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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.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.

This study investigates the presence of herding in the Brazilian stock market between 2012 and 2020 and associates it with the volume of searches on the Google platform.

Following methodologies are used to investigate the presence of herding: the Cross-Sectional Standard Deviation of Returns (CSSD), the Cross-Sectional Absolute Deviation (CSAD) and the Cross-Sectional Deviation of Asset Betas to the Market.

Most of the models detected herding. In addition, there was a causal relationship between peaks in Google search volumes and the incidence of herding across the whole period, especially in 2015 and 2019.

This study suggests that confirmation bias influences investors' decisions to buy or sell assets.

We compare the financial stock performance of companies that participate in the Carbon Efficient Index (ICO2) and those that participate only in market-wide indices of the BM&FBovespa (the IBOV, IBrX50, and IBrX100). The data includes the daily quotations of the shares from these four indices for September 2010 to December 2014. We exclude companies from market-wide indices that also participated in the ICO2. We use the stock market and average volume liquidity indices in order to analyze liquidity. We employ financial indicators to analyze the performance of the indices. Returns of companies participating in the ICO2 exceed those of all other companies except those participating in the IBrX50. The returns of all indices are statistically similar. There is a proven long-term equilibrium relationship between the indices’ returns. The ICO2 does not present obvious superiority in terms of the Sharpe and Jensen indices, although the results surpass those of the market-wide indices. Although the financial performance of sustainable companies does not surpass that of other companies, the economic benefits are similar. Thus, even though the financial result presents no significant difference, it is crucial to acknowledge that investing in sustainable stocks does not result in financial loss; rather, it has a positive environmental impact. The literature connecting the performance of the shares of the ICO2 and broad indices is scarce. Our study improves understanding of how company stocks can generate economic benefits to both society and companies.

This paper aims to identify a possible mismatch between the theory found in academic research and the practices of investment managers in Brazil.

The chosen approach is a field survey. This paper considers 78 survey responses from 274 asset management companies. Data obtained are analyzed using independence tests between two variables and multiple regressions.

The results show that most Brazilian investment managers have not adopted current best practices recommended by the financial academic literature and that there is a significant gap between academic recommendations and asset management practices. The modern portfolio theory is still more widely used than the post-modern portfolio theory, and quantitative portfolio optimization is less often used than the simple rule of defining a maximum concentration limit for any single asset. Moreover, the results show that the normal distribution is used more than parametrical distributions with asymmetry and kurtosis to estimate value at risk, among other findings.

This study may be considered a pioneering work in portfolio construction, risk management and performance evaluation in Brazil. Although academia in Brazil and abroad has thoroughly researched portfolio construction, risk management and performance evaluation, little is known about the actual implementation and utilization of this research by Brazilian practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate investor behaviour related to the timing of selling financial assets based on an intuitive evaluation of the current market trend and growth expectation.

The experiment involved 1,052 volunteer participants who made decisions about stock sales in an environment that simulated a home broker platform to negotiate stocks. Zero-inflated regression models were used.

The results show that investors’ attitudes, or beliefs, determine whether they will buy or keep risky assets in their investment portfolios; they may decide to sell such assets, even though market shows an upward trend. Such results make a new contribution to behavioural finance within the context of prospect theory and the disposition effect.

The originality of this paper lies in the use of new and innovative techniques (zero-inflated Poisson and negative binomial regression models) applied to real data obtained experimentally.

Este artigo estuda o comportamento de investidores relacionado ao momento da venda de ativos financeiros com base em uma avaliação intuitiva da tendência atual do mercado e da expectativa de crescimento.

Nosso experimento envolveu 1,052 participantes voluntários que tomaram decisões sobre a venda de ações em um ambiente que simulava uma plataforma de corretagem para negociação. Foram utilizados modelos de regressão inflacionados de zeros.

Os resultados mostram que as atitudes ou crenças dos investidores determinam se eles comprarão ou manterão ativos de risco em suas carteiras de investimento; eles podem decidir vender esses ativos, mesmo que o mercado mostre uma tendência ascendente. Tais resultados constituem uma nova contribuição para o campo das finanças comportamentais, dentro do contexto da teoria do prospecto e do efeito disposição.

