IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/assmgt/v9y2008i4d10.1057_jam.2008.23.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Fundamental indexation: An active value strategy in disguise

Author

Listed:
  • David Blitz
  • Laurens Swinkels

Abstract

In this paper, we critically examine the novel concept of fundamental indexation. We argue that fundamental indexation is by definition nothing more than an elegant value strategy, because the weights of stocks in a fundamental index and a market-capitalisation-weighted index only differ as a result of differences in valuation ratios. Moreover, fundamental indices more resemble active investment strategies than classic passive indices because (i) they appear to be at odds with market equilibrium, (ii) they do not represent a buy-and-hold strategy, and (iii) they require several subjective choices. Last but not least, because fundamental indices are primarily designed for simplicity and appeal, they are unlikely to be the most efficient way of benefiting from the value premium. Compared to more sophisticated, multi-factor quantitative strategies, fundamental indexation is likely to be an even more inferior proposition.

Suggested Citation

  • David Blitz & Laurens Swinkels, 2008. "Fundamental indexation: An active value strategy in disguise," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(4), pages 264-269, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:assmgt:v:9:y:2008:i:4:d:10.1057_jam.2008.23
    DOI: 10.1057/jam.2008.23
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/jam.2008.23
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/jam.2008.23?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. Chan, Louis K C & Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Lakonishok, Josef, 1996. "Momentum Strategies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(5), pages 1681-1713, December.
    2. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Titman, Sheridan, 1993. "Returns to Buying Winners and Selling Losers: Implications for Stock Market Efficiency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(1), pages 65-91, March.
    3. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1992. "The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 427-465, June.
    4. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan, 1990. "Evidence of Predictable Behavior of Security Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(3), pages 881-898, July.
    5. Julius Hemminki & Vesa Puttonen, 2008. "Fundamental indexation in Europe," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(6), pages 401-405, February.
    6. Blitz, D.C. & van Vliet, P., 2007. "The Volatility Effect: Lower Risk without Lower Return," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2007-044-F&A, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    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. Marielle de Jong & Lauren Stagnol, 2016. "A fundamental bond index including solvency criteria," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 17(4), pages 280-294, July.
    2. Lauren Stagnol, 2015. "Designing a corporate bond index on solvency criteria," EconomiX Working Papers 2015-39, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    3. Santosh Kumar & Ranjit Tiwari, 2021. "Does the fundamental indexation portfolio perform better? An Indian investigation," Accounting Research Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 35(2), pages 121-144, June.
    4. Vanja Piljak & Laurens Swinkels, 2017. "Fundamental indexation for developed, emerging, and frontier government bond markets," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 18(5), pages 405-420, September.
    5. Nipun Agarwal, 2014. "How to obtain high returns with lower volatility in emerging markets?," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(1), pages 1-16, December.
    6. Chen, Doris & Dempsey, Michael & Lajbcygier, Paul, 2015. "Is Fundamental Indexation able to time the market? Evidence from the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Russell 1000," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 162-177.
    7. Guido Abate & Tommaso Bonafini & Pierpaolo Ferrari, 2021. "Fundamentals-weighting vs. Capitalization-weighting: An Empirical Comparison," Journal of Finance and Investment Analysis, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 10(2), pages 1-3.
    8. Alles Rodrigues, Alexandre & Casalin, Fabrizio, 2022. "Factor investing in Brazil: Diversifying across factor tilts and allocation strategies," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    9. Lajbcygier, Paul & Sojka, Jeremy, 2015. "The viability of alternative indexation when including all costs," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 109-141.
    10. Raul Leote de Carvalho & Xiao Lu & Pierre Moulin, 2014. "An integrated risk-budgeting approach for multi-strategy equity portfolios," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 15(1), pages 24-47, February.
    11. Michael Dempsey, 2015. "Stock Markets, Investments and Corporate Behavior:A Conceptual Framework of Understanding," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number p1007, September.
    12. Balatti, Mirco & Brooks, Chris & Kappou, Konstantina, 2017. "Fundamental indexation revisited: New evidence on alpha," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 1-15.
    13. Raphael Moses Roquete & Ricardo P. C. Leal & Carlos Heitor Campani, 2018. "Corporate governance and fundamental indexation in Brazil," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 38(3), pages 1494-1504.
    14. Kotkatvuori-Örnberg, Juha & Nikkinen, Jussi & Peltomäki, Jarkko, 2011. "Geographical focus in emerging markets and hedge fund performance," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 309-320.
    15. M. Volkov & М. Волков, 2018. "Анализ фундаментальной индексации как эффективный подход к активному инвестированию // Analysis of Fundamental Indexation as an Efficient Approach to Active Investing," Review of Business and Economics Studies // Review of Business and Economics Studies, Финансовый Университет // Financial University, vol. 6(4), pages 41-51.
    16. Feng, Wenjun & Zhang, Zhengjun, 2023. "Risk-weighted cryptocurrency indices," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).

