Archiv der Kategorie: Beratung

ESG sales impact: Researchpost #135

ESG sales impact: 11x new research on ESG sales effects, governance knowledge deficits and policies, corporate purpose measurement, CSR returns, impact frameworks, bad asset managers, financial advice AI and Bitcoin by Christina Bannier, Lars Hornuf, Judith Stroehle and many more (#: SSRN downloads on July 19th, 2023)

Social and ecological research: ESG sales impact

ESG sales impact (1): Do Consumers Care About ESG? Evidence from Barcode-Level Sales Data by Jean-Marie Meier, Henri Servaes, Jiaying Wei, and Steven Chong Xiao as of July 11^th, 2023 (#266): “… we find that higher E&S ratings positively affect subsequent local product sales. The positive effect of E&S ratings on local product sales is stronger in markets with more Democratic voters and with a higher average income. … revenue also declines after the release of negative E&S news. … we find a significant increase in the sensitivity of local retail sales to firm E&S performance after (Sö: natural and environmental) … disaster events for counties located closer to the events“ (p. 23).

ESG sales impact (2): How Does ESG Shape Consumption? by Joel F. Houston, Chen Lin, Hongyu Shan, and Mo Shen as of June 21^st, 2023 (#280): “Our study explores the effects of more than 1600 negative events captured from the RepRisk database, on 150 million point-of-sale consumption observations … Our baseline findings show that the average negative event generates a 5 – 10 % decrease in sales for the affected product in the six months following the event. … we find that there is considerable heterogeneity in consumer responses, and that the average response varies considerably depending on consumer demographics and the nature of the ESG-related reputation shock“ (p. 23/24).

Governance doubts: Seven Gaping Holes in Our Knowledge of Corporate Governance by David F. Larcker and Brian Tayan as of May 3^rd, 2023 (741): “… we highlight significant “holes” in our knowledge of corporate governance. … While the concepts we review are not exhaustive, each is critical to our understanding of the proper functioning of governance, including board oversight, the recruitment of CEO talent, the size and structure of CEO pay, and the advancement of shareholder and stakeholder welfare” (abstract).

Purpose first: Sustainable Corporate Governance. An Overview and an Assessment by Steen Thomsen as of June 8^th, 2023 (#144): “This paper outlines what could be some of the key elements of sustainable corporate governance 2.0 including company law (director liability), long-term ownership, ESG investment, company purpose, sustainability committees, sustainability competencies, ESG incentives, climate plans, climate risk management, sustainability reporting, and internal carbon pricing. … the current fixation on regulation and ESG is counterproductive and suggest that a better way forward is to start with company purpose and to adjust corporate governance accordingly. Using this approach, I outline a tentative roadmap for sustainable corporate governance 2.0“ (abstract). My comment: I suggest a Roadmap for corporate and stakeholder engagement here Shareholder engagement: 21 science based theses and an action plan – (prof-soehnholz.com)

Responsible investment research: ESG sales impact

Purpose measurement: Through the looking glass: tying performance and materiality to corporate purpose by Judith C. Stroehle, Kazbi Soonawalla, and Marcel Metzner as of June 7^th, 2023 (#18): “The performance principles of corporate purpose suggest that measurement needs to reflect whether companies take into account the growing significance of workers, societies and natural assets both inside and outside a company’s legal boundaries … Purpose without measurement runs the risk of being merely a mirage …. we show that it is not impossible to establish measurement of purpose, in particular when performance in relation to purpose is linked to existing frameworks of measurement and notions of single and double materiality“ (p. 30/31).

Irresponsible returns? The risk‑return tradeoff: are sustainable investors compensated adequately? by Christina E. Bannier, Yannik Bofinger, and Björn Rock as of April 27^th, 2023: “… our results show that low CSR (Sö: Corporate Social Responsibility) is … associated with higher portfolio returns. Interestingly, these higher returns even overcompensate the investor for the amount of risk she has to bear. … from an investor’s perspective, the ‘optimal’ return-to-risk ratio is achieved for a portfolio that invests in the lowest CSR-rated firms” (p. 169/170). My comment see ESG Transition Bullshit? – Responsible Investment Research Blog (prof-soehnholz.com)

Impact frames: How impact investing firms use reference frameworks to manage their impact performance: An industry-level study by Syrus M. Islam and Ahsan Habib as of July 10^th, 2023 (#8): “… we show how impact investing firms use various reference frameworks (e.g., IFC Performance Standards, Impact Management Project framework, UN Sustainable Development Goals) to manage their impact performance throughout the investment lifecycle. … We also discuss … how reference frameworks used in performance management in the impact investing industry differ from those used in some other industries” (abstract). My comment: I use the SDG-Framework see Active or impact investing? – (prof-soehnholz.com)

