Browsing by Author "Theart, Lomari"

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    Are South African equity investors rewarded for taking on more risk?
    (AOSIS, 2019-09-25) Steyn, Johannes P.; Theart, Lomari
    Orientation: It is rational for investors to expect additional compensation for an increased risk exposure. This positive risk–return relationship is in line with traditional financial theory; however, this relationship does not always hold in empirical research. Research purpose: The aim of this article was to investigate the prevalence of the low-risk anomaly in the South African equity market. Motivation for the study: If there is evidence of a low-risk anomaly, where low-risk shares outperform high-risk shares, then the additional return expectation of investors may be misplaced. Research design/approach and method: A unique sampling procedure and an extended time frame were employed in a quintile portfolio analysis methodology. Main findings: The article presents evidence that South African listed shares with low historical volatility earned higher risk-adjusted returns over the period July 2004 to September 2018. Low-volatility shares delivered a Sharpe ratio of 1.10 compared to 0.65 produced by the Financial Times Stock Exchange / Johannesburg Stock Exchange Shareholder Weighted Index over the same period. Practical/managerial implications: The assumption that return in an investment portfolio could be enhanced by taking on more risk could be wrong. It seems that fund managers could potentially enhance returns and decrease risk in their portfolios by focussing on shares with low historical volatility. Contribution/value-add: The negative relationship observed between volatility and return is inconsistent with theoretical expectations. Therefore, the results of this article suggest that investors are not rewarded for assuming higher levels of risk.
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    Liquidity as an investment style : evidence from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2014-03) Theart, Lomari; Krige, J. D.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Business Management.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Individual and institutional investors alike are continuously searching for investment styles and strategies that can yield enhanced risk-adjusted portfolio returns. In this regard, a number of investment styles have emerged in empirical analysis as explanatory factors of portfolio return. These include size (the rationale that small stocks outperform large stocks), value (high book-to-market ratio stocks outperform low book-to-market ratio stocks) and momentum (stocks currently outperforming will continue to do so). During the mid-eighties it has been proposed that liquidity (investing in low liquidity stocks relative to high liquidity stocks) is a missing investment style that can further enhance the risk-adjusted performance in the United States equity market. In the South African equity market this so-called liquidity effect, however, has remained largely unexplored. The focus of this study was therefore to determine whether the liquidity effect is prevalent in the South African equity market and whether by employing a liquidity strategy an investor could enhance risk-adjusted returns. This study was conducted over a period of 17 years, from 1996 to 2012. As a primary objective, this study analysed liquidity as a risk factor affecting portfolio returns, first as a residual purged from the influence of the market premium, size and book-to-market (value/growth) factors, and then in the presence of these explanatory factors affecting stock returns. Next, as a secondary objective, this study explored whether incorporating a liquidity style into passive portfolio strategies yielded enhanced risk-adjusted performance relative to other pure-liquidity and liquidity-neutral passive ‘style index’ strategies. The results from this study indicated that liquidity is not a statistically significant risk factor affecting broad market returns in the South African equity market. Instead the effect of liquidity is significant in small and low liquidity portfolios only. However, the study indicated that including liquidity as a risk factor improved the Fama-French three-factor model in capturing shared variation in stock returns. Lastly, incorporating a liquidity style into passive portfolio strategies yielded weak evidence of enhanced risk-adjusted performance relative to other pure-liquidity and liquidity-neutral passive ‘style index’ strategies. This research ultimately provided a better understanding of the return generating process of the South African equity market. It analysed previously omitted variables and gave an indication of how these factors influence returns. Furthermore, in analysing the risk- adjusted performance of liquidity-biased portfolio strategies, light was shed upon how a liquidity bias could influence portfolio returns.