Small-Cap ESG: 6x new research on (German) migration, climate education, ESG performance, distressed ESG, and biodiversity bond risk (# shows SSRN full paper downloads on March 14th, 2024)
Social and ecological research
East-West migration:Moving Out of the Comfort Zone: How Cultural Norms Affect Attitudes toward Immigration by Yvonne Giesing, Björn Kauder, Lukas Mergele, Niklas Potrafke, Panu Poutvaara as of March 12th, 2024 (#17): “Our causal identification relies on comparing students who moved across the East-West border after German reunification with students who moved within former East Germany. Students who moved from East to West became more positive toward immigration. … the difference between East-West movers and East-East movers increases over time and is driven by East German students who often interacted with fellow students. Effects are stronger in less xenophobic West German regions“ (abstract).
Climate education limits:Climate Change Education Effects on Climate Risk Attitudes and Financial Investment: Experimental Evidence by Bin Chang, Nelson Borges Amaral as of Oct. 5th, 2023 (#44): “… we educate undergraduate finance students about climate change … Students in the course were assigned to manage a simulated investment portfolio which provided us with an opportunity to measure the share of climate-friendly, and climate-damaging exchange-traded funds, as well as the underlying reasons for their investment decisions through a trading journal that each student submitted. Our results reveal that while education influences personal attitudes about the importance of climate risks in investment decisions, those attitudes are not reflected in their investment behavior” (abstract).
Responsible investment research (in: Small-Cap ESG)
Responsible performance:The Risk-Adjusted Performance of Conventional, Socially Responsible, and Islamic Investment Funds by Ezzedine Ghlamallah, Sami Ben Larbi, and Laurence Gialdini as of Feb. 1st, 2024 (#31): “… our study shows that the risk-adjusted performance of SRI funds (Sö: Socially Responsible) does not differ significantly from that of conventional funds, and that both outperform SCI funds (Sö: Shari’ah Compliant). … the underperformance of SCI funds compared to SRI funds can be explained by structural factors such as the limitation of eligible assets (interest rate products and hedging instruments) … our study shows that SCI investment funds have lower systematic risk than SRI funds and are more resilient in times of economic recession” (p. 17).
Distressed ESG?On the Relationship between Financial Distress and ESG Scores by Christian Lohmann, Steffen Möllenhoff, and Sebastian Lehner as of March 8th, 2024 (#32): “This empirical study introduces the financial distress level obtained from a bankruptcy prediction model as a new explanatory variable for ESG scores. … data of listed US companies for 2003– 2022 reveals a pronounced and statistically significant U-shaped relationship between financial distress and ESG scores. A substantial increase in financial distress is associated with increased ESG scores … this empirical study concludes that financially distressed companies distort their ESG scores upward, a robust finding for the applied ESG scores from Refinitiv, MSCI, ESG Book, and Moody’s ESG” (abstract).
Small-Cap ESG performance:Is sustainable entrepreneurship profitable? ESG disclosure and the financial performance of SMEs by Paul P. Momtaz and Isabel M. Parra as of March 7th, 2024 (#22): “… we examine the role of ESG-related information disclosure in a longitudinal sample of Spanish SMEs (Sö: Small and medium enterprises) over the 2012-2022 period. Our results suggests that ESG is positively related to SMEs’ performance, the positive relation is amplified by institutional pressures, and sustainability may protect SMEs against failure, supporting the “doing well by doing good” view in the SME context” (p. 28). My comment: My experience with SME investing is comparable, especially regarding SMEs with a renewable energy focus
Bio credit risk: Biodiversity Risk in the Corporate Bond Market by Sevgi Soylemezgil and Cihan Uzmanoglu as of Feb. 26th, 2024 (#58): “… we find that longer term bonds issued by firms with higher biodiversity risk exposure have higher yield spreads, consistent with biodiversity being perceived as a long-run risk. This effect is stronger among firms with marginal credit quality and those that mention biodiversity regulation in their financial statements. … we find that the impact of biodiversity exposure on yield spreads is more pronounced when biodiversity-related awareness and regulatory risks rise” (abstract).
Biodiversity diversion: 14x new research on donations, brown indices, ESG ETFs, ESG investing fees, greenwashing, labeled bonds, climate engagement, framing, female finance, and risk measurement (“’#” shows full paper SSRN downloads as of Feb. 29th, 2024).
Social and ecological research
Facebook donations:Does Online Fundraising Increase Charitable Giving? A Nationwide Field Experiment on Facebook by Maja Adena and Anselm Hager as of Feb. 27th, 2024 (#4): “Using the Facebook advertising tool, we implemented a natural field experiment across Germany, randomly assigning almost 8,000 postal codes to Save the Children fundraising videos or to a pure control. … We found that (i) video fundraising increased donation revenue and frequency to Save the Children during the campaign and in the subsequent five weeks; (ii) the campaign was profitable for the fundraiser; and (iii) the effects were similar independent of video content and impression assignment strategy. However, we also found some crowding out of donations to other similar charities or projects.” (abstract).
