ESG Impact on Financial Corporate performance and portfolio returns: evidence of Australia and Japan

La inversión ambiental, social y de gobernanza ha experimentado un cambio radical; empresas e inversionistas se han centrado en el impacto de la divulgación de las prácticas y políticas relacionadas con el medio ambiente, la responsabilidad social y la gobernanza en sus estrategias operativas e inversiones. El propósito de este documento es demostrar el impacto que las políticas ESG tienen en la rentabilidad de las acciones de las empresas públicas en Australia y Japón. Se utilizan medidas contables y de mercado para determinar el impacto que tienen las prácticas ESG en los rendimientos de los índices bursátiles. Los datos anuales utilizados son de empresas del índice S & P / ASX de Australia y del índice Nikkei 225 de Japón, que cubren el período de 2005 a 2019. Se utilizó la regresión del modelo de efectos fijos para probar la relación significativa entre la rentabilidad de las acciones de las empresas y la puntuación ESG, la contabilidad y medidas basadas en el mercado. Se crearon carteras para analizar la relación riesgo / rentabilidad entre empresas con y sin ESG en todos los países. Los hallazgos indican resultados mixtos. Las carteras no ESG de Australia superan a las carteras S & P500 y ESG. La cartera de Japón tiene rendimientos positivos, pero está por debajo del índice de referencia. Las carteras de baja capitalización de mercado con y sin ESG superan a las carteras de mayor capitalización.

Portfolio Investment in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia

Several strategies are adopted by investors in lowering the risk of investment while maximising its return. Graham's stock selection criteria are noted as one of the best strategies in selecting portfolios by investors. Although the model is universally accepted, it is less commonly practised and examined in emerging markets. Considering the growth of these emerging countries' financial markets, it is worthwhile to investigate the doctrine's effect on investment in these countries. This study endeavours to review the consequence of Graham's stock selection criteria on portfolio returns in the Malaysian and Saudi Arabian stock markets. Each country represents the fastest growing market in their region which justifies this study. The study found that the Malaysian stock market is capable of proffering abnormal returns to investors while the Saudi stock market is capable to offer abnormal returns to investors despite being an undeveloped and immature stock market. The study concludes that the model of stock selection remains beneficial and indeed valuable to regional investments.

Dynamic portfolio rebalancing through reinforcement learning

Portfolio managements in financial markets involve risk management strategies and opportunistic responses to individual trading behaviours. Optimal portfolios constructed aim to have a minimal risk with highest accompanying investment returns, regardless of market conditions. This paper focuses on providing an alternative view in maximising portfolio returns using Reinforcement Learning (RL) by considering dynamic risks appropriate to market conditions through dynamic portfolio rebalancing. The proposed algorithm is able to improve portfolio management by introducing the dynamic rebalancing of portfolios with vigorous risk through an RL agent. This is done while accounting for market conditions, asset diversifications, risk and returns in the global financial market. Studies have been performed in this paper to explore four types of methods with variations in fully portfolio rebalancing and gradual portfolio rebalancing, which combine with and without the use of the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model to predict stock prices for adjusting the technical indicator centring. Performances of the four methods have been evaluated and compared using three constructed financial portfolios, including one portfolio with global market index assets with different risk levels, and two portfolios with uncorrelated stock assets from different sectors and risk levels. Observed from the experiment results, the proposed RL agent for gradual portfolio rebalancing with the LSTM model on price prediction outperforms the other three methods, as well as returns of individual assets in these three portfolios. The improvements of the returns using the RL agent for gradual rebalancing with prediction model are achieved at about 27.9–93.4% over those of the full rebalancing without prediction model. It has demonstrated the ability to dynamically adjust portfolio compositions according to the market trends, risks and returns of the global indices and stock assets.

ESG impact on financial corporate performance and portfolio returns: evidence of Australia and Japan

Environmental, Social, and Governance investing has undergone a radical shift; companies and investors have focused on the impact of the disclosure of the practices and policies related to the environment, social responsibility, and governance in their operational strategies and investment. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the impact that the ESG policies have on public companies' stock returns in Australia and Japan. Accounting and market-based measures are used to determine the impact ESG practices have on stock market index returns. The annual data used is of companies from Australia's S&P/ASX Index and Japan's Nikkei 225 Index, covering the period from 2005 to 2019. Fixed effect model regression was used to test the significant relationship between companies' stock returns and ESG score, accounting, and market-based measures. Portfolios were created to analyze the risk/return relationship between companies with and without ESG across countries. The findings indicate mixed results. Australia´s non-ESG portfolios outperform the S&P500 and ESG portfolios. Japan´s portfolio has positive returns but underperforms the benchmark. Low market capitalization portfolios with and without ESG outperform the higher capitalization portfolios.