Bad asset managers? Who’s managing your future? An assessment of asset managers’ climate action by Lara Cuvelier at al. from Reclaim Finance as of June 28^th, 2023: “At the parent (or group) level, the 30 asset managers included in this report invested at least $3.5 billion in 74 newly issued bond securities from companies actively engaged in fossil fuel expansion. … The 30 asset managers analyzed held US$597 bn in bonds and shares in the biggest fossil fuel developers as of January 2023. … the majority of these 30 major asset managers do not currently sanction polluting companies for failing to take the right steps for the climate …After five years of intensive dialogue by investors from the CA100+ initiative, only 20% of the companies from the coal mining and oil and gas sectors that have been engaged have even set an ambition to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. … only two of the companies are working to decarbonize their capital expenditures” (p. 7).

General investment research

AI & investments: Executives vs. Chatbots: Unmasking Insights through Human-AI Differences in Earnings Conference Q&A by John (Jianqiu) Bai, Nicole Boyson, Yi Cao, Miao Liu, and Chi Wan as of June 22th, 2023 (#125): “… we use earnings conference calls as a setting and introduce a novel measure of information content (Human Machine Differences, HAID) by exploiting the discrepancy between answers to questions at earnings conference calls provided by actual corporate CFOs and CEOs and those given by several context-preserving Large Language Models (LLM) including ChatGPT. … HAID has significant predictive power for the absolute cumulative abnormal return around earnings call, stock liquidity, earnings growth, analyst forecast accuracy, as well as management’s propensity to provide guidance. … Overall, we find that HAID provides a unique and previously unidentified source and methodology to help investors uncover new information content” (p. 26).

LLM Advice: Using GPT-4 for Financial Advice by Christian Fieberg, Lars Hornuf, David J. Streich as of July 6^th, 2023 (#250): “GPT-4 can provide financial advice which is on par with the advice provided by professional low-cost automated financial advisory services. While the portfolios suggested by GPT-4 displayed considerable home bias, its historical risk-return profiles are at least on par with … benchmark portfolios. … To investigate GPT-4’s ability to serve clients’ sustainability preferences (ESMA, 2018), we added sustainability preferences to some of our investor profiles. The portfolios suggested for those profiles included ESG-focused versions of the portfolio components such as the iShares ESG Aware MSCI USA ETF. … risk profiling … can currently not be handled by GPT-4. … GPT-4 cannot offer assistance in implementing the portfolio (opening an account, purchasing and rebalancing portfolio components)“ (p. 11/12).

Bitcoin infects: Is Bitcoin Exciting? A Study of Bitcoin’s Spillover Effects by Minhao Leong and Simon Kwok as of July 13^th, 2023 (#16): “… we detect the presence of positive jump spillovers from Bitcoin to risk assets (U.S. equities, developed market equities and emerging market equities) and negative jump spillovers from Bitcoin to defensive assets (gold and emerging market bonds) after COVID-19. … we also find evidence of jump and diffusion spillovers from Bitcoin to U.S. equity sectors, particularly to the financials, technology, consumer discretionary and communication services sectors. … We show that over time, the proportion of blockchain and cryptocurrency exposed U.S. companies (BCEs) has increased in recent years, from 19% during the pre-pandemic period to 28.8%. Specifically, the adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrency related technologies by mega-cap names such as Microsoft (Technology), Amazon (Consumer Discretionary), Alphabet (Communication Services) and Tesla (Consumer Discretionary) has increased the Bitcoin exposures of equity market and sector indices“ (p. 41/42).

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ESG Transition Bullshit?

No impact on secondary markets?

ESG transition approaches suggest making companies more sustainable. Many providers of so-called responsible investments promote ESG transition investments. Typically, the argumentation is: You have to put money into brown companies so that they can finance the transition to become a greener company. That sounds plausible but may be misleading.

In the case of listed investments, securities are bought from other investors. No capital flows to the companies themselves. This is different with capital increases, new bond issues or private equity and credit investments. Not every such investor investment is truly additional because of an often high investor demand (“capital overhang”). In any case, issuers receive additional capital which they could use to finance a green transition. Unfortunately, even in the case of some so-called green, social or sustainability bonds, it cannot be guaranteed that the proceeds are used to finance greener or more social transitions (compare The Economics of Sustainability Linked Bonds by Tony Berrada, Leonie Engelhardt, Rajna Gibson, and Philipp Krueger as of September 14^th, 2022).

