投资行业有一个永恒的主题，主动管理和被动管理，究竟哪种方式才是更好的投资方式呢?主动式管理的唯一目标就是跑赢大市，资金管理者们通过仔细的股票筛选，使得投资组合的表现超过某一个给定的指数(e.g.纳斯达克，标普500指数等)。这种投资方式也被称为Alpha策略。与此相反，被动式管理的目标就是购买某一给定指数的成分证券，来获取与指数相同的收益率。这也被称为针对市场风险的Beta策略。
主动式管理的拥护者们大多认为如果可以通过积极的投资行为来获取比被动式管理更高的收益，那就不应该放弃获利的机会。但是，很多的投资专家和学者们都认为想要长期打败市场是不可能的，所以对于普通投资者来说还是被动式管理更可靠。Active management 和passive management已经成为了金融和资产管理领域最大的dilemma，自然也就成为了学术界最感兴趣的课题之一。今天我们就来讨论一下这个经典题目。
An Empirical Study on Active Mutual Funds and Passive Index Mutual Funds & ETFs
1. Research Question and Objective
There is along-standing dilemma of the alternative between active and passive investment vehicles. Investors are often perplexed by risk-adjusted traits of actively managed mutual funds and index replication funds. In general, mutual funds and ETFs are both developed based on the theory of pooled fund investing which advocates diversified portfolio management.
Mutual funds can be divided into actively and passively managed mutual funds which adopt different investment strategies. Meanwhile, most ETFs are created to track a benchmark index. Investors pursuing different investment strategies hold different perspectives towards these investment vehicles. Active investors believe the market is inefficient and thereby they can beat the market from time to time and earn excessive returns (alpha). These investors usually prefer actively managed funds to find an optimal portfolio.
On the contrary, passive investors maintain the market is generally efficient and there is no way to consistently outperform the market. They only intend to earn the market return (beta) through investing in passively managed index mutual funds and ETFs. Therefore, active management is the key determinant that differs on these investment choices.
The majority of financial literature contends that active investment strategies tend to underperform or be equivalent to their passively managed counterparts (Sharpe, 1966, Gruber,1996). Given the flexibility and low trading costs of ETFs, many scholars claim investors should opt for passive funds.
In order to shed more lights on this issue, the primary objective of this dissertation is to underline whether investors should be concerned in selecting between active and passive investment instruments. To achieve this objective, this paper will compare the performance of various mutual fund schemes (both active and passive mutual funds and ETFs) on the basis of risks and returns.
2. Literature Review
The selection of most ideal investment portfolio is always a challenge for individual investors. Active investment approach focuses on outperforming the underlying benchmark index by adopting fund managers’ superior stock selection skills, while the passive approach focuses on tracking the performance of a relative benchmark index.
Many studies show that on average actively managed funds do not create excessive returns for investors before and after transaction fees and expenses (Malkiel, 1995; Bogle,1998). Moreover, many renowned scholars also echo the notion of constant underperformance of activeinvestment strategy by confirming that passive mutual funds deliver higher risk-adjusted performances after adjusting for expenses (Sharpe, 1966).
ETFs hold many advantages against active mutual funds, such as lower expense ratios, higher flexibility and tax benefits (Venkataraman & Venkatesan, 2016;). ETFs can be traded based on their Net Asset Value (NAV) during intraday like a normal security whereas their actively managed open-end counterparts are normally priced basedon their NAV at the end of the trading day.
Typically, mutual funds seek to outperform the market which put more tasks on the shoulder of fund managers to formulate the most profitable investment portfolio. Then the management fees as well as the transaction costs will be higher compared to ETFs’ operational expenses. Conservative investors who do not want to take the extra risk that is above the market risk would go for ETFs.
According to Andreu et al. (2012), investors can acquire an annual excess return of 5% by chasing the momentum of ETFs. Rompotis (2011) examines the performance and systematic risk (beta) of ETFs and mutual funds in Greek market and concludes that ETFs adopts more conservative strategy than competitive mutual funds and generate better performance than mutual funds as well.