Mutual funds behavior and risk-adjusted performance in Nigeria

The paper investigates the behavior of mutual funds and their risk-adjusted performance in the financial markets of Nigeria between April 2016 and May 31, 2019, using descriptive statistics, as well as CAPM, Jensen’s alpha, and other risk-adjusted portfolio performance measures such as Sharpe and Treynor ratios, as well as Fama decomposition of return. The descriptive tests revealed that 80.77% of the funds were superior to market returns, while 13.46% were riskier. The market and the fund returns behaved abnormally with asymptotic and leptokurtic characteristics as their skewness and kurtosis varied from the normal requirements. Diagnostically, the normality test by Jacque-Berra showed that the return was not normally distributed at a 1% significance level. The market was more aggressive relative to the funds. The average risk-free rate was 6.75% above the market’s return. The risk-adjusted portfolio returns measured by Sharpe and Treynor ratios showed that 67.31% of the funds underperformed the market compared to 40.38% that outperformed the market using Jensen’s alpha. Fama decomposition of return revealed that the fund managers are risk-averse with 48% superior selection ability and rationally invested over 85% of investors’ funds in schemes with fixed income securities at a given risk-free return that cushioned the negative effects of the systematic and idiosyncratic risks and consequently threw the total returns into positive territories. Overall, the fund managers possessed 52% of inferior selection abilities that only earned 33% of superior risk-adjusted returns and hence, failed to achieve the desired diversification in the relevant period.

Causal Nexus Between Crude, Gold, Dollar and Stock Markets in India: Empirical Explorations Before, During and After the Global Recession

This research study empirically examines the price linkages among oil, dollar, gold and stock markets in India over period from 1999:1 to 2019:12. We employ cointegrated vector error correction model (VECM) and Granger causality test to study the long-run and short-run relationships between commodity and financial markets before, during and after the global financial crisis. Our analysis finds the dependency on price movements in asset markets is time-varying and countercyclical in India. Findings suggest the asymmetric structure of price correlations among asset markets across three temporal periods on either side of the crisis. Our study offers useful insights into the strategic asset allocations to investors in response to economic cycles, to help optimise potential portfolio returns and provide protection towards some downside risks. JEL Codes: C58, D53, F51

The impact of MILA market-maker facility on volatility of the Colombian stock market

ABSTRACT In 2014, the Colombian Stock Exchange commenced the implementation of its market-maker facility (MMF), aiming at improving market efficiency. This paper examines the impact of the MMF program on three volatility-related aspects: volatility persistence, risk premium, and information asymmetry. This paper provides new insights about the anticipated outcomes of Mercados Integrados Latinoamericanos (MILA) reforms, specifically the MMF on the volatility of the Colombian stock market. This topic has not been fully addressed in the existing literature. This study, therefore, provides useful information for regulators and policy makers, in endeavors to address key issues raised during the World Economic Forum (WEF) of 2016. This paper poses a challenge to policy makers and stock market regulators in Colombia to revisit the reform program and address the factors limiting the effectiveness of market reforms. This paper provides justification for replicating the study to cover other MILA countries due to existing differences in some domestic market policies and structures. The paper employs conditional variance models for measuring volatility persistence, risk premia, and information asymmetry. The models are employed on the COLCAP stock index (Colombia) observed from January 17, 2008 to May 30, 2019. Observations are divided into two samples - pre- and post-MMF. This paper provides evidence of the impacts of the MMF reforms in the Colombian stock market. Specifically, the MMF seems to have an impact on the following aspects: (i) the magnitude in which current returns depend on previous returns has increased; (ii) investment portfolio returns, which are generally low, have declined after the MMF, leading to less risk compensation; (iii) the MMF does not seem to have affected the volatility of market returns and information asymmetry; (iv) volatility persistence increased in magnitude.