ESG Transition? Big Oil throws cash at shareholders, not renewables

According to Nathaniel Bullard from BNN Bloomberg (“Big Oil’s pullback from clean energy matters less than you might think” as of June 25^th, 2023) “The world’s five biggest publicly listed oil and gas companies posted just under $200 billion in total profits last year. Faced with three strategic possibilities for how to use their cash piles — extract oil and gas apace, move their businesses into renewable power and energy transition assets or return money to shareholders — the supermajors have largely sprung for the third option in recent weeks”. They invested in transition in the past, but their overall energy-transition investment share is low with about 3% according to Bullard. “And there is no shortage of capital at the moment — according to the International Energy Agency, more has been invested in clean energy than fossil fuels every year since 2016”.

It seems to make little sense to promote investments in Big Oil stocks or bonds as transition investments. Blackrock, one of the largest asset managers with very large holdings in Big Oil companies, probably disagrees with me. Exxon, Chevron and ConocoPhilipps are among the holding of its U.S. Carbon Transition Readiness ETF. According to Blackrock, the ETF provides a “broad exposure to large- and mid-capitalization U.S. companies tilting towards those that BlackRock believes are better positioned to benefit from the transition to a low-carbon economy” and “harness BlackRock’s thinking in sustainable investing through a strategy utilizing research-driven insights” (BlackRock U.S. Carbon Transition Readiness ETF | LCTU (ishares.com)).

I would rather invest in companies specialized in renewable energies. And even with listed investments, investments could have some positive impact.

Shareholder engagement with the bad or the good companies?

In theory, share- and bondholder engagement can have a positive impact on companies. For Big Oil, that did not work well so far: “Resolutions that would have forced the companies to align with Paris Agreement climate targets failed. BP and Shell have also pulled back on their strategies to cut fossil fuel production” (Bullard).

Shareholder engagement seems to be more fruitful when targeted at already somewhat responsible companies (compare Shareholder Engagement on ESG Performance by Barko et al. (2022)). That is also my experience (see Active or impact investing? – (prof-soehnholz.com)).

ESG Transition: But we still need oil and gas!

Certainly, we still need oil and gas for our economy for a long time. But Big Oil will certainly sell us oil and gas as long as we adequately pay for it. I do not expect that they decide to sell oil and gas only to stock- and bondholders.

Maybe, responsible investors should not invest at all in brown companies or companies with social deficits which distribute dividends instead of investing the available capital in a greener or more social future (see Transitionierer: Dividendenverbot für ESG Sünder? – Responsible Investment Research Blog (prof-soehnholz.com)).

Underdiversification and return risks?

Many investment advisors (and promotors of diversified products) argue, that investors should not deviate much from diversified indices. This would mean to also invest in brown and not very social companies. These advisors and promotors rarely mention the – mostly very low – marginal utility of additional diversification. Also, most likely, you will not hear the argument that if you start with very responsible investments and then diversify, the average responsibility score of the portfolio will shrink. There are very few convincing arguments why investors should invest in all the same countries, industries and companies as broad indices. Focusing investments on few of the most responsible investments can generate attractive returns and risk adjusted performances (see 30 stocks, if responsible, are all I need – Responsible Investment Research Blog (prof-soehnholz.com)).

Some argue that theory proves that brown investment should have high returns in the future. According to them, brown companies have to pay higher interest rates to creditors and higher returns to stockholders than responsible companies. Thus, shareholders of brown companies should have higher returns than shareholders of green companies.

Lower brown risks

There are other arguments, though. Brown companies certainly have more ecological risk than green companies. Therefore, the risk adjusted returns of brown companies may not be so attractive. And if brown companies have to invest instead of distributing dividends, higher returns for stockholders mean that in the future, someone has to pay a relatively high price for the (formerly?) brown stock. Instead, investors can invest in already green companies. Those companies have lower capital investment requirements for transitions. But they can still improve their greenness and/or distribute dividends. That seems to be the more attractive investment case. And given the low current share of truly green and social investments, I expect responsible investments to continue to grow for many years to come.

Since 2017 I try to invest in a limited number of most responsible companies. Since even these companies can still improve significantly in terms of responsibility, I also try to engage with all of them (see Shareholder engagement: 21 science based theses and an action plan – (prof-soehnholz.com)). So far, that approach works well.

Finfluencers: Researchpost #126

Finfluencers: 14x new research on CO2 storage, climate learnings, sustainable bonds, diversity, impact investing, active investing, and finfluencers by Laurens Swinkels, Alex Edmans, Caroline Flammer, Simon Glossner, Jeffrey Ptak, Michael Kitces, Norman Schürhoff, Christian Klein et al. (# indicates the number of SSRN downloads on May 9th, 2023)

