New evidence on fund performance in extreme events

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to compare the return performance and persistence of ethical and conventional mutual funds during two extreme events, the Asian and the global financial crises under Shariah constraints.Design/methodology/approachThe overall sample comprises of 129 Islamic mutual funds (IMFs) and 350 conventional mutual funds (CMFs) in Malaysia, and the average monthly data cover two periods of market cycles, before and during a financial crisis. The net of all expenses data is obtained from the Morningstar Database. This study employs various market risk-adjusted performance measures (ratios) to estimate the funds’ overall performance during the crises, and then it uses CAPM model to estimate the parameters via panel data approach. Moreover, paper employs the two persistence performance measures on IMFs and CMFs through contingency tables. It tests for the performance persistence effects for IMFs, CMFs using repeat winner and the cross-product ratio (CPR) tests proposed by Malkiel (1995) and Brown and Goetzmann (1995), respectively.FindingsThe main findings of the paper are: on average, both funds IMF and the CMF outperform the market return during the entire sample period; none of the funds is better than the “others” during the financial crises and the pre-crisis periods; the ethical fund – IMF outperforms the CMF over the study period. This outcome also indicates that ethical funds are more persistent especially during and the pre-crisis AFC and the GFC periods.Research limitations/implicationsThe finding of this study is limited to only Malaysian data because the objective was to guideline investors and market players in Malaysia to prefer investing in Islamic ethical funds to diversify their investment portfolio.Practical implicationsCautions to use existing ratio measures and CAPM model rather persistence measures may be used with existing methodologies in light of extreme events which influenced investor decision making for better returns at lower risks.Social implicationsA class of ethical funds consists of religious sustainable, socially responsible and impact-investing (SRI) funds but Shariah implications of halal investment must be observed to avoid prohibited practices within the class of SRI funds.Originality/valueThe work done in this paper are original in the sense that the authors employed various ratios to measure fund performance in conjunction with CAPM model and then tested for two persistence performance measures; the repeat winner and CPR tests.

Sustainability-themed mutual funds: an empirical examination of risk and performance

PurposeThis paper aims to analyze the portfolio characteristics and the performance measures of sustainability-themed mutual funds, compared to ethical mutual funds that implement different sustainable and responsible investment strategies.Design/methodology/approachThe study refers to a European sample of 106 ethical funds and 51 sustainability-themed funds. The monthly performance of each fund is downloaded from Bloomberg for the period from January 1996 to December 2015. By applying a Fama and French (1993) three-factor model, the authors overcome the limits of a capital asset pricing model (CAPM) based-single index model, to compare the performance of the two categories of funds.FindingsSustainability-themed funds do not differ significantly from ethical funds in terms of portfolio attributes, except for market capitalization, age and net asset value. Regarding performance measures, the results shows that sustainability-themed funds have a lower underperformance than ethical funds (as measured by Jensen’s alpha), whereas the samples do not differ in terms of market risk (as measured by Beta coefficient). The idiosyncratic risk of sustainability-themed funds is positively influenced by the specific portfolio strategies. The sustainability-themed funds show a higher concentration in the industrial sector and a lower exposure to financial sector than ethical funds; in terms of geographical strategy, they are more global and international oriented; they mainly focus on small caps and value stocks.Research limitations/implicationsThe different sustainable and responsible investment strategies can be applied simultaneously and in a growing number of possible combinations. Mutual fund managers can consider thematic approach as an efficient opportunity for reconciling financial performance and economic sustainability. It is demonstrated that sustainability-themed funds adopt a portfolio strategy significantly different from ethical funds and from the environmental, social and governance benchmarks. Mutual fund managers implement a thematic specialization without any negative impact on the funds returns compared to ethical funds; actually, with a proper diversified portfolio, they are able to reduce idiosyncratic risk.Originality/valueThe analysis is extremely innovative, especially for the thematic sample. During the past 15 years, literature about sustainable and responsible investment has been focused especially on the differences in terms of risk and performance between socially responsible and conventional funds. This paper, starting from the methodology applied in these studies, wants to compare two different types of socially responsible strategies, with a specific focus on sustainability-themed mutual funds, given their exponential growth in the past few years.

Do Ethical Funds Underperform Conventional Funds? - Empirical Evidence from India

One of the significant developments in the investing community is the rise of socially responsible or ethical investments during last two decades. Because of the increasing size and importance of ethical mutual funds, this paper seeks to evaluate and compare the performance of ethical mutual funds with general funds and benchmark index (S&P BSE Shariah 500 Equity Index) in the Indian market. The sample comprises six ethical fund schemes and three general fund schemes of Tauras mutual fund over the period 2009-2014 using weekly NAVs. The study uses return, risk, risk-adjusted measures (Sharpe ratio, Treynor ratio, Jensens alpha and information ratio), Famas decomposition measure, paired samples t-test, and growth regression equation to accomplish the objectives. The findings suggest that some of the ethical funds generated significantly higher return than other funds and benchmark index. Despite having higher risk, ethical funds outperformed other funds and benchmark index on the basis of various risk-adjusted measures and net selectivity returns. This indicates that the compromise made with respect to diversification by investing in ethical funds was well rewarded in terms of higher returns in Indian context. Our findings lend support to the case of ethical investing in India. Mutual funds and other investment funds should launch schemes which invest in socially responsible or ethical stocks.

Private ethical fund investors across countries and time: a survey-based review

Purpose – This paper aims to provide an overview of the literature to point out similarities and differences among private ethical investors across countries and time. Over the past three decades, many surveys have been conducted to advance the understanding of the demographic characteristics, motivation and morals of private ethical investors across countries and time. To date, the survey-based evidence on private investors into ethical funds is geographically rather segmented, and the research questions are fairly diverse. This permits only very temporally or regionally selective conclusions. Thereby, the authors identify interesting topics for future research. Design/methodology/approach – To identify the relevant literature for our review, the authors carried out a structured Boolean keyword search using major library services and databases. Findings – When questions about negative screening criteria are presented in a direct investment context, the consensus of private ethical investors “worldwide” (on average) is that social screening issues are most important, followed by ecological and moral topics. The percentage of ethical funds in the fund portfolio of the average private ethical investor in Europe seems to increase when the investor exhibits high degrees of pro-social attitudes and perceived consumer effectiveness. European private ethical investors are of the opinion that ethical funds perform worse but are less risky than conventional funds. Practical implications – The authors make suggestions on how investment companies should design their funds so that they can attract more socially responsible investors. Originality/value – The paper is of particular value because it focuses on private investors in the fast growing retail market of socially responsible investment funds.