Biodiversity diversion (1)?The 30 by 30 biodiversity commitment and financial disclosure: Metrics matter by Daniele Silvestro, Stefano Goria, Ben Groom, Thomas Sterner, and Alexandre Antonelli as of Nov. 23rd, 2023 (#93): “The recent adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework commits nearly 200 nations to protect 30% of their land by 2030 – a substantial increase from the current global average of c. 17%. … the easiest approach to reach compliance would be to protect the cheapest areas. … Here we explore biological and financial consequences of area protection … We find substantial differences in performance, with the cheapest solution always being the worst for biodiversity. Corporate disclosure provides a powerful mechanism for supporting conservation but is often dependent on simplistic and underperforming metrics. We show that conservation solutions optimized through artificial intelligence are likely to outperform commonly used biodiversity metrics“ (abstract).
ESG investment research (in: „Biodiversity diversion“)
Biodiversity diversion (2):A Bibliometric and Systemic Literature Review of Biodiversity Finance by Mark C. Hutchinson and Brian Lucey as of Feb. 19th, 2024 (#140): “This study presents a short bibliometric analysis of biodiversity finance …. Six focal areas emerge, with Conservation, Conservation Finance, and Ecosystem Finance prominent. Thematic emphasis revolves around biodiversity challenges and the inefficiency of financial mechanisms in addressing them. Our analysis reveals an exploitable gap in the lack of finance-led solutions” (abstract).
Brown stock indices:International trade in brown shares and economic development by Harald Benink, Harry Huizinga, Louis Raes, and Lishu Zhang as of Feb. 22nd, 2024 (#9): “Using global stock ownership data, we find a robust negative relation between the tendency by investors to hold brown assets and economic development as measured by log GDP per capita. … First, at the country level, economic development is likely to lead to a greening of the national stock portfolio. Second, cross-sectionally, richer countries will tend to hold greener portfolios. … Finally, we find that investors in richer countries have a lower propensity to divest from browner firms that are included in the MSCI World index, which does not consider firms’ carbon intensities” (p. 31/32). My comment: Most (institutional) investors use benchmarks. Green benchmarks should be used more often to foster transition (regarding benchmark selection compare Globale Small-Caps: Faire Benchmark für meinen Artikel 9 Fonds? (prof-soehnholz.com).
ESG ETF dispersion:From ESG Confusion to Return Dispersion: Fund Selection Risk is a Material Issue for ESG Investors by Giovanni Bruno and Felix Goltz from Scientific Beta as of Feb. 22nd, 2024: “… we construct a dataset of Sustainable ETFs – passive ETFs that have explicit ESG objectives. … Overall, our results indicate that ESG investors face a large fund selection risk. Over the full sample dispersion is 6.5% (4.9%) in terms of annualised CAPM Alpha (Industry Adjusted Returns), and it can reach 22.5% (25.3%) over single calendar years. We also show that past performance and tracking error do not contain useful information on future performance. … dispersion in performance allows ETF providers to always present investors some strategy that has recently outperformed“ (p. 31). My comment: It would be nice to have more details in the research article regarding conceptual differences e.g. between ESG Leader, Transition and SRI indics/ETFs, see e.g. Verantwortungsvolle Investments im Vergleich: SRI ETFs sind besser als ESG ETFs (prof-soehnholz.com) from 2018
Responsible fees: Responsible Investment Funds Build Consistent Market Presence by Jordan Doyle as of Feb. 21st, 2024: “… during the study period from 31 December 2012 to 31 December 2022. Total net assets for “responsible investments” as defined by Lipper increased by a factor of 2.7×, from $2,215.6 billion in 2012 to $5,974.6 billion in 2022. The market share of responsible investment funds remained relatively constant during the same period, increasing from 14.2% in 2012 to 15.4% in 2022. … Retail ownership dominates institutional ownership of responsible investment funds globally. In the United States, however, institutional assets surpassed retail assets in 2018, indicating a relative shift in demand preferences. … they both invest more assets into negative screening funds than any other type of responsible investment strategy …fund fees of responsible investing funds are largely in line with those of non-responsible investment fund fees in the United States. In Europe, however, responsible investment fund fees tend to be lower than non-responsible investment fund fees“ ( p. 3).
