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The Shift from Active to Passive Investing : Potential Risks to Financial Stability?

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Abstract

The past couple of decades have seen a significant shift in assets from active to passive investment strategies. We examine the potential effects of this shift for financial stability through four different channels: (1) effects on investment funds’ liquidity transformation and redemption risks; (2) passive strategies that amplify market volatility; (3) increases in asset-management industry concentration; and (4) the effects on valuations, volatility, and comovement of assets that are included in indexes. Overall, the shift from active to passive investment strategies appears to be increasing some types of risk while diminishing others: The shift has probably reduced liquidity transformation risks, although some passive strategies amplify market volatility, and passive-fund growth is increasing asset-management industry concentration. We find mixed evidence that passive investing is contributing to the comovement of asset returns and liquidity.

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  • Kenechukwu E. Anadu & Mathias S. Kruttli & Patrick E. McCabe & Emilio Osambela, 2018. "The Shift from Active to Passive Investing : Potential Risks to Financial Stability?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2018-060r1, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), revised 29 Jun 2020.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2018-60
    DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2018.060r1
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    Cited by:

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    2. Carmine De Franco, 2021. "Stock picking in the US market and the effect of passive investments," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 22(1), pages 1-10, February.
    3. Vives, Xavier & Banal-Estanol, Albert & Seldeslachts, Jo, 2022. "Ownership Diversification and Product Market Pricing Incentives," CEPR Discussion Papers 17686, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Duong, Truong X. & Meschke, Felix, 2020. "The rise and fall of portfolio pumping among U.S. mutual funds," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    5. L. Alamelu & Nisha Goyal, 2023. "Investment Performance and Tracking Efficiency of Indian Equity Exchange Traded Funds," Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, Springer;Japanese Association of Financial Economics and Engineering, vol. 30(1), pages 165-188, March.
    6. Yu Zheng & Bowei Chen & Timothy M. Hospedales & Yongxin Yang, 2019. "Index Tracking with Cardinality Constraints: A Stochastic Neural Networks Approach," Papers 1911.05052, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2019.
    7. Buschong, René, 2022. "Financial Literacy is associated with Stock Market Expectations but not with Forecast Accuracy: Evidence from Germany," EconStor Preprints 266404, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    8. Asgar Ali & K. N. Badhani, 2023. "Tail risk, beta anomaly, and demand for lottery: what explains cross-sectional variations in equity returns?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 65(2), pages 775-804, August.
    9. Czereszenko, Witalij, 2021. "Pursuing the aim of Exchange Traded Funds at the time of Covid-19," MPRA Paper 111319, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Michael Ewens & Joan Farre-Mensa, 2022. "Private or Public Equity? The Evolving Entrepreneurial Finance Landscape," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 14(1), pages 271-293, November.
    11. Xianfei Hui & Baiqing Sun & Hui Jiang & Indranil SenGupta, 2021. "Analysis of stock index with a generalized BN-S model: an approach based on machine learning and fuzzy parameters," Papers 2101.08984, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2022.
    12. Djoumbissie David Romain, 2020. "Predicting S&P500 Index direction with Transfer Learning and a Causal Graph as main Input," Papers 2011.13113, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2022.
    13. Burchan Sakarya & Aykut Ekinci, 2020. "Exchange-traded funds and FX volatility: Evidence from Turkey," Central Bank Review, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, vol. 20(4), pages 205-211.
    14. Kitajima, Kiichi, 2022. "Passive investors and concentration of intraday liquidity: Evidence from the Tokyo Stock Exchange," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    15. Riccardo Lucchetti & Mihaela Nicolau & Giulio Palomba & Luca Riccetti, 2022. "Reconciling TEV and VaR in Active Portfolio Management: A New Frontier," Working Papers 461, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    16. Maxime Markov & Vladimir Markov, 2022. "The impact of big winners on passive and active equity investment strategies," Papers 2210.09302, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2023.
    17. Rohan Arora & Sébastien Betermier & Guillaume Ouellet Leblanc & Adriano Palumbo & Ryan Shotlander, 2019. "Creations and Redemptions in Fixed-Income Exchange-Traded Funds: A Shift from Bonds to Cash," Staff Analytical Notes 2019-34, Bank of Canada.
    18. Ferriani, Fabrizio, 2021. "From taper tantrum to Covid-19: Portfolio flows to emerging markets in periods of stress," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    19. Kim, Myeong Hyeon & Kim, Young Min & Yang, Kisung, 2022. "Understanding BOXPI — Industry portfolio perspectives," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    20. Joseph Gerakos & Juhani T. Linnainmaa & Adair Morse, 2021. "Asset Managers: Institutional Performance and Factor Exposures," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(4), pages 2035-2075, August.
    21. Epstein, Gerald, 2019. "The asset management industry in the United States," Financiamiento para el Desarrollo 45045, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    22. Bernardo Guimaraes & Pierluca Pannella, 2021. "Short-squeeze bubbles," Discussion Papers 2109, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Financial stability; Market volatility; Asset management; Daily rebalancing; Indexing; Systemic risk; Passive investing; Mutual fund; Leveraged and inverse exchange-traded products; Exchange-traded fund; Index investing; Inclusion effects;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G20 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - General
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance

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