Ecological and social research

CO2 Storage? CO2 storage or utilization? A real options analysis under market and technological uncertainty by Hanne Lamberts-Van Assche, Maria Lavrutich, Tine Compernolle, Gwenny Thomassen, Jacco Thijssen, and Peter M. Kort as of April 24^th, 2023 (#8): “First, the presence of technological and market uncertainties … increase the barriers to invest in CCS or CCU. Second, when the firm anticipates the arrival of a more attractive CCU solution in the future, it will not postpone the investment in CCS. …. Third, higher uncertainty in the CO2 price, i.e. higher σ, increases the investment thresholds, while a higher trend in the CO2 price, i.e. higher α, decreases the investment thresholds for CCS and CCU. … First, policymakers should aim to ensure stability and predictability in the CO2 price, to lower the volatility σ of the CO2 price. Reducing the market uncertainty will lower the CO2 price investment thresholds for CCS, CCU and CCUS. Second, they should also commit to an increasing growth rate in the CO2 price in the EU ETS. When firms expect higher growth rates for the CO2 price in the future, they are more favourable to invest in CCS, CCU and CCUS sooner. Finally, policymakers should realize that CCU and CCS can be complementary solutions” (p. 32/33).

Climate-information matters: Complexity and Learning Effects in Voluntary Climate Action: Evidence from a Field Experiment by Johannes Jarke-Neuert, Grischa Perino, Daniela Flörchinger, and Manuel Frondel as of April 16^th, 2023 (#26): “Exploiting the fact that timing matters, we have empirically investigated how individuals respond to (a) having the choice about the timing of their voluntary abatement efforts in the form of retiring an emission allowance and to (b) being confronted with either no, simple but counter-intuitive, or complex but intuitive information about the effectiveness-ranking of options. To this end, we have conceived a field experiment with more than four thousand participants that was embedded in a survey conducted in Germany in 2021 … Adding information did not systematically affect contributions overall, but substantially increased their effectiveness. … The uptake of information provided was most pronounced by individuals who most strongly believed in the opposite ranking“ (p. 15/16).

German pension wealth: Accounting for pension wealth, the missing rich and under-coverage: A comprehensive wealth distribution for Germany by Charlotte Bartels, Timm Bönke, Rick Glaubitz, Markus M. Grabka, and Carsten Schröder as of April 25^th, 2023 (#13): “We found that including pension wealth increases the wealth-income ratio of German households from 570% to 850%. … pension wealth plays an equalizing role: The wealth share of the bottom 50% increases from 2% to 9% when including pension wealth, whereas that of the top 1% declines from 30% to 20%. However … Pension wealth is not transferable and, hence, differs significantly from marketable assets such as financial investments or housing“ (p. 12).

Responsible investment research: Finfluencers

Green and other bonds: Social, Sustainability, and Sustainability-Linked Bonds by Gino Beteta Vejarano and Laurens Swinkels from Robeco as of April 24^th, 2023 (#107): “… several variations of sustainable bonds appearing in the market, where either use of proceeds are earmarked for sustainable activities, or coupon payments depend on sustainability targets. Despite the fast growth, the sustainable bond market is currently less than 4% of the overall bond market, with the green bond market accounting for half of it. Social and sustainability bonds tend to be issued by government or government-related institutions and, therefore generally have higher credit quality than sustainability-linked bonds, which are much more popular in the corporate sector. … The yields on sustainable bonds tend to be only marginally lower than those on conventional bonds with a similar risk profile …. Since correlations between returns on sustainable and conventional bonds are high, the risk and return profile of the portfolio is unlikely to change much when certain conventional bonds are replaced with ESG bonds with similar characteristics …” (p. 28).

Growing greenium? How Large is the Sovereign Greenium? by Sakai Ando, Chenxu Fu, Francisco Roch, and Ursula Wiriadinata as of April 19^th, 2023 (#22): “This paper is the first empirical study to estimate the sovereign greenium using both the twin bonds issued by Denmark and Germany, and panel regression analysis. While the estimated greenium in this paper is not large, it has been increasing over time alongside the level of sovereign green bond issuances. … It remains an open question whether the purpose of the project associated with the green bond is a key determinant of the greenium, and whether green bonds have resulted in the climate outcomes they intended to achieve” (p.9/10).

Good diversity: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion by Alex Edmans, Caroline Flammer, and Simon Glossner as of May 2^nd, 2023 (#723): “… demographic diversity measures may miss many important aspects of DEI. … Companies with high DEI enjoyed recent strong financial performance and are less levered, suggesting that a strong financial position gives companies latitude to focus on long-term issues such as DEI that may take time to build. Small growth firms also exhibit higher DEI scores, consistent with either greater incentives or ability to improve DEI in such firms. … we find that the percentage of women in senior management is significantly positively associated with DEI perceptions, and this result holds regardless of the gender or ethnicity of the respondents. … DEI is also unrelated to general workplace policies and outcomes, suggesting that DEI needs to be improved by targeted rather than generic initiatives. … we find no evidence of a link between DEI and firm-level stock returns” (p. 25/26).

