scholarly journals Performance measurement of ESG-themed megatrend investments in global equity markets using pure factor portfolios methodology

PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. e0244225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Naffa ◽  
Máté Fain
Keyword(s):  
Transaction Costs ◽  
Factor Model ◽  
Equity Markets ◽  
Fund Flows ◽  
Investment Strategies ◽  
Time Series Regression ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Disruptive Technologies ◽  
Global Equity Markets ◽  
Method Of Moments Estimator

ESG factors are becoming mainstream in portfolio investment strategies, attracting increasing fund inflows from investors who are aligning their investment values to Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) declared by the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investments. Do investors sacrifice return for pursuing ESG-aligned megatrend goals? The study analyses the risk-adjusted financial performance of ESG-themed megatrend investment strategies in global equity markets. The analysis covers nine themes for the period 2015–2019: environmental megatrends covering energy efficiency, food security, and water scarcity; social megatrends covering ageing, millennials, and urbanisation; governance megatrends covered by cybersecurity, disruptive technologies, and robotics. We construct megatrend factor portfolios based on signalling theory and formulate a novel measure for stock megatrend exposure (MTE), based on the relative fund flows into the corresponding thematic ETFs. We apply pure factor portfolios methodology based on constrained WLS cross-sectional regressions to calculate Fama-French factor returns. Time-series regression rests on the generalised method of moments estimator (GMM) that uses robust distance instruments. Our findings show that each environmental megatrend, as well as the disruptive technologies megatrend, yielded positive and significant alphas relative to the passive strategy, although this outperformance becomes statistically insignificant in the Fama-French 5-factor model context. The important result is that most of the megatrend factor portfolios yielded significant non-negative alphas; which supports our assumption that megatrend investing strategy promotes SDGs while not sacrificing returns, even when accounting for transaction costs up to 50bps/annum. Higher transaction costs, as is the case for some of these ETFs with expense ratios reaching 80-100bps, may be an indication of two things: ESG-themed megatrend investors were willing to sacrifice ca. 30-50bps of annual return to remain aligned with sustainability targets, or that expense ratio may well decline in the future.

The Bias in Two-Pass Regression Tests of Asset-Pricing Models in Presence of Idiosyncratic Errors with Cross-Sectional Dependence

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (02) ◽  
pp. 1950012
Author(s):  
Thomas Gramespacher ◽  
Armin Bänziger
Keyword(s):  
Asset Pricing ◽  
Risk Premium ◽  
Measurement Errors ◽  
Factor Model ◽  
Pricing Models ◽  
Time Series Regression ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Asset Pricing Models ◽  
Slope Estimator ◽  
Regression Tests

In two-pass regression-tests of asset-pricing models, cross-sectional correlations in the errors of the first-pass time-series regression lead to correlated measurement errors in the betas used as explanatory variables in the second-pass cross-sectional regression. The slope estimator of the second-pass regression is an estimate for the factor risk-premium and its significance is decisive for the validity of the pricing model. While it is well known that the slope estimator is downward biased in presence of uncorrelated measurement errors, we show in this paper that the correlations seen in empirical return data substantially suppress this bias. For the case of a single-factor model, we calculate the bias of the OLS slope estimator in the presence of correlated measurement errors with a first-order Taylor-approximation in the size of the errors. We show that the bias increases with the size of the errors, but decreases the more the errors are correlated. We illustrate and validate our result using a simulation approach based on empirical data commonly used in asset-pricing tests.

scholarly journals International Equity Markets Co-movements And Contagion: A Novel Perspective

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 285
Author(s):  
Olfa Kaabia
Keyword(s):  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Factor Model ◽  
Equity Markets ◽  
Global Integration ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
International Equity Markets ◽  
Contagion Effects ◽  
International Equity ◽  
The One ◽  
The Global Financial Crisis

Our paper conducts an asset pricing perspective to investigate OECD equity markets co-movements and contagion during different crises. The paper aims at distinguishing between changes in cross-markets linkages during a crisis, on the one hand, and strong but stable cross-markets linkages and permanent shifts in these linkages, on the other hand. Our empirical setting relies on the three factor model of Bekeart and al. (2005, 2011) and differs by testing the co-movements in their double dimensions: interdependence and contagion during the Asian, the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) and the Global Financial crises in different regions. Our results highlight the existence of cross-sectional patterns both in regional and USA market correlations with OECD equity markets. Evidence of contagion exists during the ERM and the Global Financial crisis, but no contagion caused by the Asian crisis. Our findings lead to an international diversification opportunity and suggest that contagion effects are not strongly related to high levels of global integration.

Pricing models of shares of Russian companies and their practical application

2019 ◽  
pp. 48-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander E. Abramov ◽  
Alexander D. Radygin ◽  
Maria I. Chernova
Keyword(s):  
Stock Market ◽  
Institutional Investors ◽  
Factor Model ◽  
Investment Strategies ◽  
Pricing Models ◽  
Foreign Portfolio Investment ◽  
Market Portfolio ◽  
Stock Market Performance ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Russian Stock Market

The article analyzes the problems of applying stock pricing models in the Russian stock market. The novelty of the study lies in the peculiarities of the methodology used and the substantive conclusions on the specifics of the influence of fundamental factors on the pricing of shares of Russian companies. The study was conducted using its own 5-factor basic pricing model based on a sample of the most complete number of issues of shares of Russian issuers and a long time horizon, from 1997 to 2017. The market portfolio was the widest for a set of issuers. We consider the factor model as a kind of universal indicator of the efficiency of the stock market performance of its functions. The article confirms the significance of factors of a broad market portfolio, size, liquidity and, in part, momentum (inertia). However, starting from 2011, the significance of factors began to decrease as the qualitative characteristics of the stock market deteriorated due to the outflow of foreign portfolio investment, combined with the low level of development of domestic institutional investors. Also identified is the cyclical nature of the actions of company size and liquidity factors. Their ability to generate additional income on shares rises mainly at the stage of the fall of the stock market. The results of the study suggest that as domestic institutional investors develop on the Russian stock market, factor investment strategies can be used as a tool to increase the return on investor portfolios.

Up- and Downside Variance Risk Premia in Global Equity Markets

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Held ◽  
Julia Kapraun ◽  
Marcel Omachel ◽  
Julian Thimme
Keyword(s):  
Equity Markets ◽  
Risk Premia ◽  
Global Equity Markets ◽  
Variance Risk
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