    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. Stefan Nagel, 2013. "Empirical Cross-Sectional Asset Pricing," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 5(1), pages 167-199, November.
    2. Boudt, Kris & Raza, Muhammad Wajid & Wauters, Marjan, 2019. "Evaluating the Shariah-compliance of equity portfolios: The weighting method matters," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 406-417.
    3. Jansen, Maarten & Swinkels, Laurens & Zhou, Weili, 2021. "Anomalies in the China A-share market," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    4. Ling Cen & K. C. John Wei & Liyan Yang, 2017. "Disagreement, Underreaction, and Stock Returns," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(4), pages 1214-1231, April.
    5. Jiang, George J. & Zhu, Kevin X., 2017. "Information Shocks and Short-Term Market Underreaction," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(1), pages 43-64.
    6. Flögel, Volker & Schlag, Christian & Zunft, Claudia, 2021. "Momentum-managed equity factors," SAFE Working Paper Series 317, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    7. Savor, Pavel G., 2012. "Stock returns after major price shocks: The impact of information," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(3), pages 635-659.
    8. Chen, Hong-Yi & Hsieh, Chia-Hsun & Lee, Cheng-Few, 2023. "Revisiting the momentum effect in Taiwan: The role of persistency," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    9. Fernando Rubio, 2005. "Eficiencia De Mercado, Administracion De Carteras De Fondos Y Behavioural Finance," Finance 0503028, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 23 Jul 2005.
    10. Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, 2008. "Behavioural Finance: A Review and Synthesis," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 14(1), pages 12-29, January.
    11. Naranjo, Andy & Porter, Burt, 2010. "Risk factor and industry effects in the cross-country comovement of momentum returns," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 275-299, March.
    12. Hou, Kewei & Xue, Chen & Zhang, Lu, 2017. "Replicating Anomalies," Working Paper Series 2017-10, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    13. Burggraf, Tobias & Rudolf, Markus, 2021. "Cryptocurrencies and the low volatility anomaly," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 40(C).
    14. Bradrania, Reza & Veron, Jose Francisco & Wu, Winston, 2023. "The beta anomaly and the quality effect in international stock markets," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(C).
    15. Nartea, Gilbert V. & Bai, Hengyu & Wu, Ji, 2020. "Investor sentiment and the economic policy uncertainty premium," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    16. Flögel, Volker & Schlag, Christian & Zunft, Claudia, 2022. "Momentum-Managed Equity Factors," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    17. Chou, Pin-Huang & Ko, Kuan-Cheng & Yang, Nien-Tzu, 2019. "Asset growth, style investing, and momentum," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 108-124.
    18. Blanco, Ivan & De Jesus, Miguel & Remesal, Alvaro, 2023. "Overlapping momentum portfolios," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 1-22.
    19. Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2018. "Equity market momentum: A synthesis of the literature and suggestions for future work," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 291-296.
    20. Malcolm Baker & Terence C. Burnham & Ryan Taliaferro, 2016. "Public Goods with Punishment & Payment for Relative Rank," Working Papers 16-33, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.

    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:pal:assmgt:v:9:y:2008:i:4:d:10.1057_jam.2008.23. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    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.