Impact measure: The Impact Potential Assessment Framework (IPAF) for financial products by Mickaël Mangot and Nicola Stefan Koch of the 2o investing initiative as of March 2023: “The Impact Potential Assessment Framework (IPAF) assesses financial products based only on their actions to generate real-life impact … It is exclusively based on public information provided by the product manufacturers … It is applicable to various types of financial products … serves as a tool against impact-washing by displaying practical limitations of self-labelled “impact products … First, it assesses the (maximum) impact potential of financial products based on impact mechanisms they supposedly apply (in relation to communicated elements in marketing documents). Those impact mechanisms are the ones widely documented by academic research: Grow new/undersupplied markets, Provide flexible capital, Engage actively, Send (market and nonmarket) signals. Second, it evaluates the implementation of that impact potential based on the intensity with which financial products action the various impact mechanisms in connection to success factors documented by academic research”. My comment: I try to provide as much impact as possible with my public equity mutual fund, see https://futurevest.fund/

Green demand: Nachfrage nach grünen Finanzprodukten, Teilbericht der Wissensplattform Nachhaltige Finanzwirtschaft im Auftrag des Umweltbundesamtes von Christian Klein, Maurice Dumrose, Julia Eckert vom April 2023: “… In this project report, the development of the sustainable investment market, especially in the retail sector, is presented and the characteristics of sustainable investments are introduced. Retail investor motives for investing in such products and the requirements retail investors have for sustainable investment products are highlighted. Barriers for retail investors and investment advisors are identified in the area of sustainable investments. Finally, based on these findings, recommendations for political action are proposed, which can lead to a reduction of these barriers and thus increase the acceptance of sustainable investments” (abstract). .. “Die Literatur zeigt eindeutig, dass insbesondere die Fehlannahme der Anlageberatenden, Retail-Investierende hätten kein Interesse an Nachhaltigen Geldanlagen und fragen deshalb nicht aktiv im Beratungsgespräch nach diesen, eine Barriere darstellt. Die Untersuchung von Klein et al. zeigt in diesem Zusammenhang deutlich, dass diese Barriere durch eine verpflichtende Abfrage der Nachhaltigkeitspräferenz der Retail-Investierenden überwunden werden kann. Ferner zeigt der aktuelle Forschungsstand, dass insbesondere ein zu geringes Wissen im Bereich Nachhaltige Geldanlage die zentrale Barriere für Anlageberatende darstellt. Hohe Transaktions- sowie Informationskosten, ein fehlendes kundengerechtes nachhaltiges Produktangebot, Zweifel an dem Beitrag, den Nachhaltige Geldanlagen zu einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung leisten, hohe wahrgenommene Komplexität, Wahrnehmung von Green Washing, Angst vor Haftungsrisiken, potentielle Reputationsrisiken und keine einheitliche bzw. gesetzliche Definition des Begriffs Nachhaltige Geldanlage konnten als weitere Barrieren identifiziert werden“ (S. 42/43).

2 ESG types? Sustainable investments: One for the money, two for the show by Hans Degryse, Alberta Di Giuli, Naciye Sekerci, and Francesco Stradi as of April 26^th, 2023 (#66): “Analyzing a representative sample of Dutch households, we document the existence of two types of households: those that invest in sustainable products for social reasons (social sustainable investors) and those that do it for financial reasons (financial sustainable investors). The two groups are of equal importance but are characterized by different features. The social sustainable investors have higher social preferences, level of education and trust, and are more likely left-wing and less risk-loving. Reliable labelling, reducing greenwashing concerns, and emphasizing typical left-wing thematic linked to sustainable investments is positively related to sustainable investments by social sustainable investors, whereas hyping the benefit in terms of returns of sustainable investments through social media and word of mouth is positively associated with the investment decisions of financial sustainable investors” (abstract).

Traditional and fintech investment research: Finflucencers

Difficult 1/n?: Is Naïve Asset Allocation Always Preferable? by Thomas Conlon, John Cotter, Iason Kynigakis, and Enrique Salvador as of April 28th, 2023 (#90): “For allocation within asset classes, we find only limited evidence of outperformance in terms of risk-adjusted returns for optimized portfolios relative to the naïve benchmark … we find statistical and economic evidence that a bond portfolio that minimizes risk is the only case that provides outperformance of the 1/n rule. This evidence points to challenges in outperforming the equally weighted portfolio, especially when allocating among equities and REITs. When allocating across asset classes, we find that minimum-variance portfolios that include bonds exhibit higher Sharpe ratios than the equally weighted portfolio. These findings also carry over to downside risk, where optimal strategies have a lower VaR, both economically and statistically, than that associated with the equally weighted approach. Allocations across different asset classes also have lower rebalancing requirements, which means they are less affected by the transaction costs” (p. 26). My comment: My equity portfolios are all equal weighted. The most passive world market portfolio should be uses as reference instead of naïve asset allocation which does not work well because auf unclear asset class definitions, see Das-Soehnholz-ESG-und-SDG-Portfoliobuch.pdf (soehnholzesg.com). Regarding optimization limits see Kann institutionelles Investment Consulting digitalisiert werden? Beispiele. – Responsible Investment Research Blog (prof-soehnholz.com)

