IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbfina/v129y2021ics037842662100128x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Blessing or curse? Institutional investment in leveraged ETFs

Author

Listed:
  • DeVault, Luke
  • Turtle, H.J.
  • Wang, Kainan

Abstract

We document the increasing role leveraged exchange traded funds (ETFs) play in institutional portfolios over time. A subset of independent investment advisors, quasi-indexers, and transient portfolio managers all make substantive use of these tools. Leveraged ETFs can be used for diversification or to implement strategic bets. Empirical tests suggest that institutional holders of leveraged ETFs predict weak portfolio performance in aggregate, consistent with manager hubris, especially among the set of institutional managers most likely to lack management skill. Interestingly, managers appear to reduce positions in leveraged ETFs following good past performance, potentially to lock in good returns, consistent with compensation-based incentives.

Suggested Citation

  • DeVault, Luke & Turtle, H.J. & Wang, Kainan, 2021. "Blessing or curse? Institutional investment in leveraged ETFs," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:129:y:2021:i:c:s037842662100128x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2021.106169
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037842662100128X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbankfin.2021.106169?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Agarwal, Vikas & Gay, Gerald D. & Ling, Leng, 2014. "Window dressing in mutual funds," CFR Working Papers 11-07 [rev.3], University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    2. Lakonishok, Josef, et al, 1991. "Window Dressing by Pension Fund Managers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(2), pages 227-231, May.
    3. Henriksson, Roy D & Merton, Robert C, 1981. "On Market Timing and Investment Performance. II. Statistical Procedures for Evaluating Forecasting Skills," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(4), pages 513-533, October.
    4. Paul A. Gompers & Andrew Metrick, 2001. "Institutional Investors and Equity Prices," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 229-259.
    5. Xuemin (Sterling) Yan & Zhe Zhang, 2009. "Institutional Investors and Equity Returns: Are Short-term Institutions Better Informed?," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(2), pages 893-924, February.
    6. Chordia, Tarun & Roll, Richard & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2011. "Recent trends in trading activity and market quality," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(2), pages 243-263, August.
    7. Cici, Gjergji & Palacios, Luis-Felipe, 2015. "On the use of options by mutual funds: Do they know what they are doing?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 157-168.
    8. Joshua D. Coval & Tyler Shumway, 2005. "Do Behavioral Biases Affect Prices?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(1), pages 1-34, February.
    9. Hodder, James E. & Jackwerth, Jens Carsten, 2007. "Incentive Contracts and Hedge Fund Management," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(4), pages 811-826, December.
    10. Chevalier, Judith & Ellison, Glenn, 1997. "Risk Taking by Mutual Funds as a Response to Incentives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(6), pages 1167-1200, December.
    11. Erik R. Sirri & Peter Tufano, 1998. "Costly Search and Mutual Fund Flows," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(5), pages 1589-1622, October.
    12. Daniel, Kent, et al, 1997. "Measuring Mutual Fund Performance with Characteristic-Based Benchmarks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(3), pages 1035-1058, July.
    13. Pauline Shum & Walid Hejazi & Edgar Haryanto & Arthur Rodier, 2016. "Intraday Share Price Volatility and Leveraged ETF Rebalancing," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 20(6), pages 2379-2409.
    14. Gordon J. Alexander & Gjergji Cici & Scott Gibson, 2007. "Does Motivation Matter When Assessing Trade Performance? An Analysis of Mutual Funds," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(1), pages 125-150, January.
    15. Ivan T. Ivanov & Stephen L. Lenkey, 2014. "Are Concerns About Leveraged ETFs Overblown?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2014-106, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    16. Cremers, Martijn & Pareek, Ankur, 2016. "Patient capital outperformance: The investment skill of high active share managers who trade infrequently," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(2), pages 288-306.