A originalidade deste artigo reside no uso de técnicas novas e inovadoras (modelos de regressão Poisson e binomial negativo inflacionados de zeros) aplicadas a dados reais obtidos experimentalmente.

With just a small proportion of the population holding a college degree, the material and symbolic advantages of higher education are quite substantive in Brazil. In the last decade, social demand led to the expansion of public universities and the adoption of affirmative actions. Using data from four public universities in the state of São Paulo, the paper shows an increase in the numbers of students from lower-income and less educated families. Their relative inclusion, however, has reproduced the traditional social segmentation in Brazilian higher education, keeping access to prestigious majors more difficult to those with fewer resources.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the reflection of corruption in Brazilian companies listed on Brasil, Bolsa, Balcão (B3). The methodological design comprised a qualitative and descriptive approach in which documentary research was used to gather data. Content analysis was employed to treat data retrieved from Standard Financial Statements, Explanatory Notes, and Sustainability Reports, from 2013 to 2017. The findings reveal a low level of disclosure of the companies listed on B3 concerning the reflections of corruption. The disclosed reflections include the increase in the company's operating costs and the impact on the company's future cash flow which can be direct, such as through the reduction of revenues from canceled negotiations, or indirect, through transaction costs due to the misconduct of the company.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate sustainability have gained prominence in the major capital markets. In Brazil, the São Paulo Stock Exchange (BM&FBovespa) has created the Corporate Sustainability Index (ISE) and the Carbon Efficient Index (ICO2), responsible for indicating the performance of sustainable companies. Therefore, this study proposes to examine and compare the stock returns of the sustainability index member companies with the returns of companies out of these indexes. In this methodology we selected the two principal negotiability indexes of that market (IBOV and IBrX50), which are indexes that meet the most traded stocks of BM&FBovespa, and calculated the average daily returns of the four indexes in order to make performance comparisons over the period 2005–2014, based on nonparametric statistical tests. Our findings indicate that the average returns of sustainability indexes were higher, but these differences were not statistically significant, confirming previous evidence. Additionally, by means of a cointegration test, we found that the indexes are cointegrated in the long term. These findings are limited to the analyzed emerging market and are also subject to the limitations of the estimated models. Thus, we can infer that presence in the sustainability indexes does not indicate statistically significant higher returns, which means that companies with sustainable practices in Brazil are not only concerned with economic performance, but also with social, cultural, and environmental issues. The main findings are aligned with the concept of triple bottom line, even in the case of an emerging market.

The social role of women in Brazil is subject to significant change in both capacity and scope. While women constitute the majority of the population in Brazil, they account for 40 per cent of the workforce, and thus, they remain comparatively invisible in public life. This is evident in political representation, as although Brazilian law stipulates that political parties must reserve at least 30 per cent of their nominations for women for legislative elections, this does not occur in reality. Furthermore, despite Afro-descendant Brazilians constituting the majority of the population, in the Chamber of Deputies, for instance, there are only 9 per cent Afro-descendant representatives. Therefore, this study focuses on understanding issues of political representation of Afro-descendant women in political spaces in Brazil – a country where politics is still predominantly white and male. Thus, despite a rhetorical position of an ‘open country’ with opportunities for all, the whiteness and masculinity of Brazilian politics illustrates the degree of mythology concerning the rhetoric of Brazil’s racial democracy. We employ a qualitative research approach in this study and we employ an oral-history-informed post-structuralist approach. We focus our empirical analysis on in-depth interviews with an Afro-descendant female accounting professor who was elected to an important political position. We argue that discussions about democracy in Brazil go beyond formal aspects of civil rights, as our study highlights the necessity of reshaping political processes to engender greater female and Afro-descendent participation, to engender both groups to seek political careers as well as to encourage political parties to include more female and more Afro-descendent candidates. The ultimate goal of such institutional reform is a reformation of ‘racial democracy’ as Afro-descendent women interact with, stand and succeed in Brazilian elections.