfolio with bonds have a lower portfolio risk in my sample. I believe that the effectiveness q ratios for market timing is likely to be independent of how the q ratio is calculated. As suggested by Asness (2015), I find that portfolios that utilize both value and trend investing principles with CAPE and q may outperform portfolios that utilize only value-based market timing strategies. I conclude that CAPE and q based timing strategies are difficult to implement without detailed knowledge of future stock valuations.
Advisor: Edward Tower | JEL Codes: G11, G14 Tagged: Information on Market Efficiency, Investment Decisions, Portfolio Choice
