IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iik/wpaper/244.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Sensex and Nifty indices - Are they the right Benchmarks for mutualfunds in India?

Author

Listed:
  • Kumar SSS

    (Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode)

Abstract

Recently two significant developments took place in the Indian capital markets -(1)SEBI's decision making it mandatory for all mutual funds to disclose the scheme returns against a common benchmark index like Nifty or Sensex and (2) Employee Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) is permitted to invest a part of their funds in to stock market through the exchange traded fund (ETF) route particularly SBI Sensex and SBI Nifty ETF's. Both the developments are tied by a common concept that stock market indices like Nifty and Sensex are passive without any statistically significant alpha. In the fund management industry, alpha is a measure of the risk adjusted excess returns from a portfolio that can be attributed to the stock picking skills of a fund manager. In this paper an attempt is made to examine to check for the presence of significant alphas in the returns of both the indices. The results of the study indicate that both the indices have statistically significant excess returns raising questions on their suitability to act as reference and/or benchmarks for evaluating performance of mutual funds in India. Further, the study examined the returns of SBI Sensex ETF and observed a statistically significant alpha. The results of the study have important implications not only for the index construction companies but also to the policymakers who are advocating investment of considerable amounts of provident fund money in to stock market through exchange traded funds linked to Sensex and Nifty. Index maintenance companies have to re-design the indices so that they remain passive and the EPFOAdministration may rethink their decision to invest in the existing ETFs linked to the Sensexand Nifty indices and should consider constructing a well-diversified stock portfolio that is truly passive so that their mandate to get exposure only to market risk is fulfilled.

Suggested Citation

  • Kumar SSS, 2017. "Sensex and Nifty indices - Are they the right Benchmarks for mutualfunds in India?," Working papers 244, Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode.
  • Handle: RePEc:iik:wpaper:244
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://iimk.ac.in/websiteadmin/FacultyPublications/Working%20Papers/244fullp.pdf?t=26
    File Function: First version, 2016
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    2. 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.
    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. Darima Fotheringham & Michael A. Wiles, 2023. "The effect of implementing chatbot customer service on stock returns: an event study analysis," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 51(4), pages 802-822, July.
    2. Christiane Goodfellow & Dirk Schiereck & Steffen Wippler, 2013. "Are behavioural finance equity funds a superior investment? A note on fund performance and market efficiency," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 14(2), pages 111-119, April.
    3. Chuan-Hao Hsu & Hung-Gay Fung & Yi-Ping Chang, 2016. "The performance of Taiwanese firms after a share repurchase announcement," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 47(4), pages 1251-1269, November.
    4. Manuel Ammann & Philipp Horsch & David Oesch, 2016. "Competing with Superstars," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(10), pages 2842-2858, October.
    5. David Hirshleifer & Danling Jiang, 2010. "A Financing-Based Misvaluation Factor and the Cross-Section of Expected Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(9), pages 3401-3436.
    6. Arthur, Bruno R. & Katchova, Ani L., 2012. "Accruals Anomaly in Agriculture Financial Economics," 2012 Annual Meeting, February 4-7, 2012, Birmingham, Alabama 119822, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    7. Shi, Huai-Long & Zhou, Wei-Xing, 2022. "Factor volatility spillover and its implications on factor premia," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    8. Eun, Cheol & Lee, Kyuseok & Wei, Fengrong, 2023. "Dual role of the country factors in international asset pricing: The local factors and proxies for the global factors," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    9. Muhammad Kashif & Thomas Leirvik, 2022. "The MAX Effect in an Oil Exporting Country: The Case of Norway," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-16, March.
    10. Venkatesh Shankar & Pablo Azar & Matthew Fuller, 2008. "—: A Multicategory Brand Equity Model and Its Application at Allstate," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(4), pages 567-584, 07-08.
    11. Caroline Flammer & Michael W. Toffel & Kala Viswanathan, 2021. "Shareholder activism and firms' voluntary disclosure of climate change risks," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(10), pages 1850-1879, October.
    12. David A. Volkman, 1999. "Market Volatility And Perverse Timing Performance Of Mutual Fund Managers," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 22(4), pages 449-470, December.
    13. Ahmed M. Abdalla & Colin D. B. Clubb, 2024. "Classification shifting using income-decreasing special items: measurement and valuation issues," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 29(3), pages 2871-2926, September.
    14. Jung‐Soon Shin & Minki Kim & Dongjun Oh & Tong Suk Kim, 2019. "Do hedge funds time market tail risk? Evidence from option‐implied tail risk," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(2), pages 205-237, February.
    15. Onishchenko, Olena & Zhao, Jing & Kongahawatte, Sampath & Kuruppuarachchi, Duminda, 2024. "Investor heterogeneity and anchoring-induced momentum," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C).
    16. Cici, Gjergji & Gehde-Trapp, Monika & Göricke, Marc-André & Kempf, Alexander, 2014. "What they did in their previous life: The investment value of mutual fund managers' experience outside the financial sector," CFR Working Papers 14-11, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    17. Tobias J. Moskowitz & Mark Grinblatt, 2002. "What Do We Really Know About the Cross-Sectional Relation Between Past and Expected Returns?," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm259, Yale School of Management.
    18. John H. Cochrane, 1999. "New facts in finance," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, vol. 23(Q III), pages 36-58.
    19. Turan G. Bali & Robert F. Engle & Yi Tang, 2017. "Dynamic Conditional Beta Is Alive and Well in the Cross Section of Daily Stock Returns," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(11), pages 3760-3779, November.
    20. Dimitrios G. Konstantinides & Georgios C. Zachos, 2019. "Exhibiting Abnormal Returns Under a Risk Averse Strategy," Methodology and Computing in Applied Probability, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 551-566, June.

    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:iik:wpaper:244. 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: Sudheesh Kumar (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iikmmin.html .

    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.