Investor behavior in ETF markets: a comparative study between the US and emerging markets
International Journal of Emerging Markets
ISSN: 1746-8809
Article publication date: 1 August 2019
Issue publication date: 22 November 2019
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a study on investor behavior in exchange-traded fund (ETF) markets. The standard feedback trading model of Sentana and Wadhwani (1992) is used in a sample of 18 ETFs contracts in Brazil, China, South Africa, Korea, Mexico and India, as well as three ETFs contracts in the US market.
Design/methodology/approach
The sample includes data on daily closing prices and net asset values (NAVs) for three ETFs from each of the emerging markets of Brazil, China, Mexico, Korea and India, as well as on three ETFs from the US market. The authors used the earliest start date available in the Thomson Reuters database pertaining to all of the ETFs, and all series ended on May 5, 2017, and applied the well-established Santana and Wadhwani (1992) seminal model to evaluate evidence of feedback trading in the sample.
Findings
The empirical analysis suggests that there is evidence of feedback trading in emerging markets such as Brazil, Korea, Mexico and India, while there is no such evidence for the US market. The results are consistent with the view that developed markets investors are prone to pursue fundamental-driven investment strategies, while emerging markets investors appear to have informational guided behavior.
Research limitations/implications
Emerging markets still make up a very small part of the global ETF market, led by the USA. Nevertheless, it is extremely important that studies of this nature be gradually expanded as these markets grow, in order to verify how emerging markets compare to their developed counterparts in terms of the efficiency of information sharing and rationalization of its operations.
Practical implications
Emerging markets policy makers could benefit from these findings by stimulating new mechanisms that could minimize informational asymmetry and the persistence of so-called noise traders, a phenomenon observed recently in studies regarding ETF markets (Brown, Davies and Ringgenberg, 2018).
Originality/value
The behavior of investors was investigated by analyzing a sample of 18 ETFs from the emerging markets of Brazil, China, South Africa, Korea, India and Mexico, as well as three ETFs from the US market. Despite of being investigated separately both emerging (Charteris et al., 2014) and developed markets (Chau et al., 2011), the innovation consists in comparing those markets in a single study, pursuing to explain potential reasons for the differences observed between developed and emerging markets.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was carried out with the support of Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development – CNPq), Grant Nos 306532/2016-6 and 408470/2016-0 and Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Carlos Chagas Filho Foundation for Research Support in the State of Rio de Janeiro – FAPERJ), Grant No. E-26/202.824/2018. The authors would also like to thank the reviewers, and especially Professor Flávia Cavazotte, from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, for their valuable contributions.
Citation
da Costa Neto, A.F., Klotzle, M.C. and Figueiredo Pinto, A.C. (2019), "Investor behavior in ETF markets: a comparative study between the US and emerging markets", International Journal of Emerging Markets, Vol. 14 No. 5, pp. 944-966. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOEM-04-2018-0195
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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