Active disaster: How Can Active Stock Managers Improve Their Funds’ Performance? By Taking a Vacation—a Long One by Jeffrey Ptak from Morningstar as of May 2^nd, 2023: “While active large-cap managers made thousands of trades worth trillions of dollars over the 10-year period ended March 31, 2023 … The funds’ actual returns were almost identical to what they’d have been had those managers made no trades at all and were worse after adjusting for risk. And that was before fees were deducted”. My comment: With my portfolios/fund I try to trade as little as possible

Wealthtech changes: The Kitces AdvisorTech Map Highlights The Evolving Landscape As It Turns 5 Years Old by Michael Kitces and ben Henry-Moreland as of May 1^st, 2023: “… there now 409 different software solutions … with the total number of solutions more than doubling … Some highlights of these AdvisorTech evolution trends over the past 5 years include: The near-disappearance of the ‚B2B robo‘ tools as advisors demanded better onboarding capabilities but showed an unwillingness to pay for them on top of their broker-dealer or custodial providers … portfolio management tools have increasingly bought or built performance reporting and performance reporters acquired most of the available trading and rebalancing tools in a massive consolidation into what is now the „All-In-One“ category … The growth of the Behavioral Assessments category … The proliferation of specialized financial planning software …The explosion in advisor marketing technology …”

Bad influences: Finfluencers by Ali Kakhbod, Seyed Kazempour, Dmitry Livdan, and Norman Schürhoff as of May 4^th, 2023 (#178): “… instead of following more skilled influencers, social media users follow unskilled and antiskilled finfluencers, which we define as finfluencers whose tweets generate negative alpha. Antiskilled finfluencers ride return and social sentiment momentum, which coincide with the behavioral biases of retail investors who trade on antiskilled finfluencers’ flawed advice. These results are consistent with homophily in behavioral traits between social media users and finfluencers shaping finfluencer’s follower networks and limiting competition among finfluencers, resulting in the survival of un- and antiskilled finfluencers despite the fact that they do not provide valuable investment advice. Investing contrarian to the tweets by antiskilled finfluencers yields abnormal out-of-sample returns, which we term the “wisdom of the antiskilled crowd.”“ (p. 40).

Literacy returns: Financial literacy and well-being: The returns to financial literacy by Sjuul Derkx, Bart Frijns, and Frank Hubers as of April 25^th, 2023 (#21): “Using a panel data set of Dutch households over 2011-2020, we find that initial (2011) … financial literacy positively affects wealth accumulation for up to four years into the future, showing that there is mean-reversion in financial literacy when one no longer invests in it. Considering different age brackets, we document that financial literacy among the young results in higher income generation, while financial literacy among the old leads to greater wealth accumulation” (abstract).

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100 research blogposts since 2018

The beginning, stats and topics

„100 research blogposts“: I have been interested in scientific research for a very long time. Also, I have always enjoyed writing and published my first scientific articles while I was still a student. Since 2014 I have my own blog. I present links to and summaries of other people’s scientific contributions there since July 2018. Since mid-2019, I have been publishing 10 to 20 summaries of scientific studies every two weeks or so. On October 19, 2022, I created my one hundredth such research blogposts.

For this, I summarize research that I consider interesting and good. Initially, I focused only on research related to sustainable investing. Over time, other topics were added, specifically environmental, social, and corporate governance topics not directly related to investing, research on general investing topics such as asset allocation, fund selection, security selection, and risk management, and papers focusing on stocks, bonds, and especially alternative investments such as real estate, private equity, and hedge funds. In addition, cover financial technology (fintech) topics on advisortech, advicetech, wealthtech, and specifically model portfolios, robo-advisors, and direct indexing.

Research blogposts: Many sources and certain requirements

I mainly include scientific research articles which are free to access. My main source are the newsletters of publications of the Social Sciences Research Network. Currently, I subscribe to over 80 newsletters in the areas of Economics, Energy, Entrepreneurship, Financial Planning, Governance, Investments, Law, Management, Philosophy, Sociology, and Sustainability. From time to time I also actively search within SSRN for new contributions, especially those with the focus on ESG and Impact.

I also analyze contributions with interesting statistics from NGOs like Planet Tracker and for-profit organizations like Morningstar and MSCI and from my network (see e.g. my third-party links at www.prof-soehnholz.com). In addition, I point out innovative or surprising corporate activities, especially from the USA and Great Britain, which can serve as a model for German-speaking countries. I usually do not take into account unscientific surveys and purely conceptual or opinion contributions.

