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The purpose of this paper is to examine the risk-adjusted performance of Brazilian SRI stock funds.

Risk-adjusted performance of 11 Brazilian socially responsible investment (SRI) funds relative to local index funds and matched pairs of funds.

SRI funds performed as well as portfolios representing the broad market on a risk-adjusted basis, both before and during the global financial crisis. Independent investment houses are not interested in SRI funds. Large financial conglomerates may see these funds as part of their corporate social responsibility image strategy.

Brazilian SRI funds are a very small niche in the stock mutual fund universe of the country, thus, the small sample (universe) of SRI funds, as far as the author's knew. One cannot say that independent asset managers do not include SRI screening in their stock selection criteria. The use of SRI screening by the most prominent independent asset managers is a potential topic for future research.

Brazilian SRI funds did not represent an extra screening filter cost to their investors. The majority of asset managers do not consider this strategy important enough to deserve an exclusive vehicle.

As SRI funds did not posit an extra screening cost, they may deserve a greater share of the mutual fund market, stimulating more SRI.

The performance of Brazilian SRI stock funds had not been examined in the international literature. Brazil has vast natural resources, a very large economy and the fourth largest mutual fund industry in the world, but was overlooked.

The purpose of this paper is to contrast three investment choices within the reach of individual investors: naive portfolios of Brazilian stocks; actively managed stock funds; and the Ibovespa index, which represents passive management as well as to offer insights on the performance of professional asset managers in this large emerging market.

Equally weighted portfolios contained between 5 and 30 stocks to keep transaction costs low. Stock selection used the Ibovespa constituents and considered value (dividend yield (DY) and price-to-book ratio), momentum (past returns), and liquidity, as well as the Sharpe ratio (SR) over the 2003-2012 period, rebalancing three times a year.

Cumulative returns of naive portfolios are large. They frequently outperform the index for all values of n. They also outperform stock funds, particularly when the invested amount exceeds US$25,000, due to transaction costs. Yet, expected out-of-sample SRs corrected for errors in estimates are very low, suggesting that one should not count on this historical performance in the future. Naive portfolios may simply be more exposed to additional value, size, and momentum risks. Results are sensitive to time period selection.

Naive portfolios may be attractive to individual investors in Brazil relative to stock funds, which seem to strive to keep volatility low and may be better when the investment amount is low. There may be merit for value or momentum stock selection strategies when forming small equally weighted portfolios.

The paper contrasts realistic stock investing alternatives for individuals, it provides a view of stock fund performance in Brazil, and offers practical implications that may be pertinent in other emerging stock markets.

Contrastar três opções de investimento ao alcance de investidores individuais: carteiras ingênuas de ações brasileiras; fundos de ações de gestão ativa; e o índice Ibovespa, que representa a gestão passiva. Oferecer informações sobre o desempenho de gestores de ativos profissionais neste grande mercado emergente.

As carteiras igualmente ponderadas continham entre 5 e 30 ações para manter os custos de transação baixos. A seleção de ações utilizou os componentes do Ibovespa e considerou o valor (rendimento de dividendos e relação preço/valor patrimonial), momentum (retornos passados) e liquidez, bem como o Índice de Sharpe no período 2003-2012, rebalanceando três vezes ao ano.

Os retornos acumulados de carteiras ingênuas são grandes. Eles frequentemente superam o índice para todos os valores de N. Eles também superam os fundos de ações, particularmente quando o montante investido excede US$ 25,000, devido aos custos de transação. Contudo, os Índices de Sharpe esperados fora de amostra corrigidos por erros nas estimativas são muito baixos, sugerindo que não se deve contar com este desempenho histórico no futuro. As carteiras ingênuas podem simplesmente estar mais expostas a fatores riscos adicionais, tal como os de valor, tamanho e momentum. Os resultados são sensíveis à seleção do período de tempo.

As carteiras ingênuas podem ser atrativas para os investidores individuais no Brasil em relação aos fundos de ações, que parecem se esforçar para manter a volatilidade baixa e podem ser melhores quando o valor do investimento é baixo. Pode haver mérito para estratégias de seleção de ações de valor ou momentum ao formar carteiras igualmente ponderadas pequenas.

O artigo contrasta alternativas realistas de investimento em ações para indivíduos, oferece uma visão do desempenho dos fundos de ações no Brasil e oferece implicações práticas que podem ser pertinentes em outros mercados emergentes.

This paper analyzes alternative performance evaluation models applied to equity mutual funds under conditional and unconditional approaches in the Brazilian market.

The analysis is conducted using CAPM's single factor, Fama–French three and five factors, under their conditional and unconditional versions in a sample of 896 equity mutual funds from 2008 to 2019.

The results suggest that the use of three- or five-factor models is especially relevant to reduce the effect of market anomalies in performance assessment. Additionally, results show that conditional approaches, adding time-varying alphas and betas with macroeconomic variables, provide higher explanatory power than their unconditional peers.

The results are relevant in the unique economic environment characterized by historically high interest rate and high market volatility.

This chapter describes the evolution of the Brazilian investment fund industry and the impact of domestic and international crises on investors, managers and the main types of funds offered in Brazil. In particular, it explores the effect of the subprime crisis and shows that the first wave of this crisis had very little impact, but the second wave with the collapse of Lehman Brothers did have a major impact on risk, returns and flows of the mutual fund industry in Brazil.

This study aims to investigate the association of demographic characteristics, market conditions and risk taking with the disposition effect using data on Brazilian individual investors.