Bogle, (1998) presents a trade-off hypothesis, indicating the trade-off nature between fund selection opportunities and low costs funds. He suggests it would be wise for investors to choose low expense funds at the expense of reduced fund selection options. Malkiel (1995) investigates the performance and the level of survivorship bias of all available equity mutual funds on a 21-year time horizon. He confirms that actively managed mutual funds typically underperform their benchmark indices.
Moreover, the survivorship bias seems stronger than the estimation of previous researches which leads to the overestimation of existing mutual funds’ performance. Malkielalso suggests since the market is generally efficient and then the so-called arbitrage opportunities won’t exist in the long-haul. Accordingly, investors will have a better chance to earn superior risk-adjusted returns through investing passively managed funds.
Rompotis (2009) compares the performance of active and passive ETFs and index mutual funds. As a continuation to the previous literature, his research outcomes demonstrate that both passive ETFs and index mutual funds outperform actively managed ETFs which add more empirical evidence to root for passive investing strategies.
The phenomenon of active funds are inferior to their passive peers doesn’t exist solely among equity mutual funds. Using US bond mutual funds as research target, Blake et al. (1993) find out that fixed incomemutual funds also underperform their underlying indices. They also reveal that as management fees increase the returns decrease accordingly.
With overwhelming research findings supporting passive investing strategies, it would be reasonable to believe that the majority investors will go for index funds and ETFs. Nevertheless, active mutual funds experienced an explosive growth over the past few decades, suggesting the relative lower returns and higher costs didn’t stop investors to allocate their assets on these funds.
Gruber (1996) recognizes this phenomenon as the mutual fund puzzle. If the majority of investors only choose passive funds, this will trigger the market to become inefficient as no one tries to earn excessive returns. Some contend that the real value of active investing is to improve the efficiency of the market by optimizing asset allocation (Jones & Wermers, 2011).
Others like Minor (2001) suggests that active mutual funds can beat passive funds during certain time horizon. Furthermore, there are a set of empirical studies find out actively managed equity mutual funds can generate higher net of fees returns measured by alpha from different asset pricing models against their peer sector ETFs and index ETFs (Xiong, etal., 2010).
Rai & Raman (2014) also indicate small and mid-cap mutual funds in India substantially outperform their benchmark indices over different time durations. Their research findings suggest it might be better to select research targets in mature and efficient market because the capital markets in emerging economies provides more arbitrage opportunities.
This dissertation aims to measures the performance of active mutual funds, index funds and ETFs to determine which investment schemes can generate additional value for investors. Then, we might be able to provide additional evidence to answer the question of whether active investing is inferior to passive. This paper’s research outcomes can also provide useful information that when it comes to asset allocation investors need to pay attention to an investment objective’s expense ratio and transaction costs rather than exclusively past performances.
3. Methodology
This paper will focus on analyzing the monthly net asset values of active mutual funds, index funds and passive ETFs in US with a 10-year time span. The evaluation of risk-adjusted returns of research samples is operated by implementing of single-factor and multi-factor asset pricing models.
These models include Capital Asset Pricing Model (Sharpe, 1964;) and Fama French Three-Factor Model (Fama & French, 1993). NAV data for all sample funds will be extracted from the Thomson Reuters Datastream. The monthly NAVs range from 2008 to 2017 for each sample investments.
The dissertation deems a 10-year period is suitable for the study because it encompasses the diverse economic cycle. A shorter time span might carry too much noise to yield a normal investment pattern. This dissertation will select large-cap equity mutual funds, index funds and ETFs domiciled in the US as research targets.
In order to properly implement CAPM and Fama French Three-Factor, this paper will use Standard& Poor’s 500 as equity market portfolio proxy. With regard to the risk-free rate, this study intends to follow the mainstream literature applying the 3-Month US Treasury Bill monthly ask yield as a proxy.
As for the three-factor model, the additional data of HML and SMB variables will be gathered from the Kenneth and French online library. These parameters are essential for the regression analysis in order to calculate alphas of sample funds if present. In addition, to properly conduct the comparative analysis, this research paper will also measure the tracking error of sample index funds and ETFs to determine how far these passively managed investment schemes stray from the benchmark indices they mimic.
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