IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbfina/v35y2011i9p2245-2251.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Momentum or contrarian investment strategies: Evidence from Dutch institutional investors

Author

Listed:
  • de Haan, Leo
  • Kakes, Jan

Abstract

This paper analyses investment strategies of three types of Dutch institutional investors - pension funds, life insurers and non-life insurers - over the period 1999-2005. We use balance sheet and cash flow data, including purchases and sales of equity, fixed income and real estate. We trace asset reallocations back to both active trading and revaluations and link investment decisions to firm-specific characteristics and macroeconomic variables. Overall, our results indicate that all three investor types tend to be contrarian traders, i.e. they buy past losers and sell past winners. Especially pension funds showed this behaviour in the most turbulent part of the sample - the crash of 2002 and early 2003 - implying that these institutions have a stabilising impact on financial markets when this is needed most. Life insurers tend to be contrarian traders when they have a high proportion of unit-linked policies, while non-life insurers are contrarian when they have a more risky business model.

Suggested Citation

  • de Haan, Leo & Kakes, Jan, 2011. "Momentum or contrarian investment strategies: Evidence from Dutch institutional investors," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(9), pages 2245-2251, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:35:y:2011:i:9:p:2245-2251
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378426611000483
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    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. Jacob A. Bikker & Dirk W.G.A. Broeders & Dirk Jan de Dreu, 2010. "Stock Market Performance and Pension Fund Investment Policy: Rebalancing, Free Float, or Market Timing?," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 6(2), pages 53-79, June.
    2. Lo, Andrew W & MacKinlay, A Craig, 1990. "When Are Contrarian Profits Due to Stock Market Overreaction?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 3(2), pages 175-205.
    3. Mark Grinblatt & Matti Keloharju, 2001. "What Makes Investors Trade?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 589-616, April.
    4. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:5:p:1775-1798 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. de Haan, Leo & Kakes, Jan, 2010. "Are non-risk based capital requirements for insurance companies binding?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(7), pages 1618-1627, July.
    6. S.G. Badrinath & Sunil Wahal, 2002. "Momentum Trading by Institutions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(6), pages 2449-2478, December.
    7. Ferstl, Robert & Weissensteiner, Alex, 2011. "Asset-liability management under time-varying investment opportunities," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 182-192, January.
    8. Grinblatt, Mark & Keloharju, Matti, 2000. "The investment behavior and performance of various investor types: a study of Finland's unique data set," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 43-67, January.
    9. Chiang, Thomas C. & Zheng, Dazhi, 2010. "An empirical analysis of herd behavior in global stock markets," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 1911-1921, August.
    10. Asem, Ebenezer, 2009. "Dividends and price momentum," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 486-494, March.
    11. Grinblatt, Mark & Titman, Sheridan & Wermers, Russ, 1995. "Momentum Investment Strategies, Portfolio Performance, and Herding: A Study of Mutual Fund Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1088-1105, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Daniel, Kent & Hirshleifer, David & Teoh, Siew Hong, 2002. "Investor psychology in capital markets: evidence and policy implications," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 139-209, January.
    2. Baltzer, Markus & Jank, Stephan & Smajlbegovic, Esad, 2019. "Who trades on momentum?," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 56-74.
    3. Economou, Fotini & Gavriilidis, Konstantinos & Goyal, Abhinav & Kallinterakis, Vasileios, 2015. "Herding dynamics in exchange groups: Evidence from Euronext," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 228-244.
    4. John Y. Campbell & Tarun Ramadorai & Tuomo O. Vuolteenaho, 2005. "Caught On Tape: Institutional Order Flow and Stock Returns," NBER Working Papers 11439, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Campbell, John Y. & Ramadorai, Tarun & Schwartz, Allie, 2009. "Caught on tape: Institutional trading, stock returns, and earnings announcements," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 66-91, April.
    6. Duxbury, Darren & Yao, Songyao, 2017. "Are investors consistent in their trading strategies? An examination of individual investor-level data," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 77-87.
    7. Bange, Mary M. & Miller, Thomas Jr., 2004. "Return momentum and global portfolio allocations," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 429-459, September.
    8. Yuming Fu & Wenlan Qian, 2014. "Speculators and Price Overreaction in the Housing Market," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 42(4), pages 977-1007, December.
    9. Fotini Economou & Konstantinos Gavriilidis & Bartosz Gebka & Vasileios Kallinterakis, 2022. "Feedback trading: a review of theory and empirical evidence," Review of Behavioral Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 15(4), pages 429-476, February.
    10. Ülkü, Numan & Weber, Enzo, 2013. "Identifying the interaction between stock market returns and trading flows of investor types: Looking into the day using daily data," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 2733-2749.
    11. Gębka, Bartosz & Wohar, Mark E., 2013. "International herding: Does it differ across sectors?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 55-84.
    12. Chae, Joon & Yang, Cheol-Won, 2013. "Commonality in individuals' trading: A systematic path between behavioral bias and expected returns," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 1008-1023.
    13. Bhaskar Chhimwal & Varadraj Bapat, 2021. "Comparative Study of Momentum and Contrarian Behavior of Different Investors: Evidence from the Indian Market," Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, Springer;Japanese Association of Financial Economics and Engineering, vol. 28(1), pages 19-53, March.
    14. Lukas Menkhoff & Maik Schmeling & Ulrich Schmidt, 2010. "Are All Professional Investors Sophisticated?," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 11(4), pages 418-440, November.
    15. Fung, Scott & Obaid, Khaled & Tsai, Shih-Chuan, 2024. "Information acquisition and processing skills of institutions and retail investors around information shocks," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    16. David Hirshleifer, 2001. "Investor Psychology and Asset Pricing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(4), pages 1533-1597, August.
    17. Bijlsma, Melle & Vermeulen, Robert, 2016. "Insurance companies’ trading behaviour during the European sovereign debt crisis: Flight home or flight to quality?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 137-154.
    18. Shen, Qian & Szakmary, Andrew C. & Sharma, Subhash C., 2005. "Momentum and contrarian strategies in international stock markets: Further evidence," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 235-255, July.
    19. I. Koetsier & J.A. Bikker, 2018. "Herding behavior of Dutch pension funds in asset class investments," Working Papers 18-04, Utrecht School of Economics.
    20. Andrikopoulos, Panagiotis & Gebka, Bartosz & Kallinterakis, Vasileios, 2021. "Regulatory mood-congruence and herding: Evidence from cannabis stocks," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 842-864.

    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:35:y:2011:i:9:p:2245-2251. 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.