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After completion of the case study, the students will be able to understand the different risks associated with a business, focusing on price risk and the importance of price risk management in business; understand and evaluate the products available for hedging price risk through exchange-traded derivatives in the Indian scenario; and understand and evaluate the different strategies for price risk management through exchange-traded derivatives in the Indian scenario.

The case study pertains to a small business, M/s Sethi Jewellers. The enterprise is being run by Shri Charan Jeet Sethi and his son Tejinder Sethi. The business is located in Jain Bazar, Jammu, UT, in Northern India. The business was started in 1972 by Charan Jeet’s father. They deal in a wide range of jewelry products and are well-established jewelers known for selling quality ornaments. Tejinder (MBA in marketing) was instrumental in revamping his business recently. Under his leadership, the business has experienced rapid transformation. The business has grown from a one-room shop fully managed by Tejinder’s grandfather to a multistory showroom with several artisans, sales staff and security persons. Through his e-store, Tejinder has a bulk order from a client where the client requires him to accept the order with a small token at the current price and deliver the final product three months from now. Tejinder is in a dilemma about accepting or rejecting the large order. Second, if he accepts, should he buy the entire gold now or wait to buy it later at a lower price? He is also considering hedging the price risk through exchange-traded derivatives. However, he is not entirely sure, as he has a few apprehensions regarding the same, and he is also not fully aware of the process and the instruments he has to use for hedging the price risk on the exchange.

The case study is aimed to cater to undergraduate, postgraduate and MBA students in the field of finance. This case study can be used for students interested in commodity derivatives, risk management and market microstructure.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 1: Accounting and finance.

The purpose of this study is to formulate a governance and regulatory framework for Islamic crypto assets (ICAs). A balanced regulatory framework is required to protect consumers and to encourage digital Islamic finance innovation.

This study focuses on Indonesia and compares it to other countries, specifically Malaysia and the UK, using statutory, comparative and conceptual research approaches.

The ICAs are permissible (halal) commodities/assets to be traded if they fulfil the standards as goods or commodities that can be traded with a sale and purchase contract (sil’ah) and have an underlying asset (backed by tangible assets such as gold). Islamic social finance activities such as zakat and Islamic microfinance activities such as halal industry are backed by ICAs. The regulatory framework needed to support ICAs includes the Islamic Financial Services Act, shariah supervisory boards, shariah governance standards and ICA exchanges.

This study only examined crypto assets (tokens as securities) and not cryptocurrencies. It used regulations in several countries with potential in Islamic finance development, such as Indonesia, Malaysia and the UK.

The ICA regulatory framework is helpful as an element of a comprehensive strategy to develop a lasting Islamic social finance ecosystem.

The development of crypto assets must be supported by a regulatory framework to protect consumers and encourage innovation in Islamic digital finance.

ICA has growth prospects; however, weak regulatory support and minimal oversight indicate weak legal protection for consumers and investors. Regulating ICA, optimising supervision, implementing shariah governance standards and having ICA exchanges can strengthen the Islamic economic ecosystem.

This study aims to examine investor attention by exploring the trading behavior of investors in US-based exchange traded funds (ETFs) of countries active in the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cups.

The present study employs event study methodology to measure abnormal returns and excess trading volume of country-specific ETFs during six FIFA World Cups. The sample of ETFs includes 19 participating countries.

Consistent with investor behavior that might be explained by attention effect, the study finds that country-specific ETFs from participating countries do indeed behave differently during FIFA World Cups events. The authors find significant evidence of abnormal trading volume and, albeit weaker, abnormal returns during cups.

This study contributes to the literature on investor behavior, linking investor attention with salient sports events.

This study aims to examine the herding behavior of socially responsible exchange traded funds (SR ETFs) in comparison to conventional ETFs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To test for herding behavior, the authors use the cross-sectional absolute deviation and a quadratic market model.

During the pandemic, investments in socially responsible financial products grew rapidly. And investors in the popular SR ETFs herd during this special period, while holders of conventional ETFs did not.

Investors in socially responsible investments must do their own research and make their own financial decisions, rather than follow the crowd, especially during extreme events like the COVID-19 pandemic.

The evidence shows that, during the pandemic, socially responsible ETFs behaved in line with theoretical predictions of herding, that is, herding is more significant during extreme market conditions.

The authors analyse six actively traded VIX Exchange Traded Products (ETPs) including 1x long, −1x inverse and 2x leveraged products. The authors assess their impact on the VIX Futures index benchmark.

Long-run causal relations between daily price movements in ETPs and futures are established, and the impact of rebalancing activity of leveraged and inverse ETPs evidenced through causal relations in the last 30 min of daily trading.

High frequency lead lag relations are observed, demonstrating opportunities for arbitrage, although these tend to be short-lived and only material in times of market dislocation.

The causal relations between VXX and VIX Futures are well established with leads and lags generally found to be short-lived and arbitrage relations holding. The authors go further to capture 1x long, −1x inverse as well as 2x leveraged ETNs and the corresponding ETFs, to give a broad representation across the ETP market. The authors establish causal relations between inverse and leveraged products where causal relations are not yet documented.

The case examines the development and launch of an exchange-traded fund (ETF) based on JUST Capital's socially responsible corporate ranking methodologies. The case provides a market overview of Environment, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) and socially responsible investing (SRI), what has driven growth in those areas worldwide, and several best-practice investment approaches. Following the overview, the case describes the founding and development of JUST Capital, explores JUST Capital's ranking methodologies, and presents the decision point faced by the CEO: requisite selection of one of three strategies in order for JUST Capital to generate “self-sustaining” revenue.