Early publication, but not necessarily peer-reviewed

Often, I am one of the first to download such contributions in their entirety. After briefly analyzing them, I include the contributions in my blogposts as soon as possible after they have been made available online. Also, I indicate the number of SSRN downloads at the time my blog post is published. This allows my readers to gauge how well-known or popular the research posts I include currently are.

At that point, the articles are often already scheduled for publication in scientific journals, but have not yet been reviewed by other scientists (i.e., without peer review). When downloading the full articles, SSRN explicitly points out this limitation. I myself cannot check the publications in detail for their quality, but I try to heed warning signals and to weed out bad contributions in advance, of which there are unfortunately more and more (cf. e.g. The Corrupt Institutions of Development Economics and Its Shadow Professoriate by Bryane Michael, September 10, 2022).

Anti-Quant research blogposts? Excursus on evidence

Left unconsidered are contributions that suggest they can generate future outperformance (alpha). This is due to the fact that many such studies are, in my opinion, based on so-called data mining and/or inappropriate or very sensitive models (this is what I call pseudo-optimizations, see e.g. Kann institutionelles Investment Consulting digitalisiert werden? Beispiele. – Responsible Investment Research Blog (prof-soehnholz.com)).

Similarly, I usually do not consider studies that attribute only positive diversification properties to any investments. The reason: If additional investments are different from already existing investments, one can, by definition, expect positive diversification properties.

Thus, I distance myself from so-called quantitative investors (quants) or a narrowly understood „quant“ evidence-based investments term. Thus, I do not define evidence-based investing to mean everything that can be shown with data as some others do, especially supporters of so-called factor investments. By evidence-based investments I understand that one should know the scientific results known at the time of investment and implement them if possible. I especially this definition: „Evidence-Based Investing (EBI) is a disciplined approach to asset management that combines the data we have from the past and present with honesty about the unknowable future. Where others would use forecasts, relationships or emotions to guide their decisions, practitioners of EBI would substitute facts, logic and reason“ (see 2016 Evidence Based Investing Conference by IMN; see also Evidence-Based Investing – Interesting for all Passive and Robo-Advisor Fans).

My biases and how I use evidence myself

I also have conscious and perhaps unconscious biases in that I primarily include research that could be relevant to financial investors and people interested in sustainability from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. My approach is selective and means that I certainly can not include all good contributions on the topics I mentioned above in my blog. Moreover, I do not present the complete abstracts or summaries of the respective contributions, but only the most important results from my point of view.

I have now been involved with sustainable investing for quite some time. After co-developing a Sustainable Private Equity fund of funds in 2007, I introduced ESG selection criteria for several equity funds starting in 2012. I pioneered ESG ETF portfolios (2015), pure ESG portfolios (2016) and SDG ETF portfolios (2019) and I am one of the first to advocate Direct ESG Indexing in Europe. Already in 2017, half of the portfolios I offered publicly were sustainable. Since then, new portfolios have been developed almost exclusively using ESG criteria and, more recently, SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) criteria. To do this, I take into account the findings from the studies I analyze as much as possible.

I also use the research findings to advise interested parties and clients. In „Das Soehnholz ESG und SDG Portfoliobuch„, my current investment principles and rules are documented in detail and in an „archive“ the corresponding documentation of previous years is also publicly available. I also use the research findings for my other publications, including my now nearly 200 other (“opinion”) blog posts.

Free for all research blogposts, including competitors

I want to advance evidence-based investing in general, and I don’t necessarily expect everyone interested in it to invest in my portfolios. That’s why I want to make the research as widely known as possible. This works best if I give it away for free. I am especially happy about supporters who further publicize my research. This can be done, for example, through social media referrals. I also like to collaborate with other companies. For example, Exxec News provides part of my research to its users for free.

The relatively extensive time I invest in reading and preparing the research I mentally chalk up to „pro-bono“ or marketing costs. Obviously, whoever would like to support my research activities is welcome to invest – starting at about 50 Euro – in my investment fund (see www.futurevest.fund) and/or recommend this fund or my other (model portfolio) services.