    17. LUKE DeVAULT & RICHARD SIAS & LAURA STARKS, 2019. "Sentiment Metrics and Investor Demand," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 74(2), pages 985-1024, April.
    18. Vikas Agarwal & Wei Jiang & Yuehua Tang & Baozhong Yang, 2013. "Uncovering Hedge Fund Skill from the Portfolio Holdings They Hide," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(2), pages 739-783, April.
    19. Edelen, Roger M. & Ince, Ozgur S. & Kadlec, Gregory B., 2016. "Institutional investors and stock return anomalies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(3), pages 472-488.
    20. Berk, Jonathan B. & van Binsbergen, Jules H., 2015. "Measuring skill in the mutual fund industry," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 1-20.
    21. Brian J. Bushee, 2001. "Do Institutional Investors Prefer Near†Term Earnings over Long†Run Value?," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 18(2), pages 207-246, June.
    22. Pástor, Ľuboš & Stambaugh, Robert F. & Taylor, Lucian A., 2015. "Scale and skill in active management," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 23-45.
    23. Jennifer Lynch Koski & Jeffrey Pontiff, 1999. "How Are Derivatives Used? Evidence from the Mutual Fund Industry," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(2), pages 791-816, April.
    24. John M. Griffin & Jin Xu, 2009. "How Smart Are the Smart Guys? A Unique View from Hedge Fund Stock Holdings," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(7), pages 2331-2370, July.
    25. George O. Aragon & Vikram Nanda, 2012. "Tournament Behavior in Hedge Funds: High-water Marks, Fund Liquidation, and Managerial Stake," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(3), pages 937-974.
    26. Lan, Yingcong & Wang, Neng & Yang, Jinqiang, 2013. "The economics of hedge funds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(2), pages 300-323.
    27. Richard Sias & H. J. Turtle & Blerina Zykaj, 2016. "Hedge Fund Crowds and Mispricing," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(3), pages 764-784, March.
    28. Murat Binay, 2005. "Performance Attribution of US Institutional Investors," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 34(2), Summer.
    29. Ekkehart Boehmer & Eric K. Kelley, 2009. "Institutional Investors and the Informational Efficiency of Prices," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(9), pages 3563-3594, September.
    30. Sias, Richard W & Starks, Laura T, 1997. "Institutions and Individuals at the Turn-of-the-Year," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(4), pages 1543-1562, September.
    31. Mitchell A. Petersen, 2009. "Estimating Standard Errors in Finance Panel Data Sets: Comparing Approaches," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(1), pages 435-480, January.
    32. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    33. James A. Bennett, 2003. "Greener Pastures and the Impact of Dynamic Institutional Preferences," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(4), pages 1203-1238.
    34. Qing Bai & Shaun A. Bond & Brian Hatch, 2015. "The Impact of Leveraged and Inverse ETFs on Underlying Real Estate Returns," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 43(1), pages 37-66, March.
    35. Almazan, Andres & Brown, Keith C. & Carlson, Murray & Chapman, David A., 2004. "Why constrain your mutual fund manager?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 289-321, August.
    36. Stephen J. Brown & William N. Goetzmann & James Park, 2001. "Careers and Survival: Competition and Risk in the Hedge Fund and CTA Industry," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(5), pages 1869-1886, October.
    37. Jia He, 2004. "Quarterly Trading Patterns of Financial Institutions," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 77(3), pages 493-510, July.
    38. Ferson, Wayne E & Schadt, Rudi W, 1996. "Measuring Fund Strategy and Performance in Changing Economic Conditions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(2), pages 425-461, June.
    39. Joseph Chen & Harrison Hong & Ming Huang & Jeffrey D. Kubik, 2004. "Does Fund Size Erode Mutual Fund Performance? The Role of Liquidity and Organization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1276-1302, December.
    40. Aragon, George O. & Spencer Martin, J., 2012. "A unique view of hedge fund derivatives usage: Safeguard or speculation?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(2), pages 436-456.
    41. Brown, Keith C & Harlow, W V & Starks, Laura T, 1996. "Of Tournaments and Temptations: An Analysis of Managerial Incentives in the Mutual Fund Industry," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(1), pages 85-110, March.