This study uses a unique data set with monthly data from June 2007 to February 2017 provided by one of the largest asset management firms in Brazil. This paper computes the proportion of gains realized and the proportion of losses realized to see if investors incur the disposition effect. This paper then performs logistic regressions to verify the association between investors’ disposition effects and demographic and portfolio characteristics. This paper analyses the prevalence of cognitive biases depending on market conditions (bull or bear markets) and include regressions by asset class as robustness checks.

This paper finds evidence that risk averse investors are more prone to the disposition effect, male subjects are less prone to this cognitive bias and age is not associated with the disposition effect. This paper observes that the tendency to incur the disposition effect decreases during bull markets but increases during bear markets. Also, this paper finds that sophisticated investors are more prone to selling winning assets and holding on to losses.

First, paper gains and losses are based on the highest and lowest prices of the month and not on the price at the moment the sale occurred. Second, this paper had access only to end-of-month information, not to actual daily trading records. Third, because the data set relates to individual investors who trade investment funds, this paper cannot determine whether firm size is associated with the disposition effect. Fourth, age may not necessarily be a proxy for investor experience, so one should interpret the lack of significance for age in terms of generational differences.

This paper demonstrates that the disposition effect is prevalent even among wealthier and more educated investors with delegated asset classes. This paper also presents evidence on the association between demographic characteristics and cognitive biases considering a liquidity-constrained, highly volatile and developing market.

This paper demonstrates that gender is an important characteristic to understand cognitive biases and that investor sophistication may not necessarily be an attenuation factor for the disposition effect in a liquidity-constrained market.

This is the first study to analyse the role of demographic characteristics and risk taking to explain the disposition effect using real information at the individual level about Brazilian investors. It is also the first to analyse the intensity of cognitive biases during bull and bear markets in the Brazilian economy.

This paper aims to identify the effectiveness of private equity and venture capital (PE/VC) funds in promoting best practices of corporate governance in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) committed to PE/VC partnerships, in an institutional environment characterized by ownership concentration, lack of support for minorities' shareholder rights, and limited outside sources of finance for SMEs.

Based on the literature related to similar work and context as in Eastern Europe and South Africa and best corporate governance practices developed for Brazil, the authors developed a list of aspects associated to practices related to SMEs. This list was submitted to 15 specialists, and the resulting compilation produced a list of 49 items that were submitted to a sample of 78 respondents to evaluate the relative importance of each item. Finally, a survey comprised of 70 entrepreneurs and managers of SMEs with investments from PE/VC funds evaluated the situation of their companies before and after forming a partnership with the fund.

The study provides evidence that PE/VC funds play an important role in promoting best practices of corporate governance in invested SMEs, which contributes to development of the institutional environment and SMEs access to outside sources of finance.

The study contributes empirical evidence to the role played by PE/VC funds and their influence on corporate governance practices.

The chapter describes the recent history of Sustainability Indices in three Latin American countries: Brazil, Mexico, and Chile. In these countries, local Stock Exchanges have been recently launching their own Sustainability Indices. This ongoing trend may indicate a particular way of addressing Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) in the region. The chapter relies on secondary data, mainly documents published by the Stock Exchanges themselves, and on some selected academic and practitioner oriented articles. All three countries present some common features. In all cases, local stock markets launched Sustainability Indices, and their composition has been publicly available from the beginning. Consequently, SRI is now developing in the region in a different way from that of developed markets. The chapter is based on secondary data only. Further research may involve interviews and surveys with different stakeholders (i.e., investors, quoted companies, public officials). The illustration of a different way of developing an SRI market may help public officials and investors from other countries, either in Latin America or elsewhere, who intend to promote SRI. There are few studies on SRI in Latin America, and comparative research between different countries in the region is still rare.

This study is aimed at developing and validating an index designed to measure the level of social disclosure of external social programs of firms listed on the Brazilian stock market.

The index of social disclosure is composed of 13 items distributed in three dimensions: past information, prospective actions, and accessibility. Its validation involved: (a) pre-test, (b) analysis by referees, (c) exploratory factor analysis, (d) Cronbach’s alpha test, and (e) final validation. The sample is composed of 83 Brazilian firms listed on the Brazilian Stock Exchange from 2005 to 2009.

The index presented robustness in all validation stages. It was found that size, industry sector, internationalization, auditing, and listing on social responsible investment funds are decisive factors for increasing the level of social disclosure.

The index of social disclosure evaluates external social programs only. Hence, some types of social information are not captured, such environmental ones. Besides, the sources of information for the index are restricted to annual and sustainability reports, so that information from other sources, such as official announcements and company websites, are not captured.

The social disclosure index developed can be useful to analysts and investors assessing listed firms, as well as to financial-market regulators defining policies applicable to the disclosure of corporate social information.

(a) Construction of a social disclosure index validated and tested in Brazilian firms, which is liable to replication; (b) Utilization of a representative sample of firms listed on an important emerging stock market.

This paper examines stock prices reaction to open market repurchases announcements at the São Paulo Stock Exchange between May 30, 1997 and October 31, 1998. This institutional scenario is a good testing ground for some theoretical hypotheses about stock repurchases announcements, because during this period there were taxes on capital gains but not on dividends. Using an event study methodology, we examined 110 episodes and found very small abnormal returns. Those results can not be explained by two main competing theoretical explanations. The Cumulative Abnormal Returns pattern found clearly suggests that repurchase announcements affected the behavior of stock prices in ways not described in previous studies.