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Transcript of Sandy Lai SMU 1 The Role of Equity Funds in the Financial Crisis Propagation Harald Hau INSEAD ...
Sandy LaiSMU
1
The Role of Equity Funds in the Financial Crisis Propagation
Harald Hau
INSEADhttp://www.haraldhau.com
Chong Tze ChuaSMU
Motivation and Key Findings
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 2
Subprime exposure was concentrated in financial stocks which account for only 15% of the US stock market in 2007
How could this lead to a 50% decline of the non-financial stocks?
This paper examine the role of mutual funds as a channel of asset contagions from financial to non-financial stocks
Document that the 27% stocks most exposed (via stock ownership) to distressed funds have an under-performance of 35% at the peak of the crisis
Hypotheses
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 3
H1: Simple Fire Sale Hypothesis
Stocks owned by equity funds with high exposure to bank stocks in 2007/2 and 2008/1 face larger selling pressure and show poor crisis performance.
H2: Stock Performance Dependent Fire Sales Hypothesis
Distressed funds sell primarily better performing stocks when in distress
• Valuation Uncertainty makes over-performing stocks better sells
• Disposition Effect
H3: Fund Share Stability Hypothesis
Stocks with a large share of (non-distressed) fund owners perform better during the crisis
• Panic sales by direct retail investors• Self-selection of retail investors into fund and direct investors
Literature I
What is contagion? Forbes and Rigobon (JF, 2001): Asset interdependence and
crisis specific effects are difficult to disentangle Need to think about contagion channel and its identification Example: Gelos and Reinhard (2006)
Equity fire sales Coval and Stafford (2007)
Limits to arbitrage more severe in crisis Caballero and Simsek (2009)
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 4
Literature II
Recent contributions on the crisis contagion
Contagion from co-lateralized debt to corporate bonds (Manconi, Massa, and Yasuda (2010))
Channel: demand collapse, credit collapse or asset fire sales? (Calomiris, Love, and Peria (2010))
Contagion from the ABX subprime index to bonds and financial stocks (Longstaff (2010))
[...]
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 5
Identification
Use stock and fund/investor level data to separate contagion effect from other linkages and macro crisis channels
Procedure: Step 1: Measure fund exposure to financial stocks Step 2: Measure stock exposure to exposed
(distressed) funds Stock exposure is a stock specific measure of fire sale
pressure which differs across stocks in the same country and industry; control for macro exposure via industry fixed effects
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 6
Data
Fund holding data: 27,274 equity funds in 69 countries Reported holding concern approximately 30,000
stocks
After data filtering: Work with 20,477 funds Report 16,045 billion in assets under management in
June 2007
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 7
Summary Statistics
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 8
[...]
From Fund Exposure to Stock Exposure
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 9
Fund exposure: Return loss (if larger than 1%) due to financial stock investments in 2007/2 and 2008/1
Stock exposure: Aggregate fund exposure of all funds holding a stock weighted by fund ownership relative to capitalization
Exposed versus Non-Exposed Stocks
Define exposure dummy DExp for 15% most exposed stocks worldwide
We find that exposed stocks are concentrated in the U.S. market (27%) are spread over all industries are on average larger than non-exposed stocks show a drastic reduction of their fund holdings relative
to non-exposed stocks
No evidence that exposed funds are different Same average pre-crisis return on assets
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 10
Fund Redemption
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 11
Fund Holding Changes During Crisis
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 12
0.1
.2.3
0.1
.2.3
-30 -20 -10 0 10
Exposed Stock
Non-Exposed Stock
Den
sity
Percentage Aggregate Fund Holding Change
Factor model for risk adjustment of returns estimated for July 2003 to July 2007:
Excess returns for crisis period
Cumulative excess return
Calculation of Excess Returns
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 13
Relative Underperformance of Exposed Stocks
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 14
-.5
-.4
-.3
-.2
-.1
0C
um
ula
tive
Re
turn
s
Fire Sales Effects for All Exposed Stocks
-.5
-.4
-.3
-.2
-.1
0C
um
ula
tive
Re
turn
s
Fire Sales Effects for Exposed U.S. Stocks
Feb 27, 2009:
-36%
H1: Evidence on Fire Sale Hypothesis
Stocks owned by distressed funds dramatically underperform during the crisis relative to industry peers
Return shortfall of 36% on February 27, 2009 for the 27% most exposed U.S. Stocks
Also large effects for non-U.S. stocks Fire sale discounts are transitory
Contagion channel through fund ownership can account for at least 10% of the downturn in non-financial stocks
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 15
H2: Stock Performance Dependent Fire Sales?
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 16
Non-Exposed Stocks
Exposed Stocks
-10
12
3
Cu
mu
lativ
e R
etu
rns
0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1
Return Quantiles
Non-Exposed vs. Exposed U.S. Stocks27/2/2009
-2-1
.5-1
-.5
0
Cu
mu
lativ
e R
etu
rns
0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1
Return Quantiles
Fire Sales Effects by Return Quantiles27/2/2009
H3: Are Stocks with high Fund Share more stable?
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 17
Are Direct Investors more Panic-Prone?
Retail investors with direct investments might be more prone to panic than those investing through mutual funds; hence a high fund share increases a stock’s crisis resilience
Fund ownership share and NYSE retail trading volume have correlation of - 0.58
Define two long-short portfolio loading on stocks with
(i) high direct ownership share (DMF = direct minus fund)
(ii) high retail trading (RMI = retail minus institutional) VAR structure:
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 18
Impulse Response of DMF Portfolio to Index Return Shock
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 19
Summary of VAR Evidence
Evidence of Granger causality from index returns to the DMF portfolio return
Find Granger Causality during the two crisis periods, but not before the crisis
Spill-over occurs (mostly) with a one-day lag It is economically large: A 1% index shock causes a
DMF return of 0.41% for the DMF portfolio
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 20
Conclusions
Equity funds were a very important channel for asset contagion from bank stocks to non-financial stocks
Paradoxically, fire sales are concentrated in the best performing stocks
(Non-distressed) fund ownership increases a stock’s crisis resilience
Evidence of more “flight to quality” (retail investor panic) among direct than indirect (fund) investors
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 21
Next Project
What were the consequences of stock mispricing for the company’s real decision: Investment behaviour? Employment? Capital structure: Share buybacks?
Is the stock market a side-show? Does it matter for bank financing?
© Harald Hau, INSEAD 22