    42. Vikas Agarwal & Gerald D. Gay & Leng Ling, 2014. "Window Dressing in Mutual Funds," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(11), pages 3133-3170.
    43. Turtle, H.J. & Wang, Kainan, 2016. "The benefits of improved covariance estimation," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 233-246.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Denis Davydov & Jarkko Peltomäki, 2023. "Investor attention and the use of leverage," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 58(2), pages 287-313, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hung, Pi-Hsia & Lien, Donald & Kuo, Ming-Sin, 2020. "Window dressing in equity mutual funds," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 338-354.
    2. Mustafa O. Caglayan & Umut Celiker & Gokhan Sonaer, 2022. "Disagreement between hedge funds and other institutional investors and the cross‐section of expected stock returns," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 57(3), pages 663-689, August.
    3. Brown, Stephen J. & Sotes-Paladino, Juan & Wang, Jiaguo(George) & Yao, Yaqiong, 2017. "Starting on the wrong foot: Seasonality in mutual fund performance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 133-150.
    4. Agarwal, Vikas & Gay, Gerald D. & Ling, Leng, 2012. "Performance inconsistency in mutual funds: An investigation of window-dressing behavior," CFR Working Papers 11-07 [rev.], University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    5. Agarwal, Vikas & Gay, Gerald D. & Ling, Leng, 2011. "Window dressing in mutual funds," CFR Working Papers 11-07, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    6. Agarwal, Vikas & Gay, Gerald D. & Ling, Leng, 2013. "Window dressing in mutual funds," CFR Working Papers 11-07 [rev.2], University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    7. Agarwal, Vikas & Gay, Gerald D. & Ling, Leng, 2014. "Window dressing in mutual funds," CFR Working Papers 11-07 [rev.3], University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    8. Martin Rohleder & Dominik Schulte & Marco Wilkens, 2017. "Management of flow risk in mutual funds," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 48(1), pages 31-56, January.
    9. Chung, Chune Young & DeVault, Luke & Wang, Kainan, 2019. "Perceived information, short interest, and institutional demand," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 22-38.
    10. Martin Rohleder & Dominik Schulte & Janik Syryca & Marco Wilkens, 2018. "Mutual Fund Stock†Picking Skill: New Evidence from Valuation†versus Liquidity†Motivated Trading," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 47(2), pages 309-347, June.
    11. Clemens Sialm & T. Mandy Tham, 2016. "Spillover Effects in Mutual Fund Companies," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(5), pages 1472-1486, May.
    12. Ferson, Wayne E., 2013. "Investment Performance: A Review and Synthesis," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 969-1010, Elsevier.
    13. Agarwal, Vikas & Ma, Linlin & Mullally, Kevin, 2015. "Managerial multitasking in the mutual fund industry," CFR Working Papers 13-10 [rev.], University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    14. Chang, Xiaochen & Guo, Songlin & Huang, Junkai, 2022. "Kidnapped mutual funds: Irrational preference of naive investors and fund incentive distortion," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    15. Jiao, Yawen, 2022. "Decision-based trades: An analysis of institutional investors’ information advantages," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 104-115.
    16. Ferson, Wayne & Mo, Haitao, 2016. "Performance measurement with selectivity, market and volatility timing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 93-110.
    17. Viktoriya Lantushenko & Edward Nelling, 2020. "New Positions in Mutual Fund Portfolios: Implications for Fund Alpha," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 58(2), pages 161-198, December.
    18. Kee-Hong Bae & Junesuh Yi, 2008. "The Impact of the Short-Short Rule Repeal on the Timing Ability of Mutual Funds," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(7-8), pages 969-997.
    19. Khaled Obaid & Kuntara Pukthuanthong, 2021. "Informativeness of mutual fund advertisements: Does advertising communicate fund quality to investors?," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 50(1), pages 203-236, March.
    20. Jennifer Huang & Clemens Sialm & Hanjiang Zhang, 2011. "Risk Shifting and Mutual Fund Performance," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(8), pages 2575-2616.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:129:y:2021:i:c:s037842662100128x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbf .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.