Additional information

My investment philosophy and portfolios: The Soehnholz ESG and SDG portfolio book

Blog posts by topic: Passive, responsible and online investing

Research blog posts: The Soehnholz ESG and Impact Research Book

Numerous other publications/presentations/videos at www.prof-soehnholz.com

This text has been translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Proven Impact Investing? (Researchblog #97)

Proven impact investing: >10x new research on work, midlifes, climate impact, ESG reporting, impact investments, engagement, indexing, client advisors, risk measurement, real estate, fractional shares, stablecoins

Ecological and social research

More homework: Working from home around the world by Cevat Giray Aksoy, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Steven J. Davis, Mathias Dolls, and Pablo Zarate as of September 19, 2022 (#13): “… we survey full-time workers who finished primary school in 27 countries as of mid 2021 and early 2022. … first, that WFH averages 1.5 days per week in our sample, ranging widely across countries. Second, employers plan an average of 0.7 WFH days per week after the pandemic, but workers want 1.7 days. Third, employees value the option to WFH 2-3 days per week at 5 percent of pay … employer plans for WFH levels after the pandemic rise strongly with WFH productivity surprises during the pandemic” (abstract).

Advert: “Sponsor” my free research by buying my Article 9 fund. The minimum investment is around EUR 50. FutureVest Equity Sustainable Development Goals R – DE000A2P37T6 – A2P37T: With my most responsible stock selection approach I focus on social SDGs and midcaps and use best-in-universe as well as separate E, S and G minimum ratings (see ESG plus SDG-Alignment mit guter Performance: FutureVest ESG SDG – Responsible Investment Research Blog (prof-soehnholz.com))

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ESG overall (Researchblog #91)

ESG overall: >15x new research on fixed income ESG, greenium, insurer ESG investing, sin stocks, ESG ratings, impact investments, real estate ESG, equity lending, ESG derivatives, virtual fashion, bio revolution, behavioral ESG investing

Advert: Check my article 9 SFDR fund FutureVest Equity Sustainable Development Goals (-2,9% YTD). With my most responsible stock selection approach I focus on social SDGs and midcaps and use best-in-universe as well as separate E, S and G minimum ratings.

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ESG skeptical research (Researchblog #90)

ESG skeptical: >15x new and skeptical research on ESG and SDG investments, performance, cost of capital, reporting, ratings, impact, bonifications and artificial intelligence

Advert: Check my article 9 SFDR fund FutureVest Equity Sustainable Development Goals. With my most responsible selection approach I focus on social SDGs and midcaps and use best-in-universe as well as separate E, S and G minimum ratings.

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ESG ok, SDG gut: Performance 1. HJ 2022

ESG ok, SDG gut: Im ersten Halbjahr 2022 haben meine Trendfolgeportfolios sowie die Portfolios, die sich an den nachhaltigen Entwicklungszielen der Vereinten Nationen ausrichten (SDG), zwar auch an Wert verloren, aber dafür relativ gut gegenüber Vergleichsgruppen performt. Das gilt besonders auch für den FutureVest Equities SDG Fonds. Anders als die meist OK gelaufenen globalen haben spezialisierte ESG Portfolios der Soehnholz ESG GmbH im ersten Halbjahr schlechter als traditionelle Vergleichsportfolios abgeschnitten. Dafür war deren Performance in der Vergangenheit oft überdurchschnittlich.

Werbemitteilung: Kennen Sie meinen Artikel 9 Fonds FutureVest Equity Sustainable Development Goals: Fokus auf soziale SDGs und Midcaps, Best-in-Universe Ansatz, getrennte E, S und G Mindestratings.

Auf Seite 2 folgt die Übersicht der Halbjahresrenditen für die 15 nachhaltigen und zwei traditionellen Portfolios von Soehnholz ESG sowie für meinen Fonds.

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ESG and impact investments under fire (Researchpost #89)

Under fire includes >10x new research on ESG and factors, performance, commitment, regulation, scope 3 GHG, market potential, indices, reporting, engagement, and impact washing

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Deadline August: Müssen dann andere Fonds angeboten werden?

Deadline August: Ab August müssen AnlegerInnen aufgrund regulatorischer Vorgaben (MiFID II, IDD) nach ihren Nachhaltigkeitspräferenzen befragt werden. Auch künftig ist zunächst weiterhin die sogenannte Geeignetheit zu prüfen, speziell Renditeerwartungen, Risikokriterien, Zeithorizont und individuelle Umstände von InteressentInnen. Vereinfacht zusammengefasst muss künftig im Anschluss daran gefragt werden, inwieweit eines oder mehrere dreier Nachhaltigkeitsprodukttypen in Anlagen einbezogen werden sollen: Erstens ein Produkt mit einem ein Mindestanteil an ökologisch nachhaltigen Investitionen oder, zweitens, einem Mindestanteil an sozial nachhaltigen Investitionen oder drittens mit einer Mindest-ESG-Gesamtbeurteilung.

Werbemitteilung: Kennen Sie meinen Artikel 9 Fonds FutureVest Equity Sustainable Development Goals R – DE000A2P37T6 – A2P37T mit Fokus auf soziale SDGs und Midcaps, Best-in-Universe Ansatz, getrennte E, S und G Mindestratings?

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