IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jfinec/v102y2011i1p62-80.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Institutional investors and the limits of arbitrage

Author

Listed:
  • Lewellen, Jonathan

Abstract

The returns and stock holdings of institutional investors from 1980 to 2007 provide little evidence of stock-picking skill. Institutions as a whole closely mimic the market portfolio, with pre-cost returns that have nearly perfect correlation with the value-weighted index and an insignificant CAPM alpha of 0.08% quarterly. Institutions also show little tendency to bet on any of the main characteristics known to predict stock returns, such as book-to-market, momentum, or accruals. While particular groups of institutions have modest stock-picking skill relative to the CAPM, their performance is almost entirely explained by the book-to-market and momentum effects in returns. Further, no group holds a portfolio that deviates efficiently from the market portfolio.

Suggested Citation

  • Lewellen, Jonathan, 2011. "Institutional investors and the limits of arbitrage," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 62-80, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:102:y:2011:i:1:p:62-80
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304405X11001358
    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. Grinblatt, Mark & Titman, Sheridan, 1993. "Performance Measurement without Benchmarks: An Examination of Mutual Fund Returns," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66(1), pages 47-68, January.
    2. Chen, Hsiu-Lang & Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Wermers, Russ, 2000. "The Value of Active Mutual Fund Management: An Examination of the Stockholdings and Trades of Fund Managers," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 35(3), pages 343-368, September.
    3. 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.
    4. repec:bla:jfinan:v:55:y:2000:i:4:p:1655-1703 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Del Guercio, Diane, 1996. "The distorting effect of the prudent-man laws on institutional equity investments," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 31-62, January.
    6. Russ Wermers, 2000. "Mutual Fund Performance: An Empirical Decomposition into Stock‐Picking Talent, Style, Transactions Costs, and Expenses," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1655-1695, August.
    7. Chen, Joseph & Hong, Harrison & Stein, Jeremy C., 2002. "Breadth of ownership and stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 171-205.
    8. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    9. Richard W. Sias, 2004. "Institutional Herding," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(1), pages 165-206.
    10. 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.
    11. Jonathan B. Berk & Richard C. Green, 2004. "Mutual Fund Flows and Performance in Rational Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(6), pages 1269-1295, December.
    12. Russ Wermers, 1999. "Mutual Fund Herding and the Impact on Stock Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(2), pages 581-622, April.
    13. James A. Bennett, 2003. "Greener Pastures and the Impact of Dynamic Institutional Preferences," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(4), pages 1203-1238.
    14. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:5:p:2013-2040 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Grinblatt, Mark & Titman, Sheridan D, 1989. "Mutual Fund Performance: An Analysis of Quarterly Portfolio Holdings," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 62(3), pages 393-416, July.
    16. 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.
    17. Cohen, Randolph B. & Gompers, Paul A. & Vuolteenaho, Tuomo, 2002. "Who underreacts to cash-flow news? evidence from trading between individuals and institutions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 409-462.
    18. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. "The Limits of Arbitrage," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 35-55, March.
    19. Falkenstein, Eric G, 1996. "Preferences for Stock Characteristics as Revealed by Mutual Fund Portfolio Holdings," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(1), pages 111-135, March.
    20. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    21. Jeffrey Pontiff, 1996. "Costly Arbitrage: Evidence from Closed-End Funds," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(4), pages 1135-1151.
    22. John R. Nofsinger & Richard W. Sias, 1999. "Herding and Feedback Trading by Institutional and Individual Investors," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(6), pages 2263-2295, December.
    23. Gibbons, Michael R & Ross, Stephen A & Shanken, Jay, 1989. "A Test of the Efficiency of a Given Portfolio," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(5), pages 1121-1152, September.
    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. 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.
    2. Lan, Chunhua & Moneta, Fabio & Wermers, Russ, 2018. "Holding Horizon: A New Measure of Active Investment Management," CFR Working Papers 15-06, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR), revised 2018.
    3. 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.
    4. Cohen, Randolph B. & Gompers, Paul A. & Vuolteenaho, Tuomo, 2002. "Who underreacts to cash-flow news? evidence from trading between individuals and institutions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 409-462.
    5. Belghitar, Yacine & Clark, Ephraim & Kassimatis, Konstantino, 2011. "The prudential effect of strategic institutional ownership on stock performance," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 191-199, August.
    6. Ye, Qing & Wu, Yuliang & Liu, Jia, 2019. "Institutional preferences, demand shocks and the distress anomaly," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 72-91.
    7. Danny Yeung, 2012. "The Impact of Institutional Ownership: A Study of the Australian Equity Market," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 11, July-Dece.
    8. Randolph B. Cohen & Joshua D. Coval & Ľuboš Pástor, 2005. "Judging Fund Managers by the Company They Keep," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(3), pages 1057-1096, June.
    9. Baik, Bok & Kang, Jun-Koo & Kim, Jin-Mo, 2010. "Local institutional investors, information asymmetries, and equity returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 81-106, July.
    10. Chen, An-Sing & Hong, Bi-Shia, 2006. "Institutional ownership changes and returns around analysts' earnings forecast release events: Evidence from Taiwan," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(9), pages 2471-2488, September.
    11. Laurent Barras & Olivier Scaillet & Russ Wermers, 2010. "False Discoveries in Mutual Fund Performance: Measuring Luck in Estimated Alphas," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(1), pages 179-216, February.
    12. Ashiq Ali & Xuanjuan Chen & Tong Yao & Tong Yu, 2008. "Do Mutual Funds Profit from the Accruals Anomaly?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(1), pages 1-26, March.
    13. 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.
    14. Jiang, Hao & Verardo, Michela, 2013. "Does herding behavior reveal skill? An analysis of mutual fund performance," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119034, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Tao Chen, 2009. "Informational Efficiency: Which Institutions Matter?," Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, Springer;Japanese Association of Financial Economics and Engineering, vol. 16(2), pages 141-168, June.
    16. Badhani, K.N. & Kumar, Ashish & Vo, Xuan Vinh & Tayde, Mangesh, 2023. "Do institutional investors perform better in emerging markets?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 1041-1056.
    17. Hao Jiang & Michela Verardo, "undated". "Does herding behavior reveal skill? An analysis of mutual fund performance," FMG Discussion Papers dp720, Financial Markets Group.
    18. 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).
    19. 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).
    20. Amil Dasgupta & Andrea Prat & Michela Verardo, 2011. "Institutional Trade Persistence and Long‐Term Equity Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(2), pages 635-653, April.

    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:jfinec:v:102:y:2011:i:1:p:62-80. 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/inca/505576 .

    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.