This study is the first to investigate the causal relationship between Bitcoin and equity price returns by sectors. Previous studies have focused on aggregated indices such as S&P500, Nasdaq and Dow Jones, but this study uses mixed frequency and disaggregated data at the sectoral level. This allows the authors to examine the nature, direction and strength of causality between Bitcoin and equity prices in different sectors in more detail.

This paper utilizes an Unrestricted Asymmetric Mixed Data Sampling (U-AMIDAS) model to investigate the effect of high-frequency Bitcoin returns on a low-frequency series equity returns. This study also examines causality running from equity to Bitcoin returns by sector. The sample period covers United States (US) data from 3 Jan 2011 to 14 April 2023 across nine sectors: materials, energy, financial, industrial, technology, consumer staples, utilities, health and consumer discretionary.

The study found that there is no causality running from Bitcoin to equity returns in any sector except for the technology sector. In the tech sector, lagged Bitcoin returns Granger cause changes in future equity prices asymmetrically. This means that falling Bitcoin prices significantly influence the tech sector during market pullbacks, but the opposite cannot be said during market rallies. The findings are consistent with those of other studies that have established that during market pullbacks, individual asset prices have a tendency to decline together, whereas during market rallies, they have a tendency to rise independently. In contrast, this study finds evidence of causality running from all sectors of the equity market to Bitcoin.

The findings have significant implications for investors and fund managers, emphasizing the need to consider the asymmetric causality between Bitcoin and the tech sector. Investors should avoid excessive exposure to both Bitcoin and tech stocks in their portfolio, as this may lead to significant drawdowns during market corrections. Diversification across different asset classes and sectors may be a more prudent strategy to mitigate such risks.

The study's findings underscore the need for investors to pay close attention to the frequency and disaggregation of data by sector in order to fully understand the true extent of the relationship between Bitcoin and the equity market.

The purpose of this study is to compare market reactions to the change in the demand by index funds between large and small company stocks by examining the transition of the S&P 500, S&P 400 MidCap and S&P 600 SmallCap indexes from market capitalization to free-float weighting. This unique information-free event allows not only avoiding confounding information signaling and investor awareness effects but also comparing the effect of the decrease in demand on stocks of different sizes.

This study uses the event study methodology to calculate abnormal returns and trading volume around the full-float adjustment day. It also tests for significant changes in institutional ownership and liquidity. Multivariate regressions are used to examine the relation of liquidity changes and price elasticity of demand to the cumulative abnormal returns around the full-float adjustment day.

This study finds significant decreases in stock price accompanied with significant increases in trading volume on the full-float adjustment day, and significant gains in quasi-indexer institutional ownership and liquidity. The main finding is that cumulative abnormal returns around the event period are related to changes in the number of quasi-indexer and transient institutional shareholders, not to changes in liquidity or price elasticity of demand.

This study provides the first comprehensive comparison analysis of stock market reactions to the decline in demand between large and small company stocks. As an important implication for future studies of the index effect, changes in institutional ownership should be considered in the analysis.

This study aims to test mutual fund superiority, comparing the performance of 646 Islamic mutual funds with 475 ethical funds and conventional proxies.

This study uses statistical methods including paired t-statistics of independent samples, one-way Bonferroni test–analysis of variance–F-statistic for testing means equality, the chi-squared test for median equality and regression models corrected for heteroscedasticity. These methods are used to identify superiority of mutual funds and to validate the significance of the results.

The findings confirm the superiority of conventional funds over ethical funds and ethical funds over Islamic funds. Both ethical and Islamic funds, however, outperform conventional proxies during some recessionary periods. Moreover, stronger performance is recorded for Islamic funds in Europe and North America regions and across age and asset allocation categories, but limited support for reversal fund size, composition focus and reversed price effect.

These findings should assist investors when deciding to invest and motivate Islamic and ethical funds to improve their portfolio formation and asset allocation strategies set by their professional managers.

The originality of this study is in its comprehensive approach in that it compares the performance of funds after accounting for such characteristics as fund objectives, size, age, asset allocation, geographical investment focus, fund composition focus, share price levels and the effect of global crises. This study approach is not only original and productive in documenting Islamic funds’ performance for the past three decades (1990–2022) but can also update the literature on these characteristics collectively and individually.

Against the background of sustainable finance, this study aims to address whether global asset management firms started transforming toward more environmentally friendly investment policies according to the Agenda for Sustainable Development launched by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015.

The authors apply qualitative, explorative research methods through the development of the case study of BlackRock, Inc. (USA). Addressing sustainable finance, the authors compare the opposite to the editorial page (op-eds) communication strategy of BlackRock against real life for the period from 2015 until today.

The op-eds communication strategy by BlackRock is multi-faceted targeting to develop a leading sustainable reputation supported by fine-grained relationships to business and policy makers. This study empirically proves that there is a discrepancy between BlackRock’s op-eds communication contends concerning sustainable finance and the reality. Among others this study found that BlackRock still invests in fossils and increasingly launches passively managed funds with limited transparency standards in terms of sustainable finance.

This study contributes to the corporate social responsibility literature focusing on fossil energy and sustainable finance. As BlackRock did not reply to the authors’ requests for conducting interviews, the authors rely on a broad range of secondary sources including material provided by non-governmental organizations. This study proposes that research should be amplified by further empirical studies among various sustainable finance stakeholders based on the research propositions the authors have developed as a result of this study.

This research provides empirical evidence for business executives and policy decision-makers involved in the energy industry, corporate ethics and global financial asset management.

This study provides insights toward sustainable finance policies of BlackRock with corresponding outcomes related to global climate change and its impact on societies.

This study delivers empirical evidence on the energy transformation from fossils toward renewables against the background of sustainable finance strategies of large asset management enterprises such as BlackRock which is rare to find in the literature.