Unsustainable institutions?Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation: voluntary signaling or mandatory disclosure? by Lara Spaans, Jeroen Derwall, Joop Huij, and Kees Koedijk as of Feb. 19th, 2024 (#38): “… we point out that (i) the SFDR similarly to voluntary disclosure enables funds to signal their sustainability commitments to the market, while (ii) like mandatory disclosure, requires these funds to be transparent about the sustainability outcomes of their underlying portfolio … we show that investors indeed respond to the Article signals, but that this effect is driven by retail investors. … we see that mutual funds that take on an Article 8(/9) label after the SFDR announcement improve their sustainability outcomes compared to Article 6 funds. Specifically, we note that retail funds behave in accordance with their signal, while for institutional funds we do not find that Article 8(/9) funds behave differently from Article 6 funds. We disregard the hypothesis that these institutional funds partake in ‘window-dressing’, instead we find evidence that mandatory disclosure induces European institutional funds to significantly improve their sustainability outcomes compared to untreated, US-domiciled institutional funds“ (p. 32). My comment: For my Article 9 (global smallcap fund) see www.futurevest.fund and My fund (prof-soehnholz.com).
Less greenwashing:Do US Active Mutual Funds Make Good of Their ESG Promises? Evidence from Portfolio Holdings by Massimo Guidolin and Monia Magnani as of Feb. 23rd, 2024 (#22): “… our findings indicate a distinct shift towards greater sustainability within the mutual equity fund industry. Notably, this trend is not exclusive to self-labelled ESG funds; all types of funds have enhanced their ESG ratings and reduced their investments in sin stocks. The number of self-labelled ESG funds has continued to rise in recent years, and importantly, most of these ESG funds, on average, appear to genuinely adhere to their claims of prioritizing sustainable investing. Consequently, they demonstrate significantly higher actual ESG scores in their portfolio holdings. Moreover, we are witnessing a noticeable reduction in sin stocks within their portfolios“ (p. 34).
SDG- aligned and impact investment research
Sustainable returns: Labeled Bonds: Quarterly Market Overview Q4 2023 by Jakub Malich and Anett Husi from MSCI Research as of Feb. 21st, 2024: Green, social, sustainability and sustainability-linked “Labeled-bond issuance reached a similar level in 2023 as in 2022, which was notably below the peak issuance of 2021. … The market continued to grow both in size and diversity, as hundreds of new and recurring corporate and government-related issuers brought labeled bonds to the market. … Most newly issued and outstanding labeled bonds were investment-grade and issued by ESG leaders … the performance of labeled bonds, despite their distinctions from conventional bonds, was primarily driven by key fixed-income risk and return drivers, such as interest-rate sensitivity, currency fluctuations and credit risk“ (p. 18). … “Corporate issuers led issuance in the fourth quarter, with USD 75 billion worth of labeled bonds (63% of the total), while supranational, sovereign and agency (SSA) entities issued USD 44 billion (37%). This continues a shift in the labeled-bond market, with corporate issuers taking a more central role” (p. 4).
Index impact: The Impact of Climate Engagement: A Field Experiment by Florian Heeb and Julian F. Kölbel as of Feb. 6th, 2024 (#361): “A randomly chosen group of 300 out of 1227 international companies received a letter from an index provider, encouraging the company to commit to setting a science-based climate target to remain included in its climate transition benchmark indices. After one year, we observed a significant effect: 21.0% of treated companies have committed, vs. 15.7% in the control group. This suggests that engagement by financial institutions can affect corporate policies when a feasible request is combined with a credible threat of exit” (abstract). My comment: It would be interesting to know the assets of the funds threatening to divest (index funds are often large). Hopefully, this type of shareholder engagement also works for active (and small) asset managers. Further shareholder engagement research see e.g. Shareholder engagement: 21 science based theses and an action plan – (prof-soehnholz.com)
ESG nudging:Optimistic framing increases responsible investment of investment professionals by Dan Daugaard, Danielle Kent, Maroš Servátka, and Lyla Zhang as of Jan. 1zh, 2024 (#33): “… we report insights from an incentivized online experiment with investment professionals … The analyzed sample consists of individuals who stated their intention to increase their investment in ESG within the next 10 years … We demonstrate that framing divestment decisions in a more optimistic orientation, with an emphasis on the transitory nature of costs and the permanency of future benefits, significantly increases responsible investment by 3.6%. With total professionally managed assets valued at USD $98.4 trillion globally, a comparable effect size would represent a USD $3.6 trillion shift in asset allocations” (p. 12).
Other investment research (in: „Biodiversity diversion“)
Gender differences: The Gender Investment Gap: Reasons and Consequences by Alexandra Niessen-Ruenzi and Leah Zimmerer as of Jan. 27th, 2024 (#31): „ Women, compared to men, report larger financial constraints, higher risk aversion, perceived stress in financial matters, and lower trust in financial institutions. As a result, women save and invest less consistently than men. Conditional on investing, women use fewer financial products, particularly in equity investments. We find a significant gender gap in stock market participation, with 17.6% of women and 32.3% of men investing. The motives and barriers influencing stock market participation also diverge, with men leaning towards short-term gains and the thrill of investing, while women commonly cite unfamiliarity with stocks and fear of potential losses as primary reasons for non-participation” (abstract).
New performance indicator:Maximum Cumulative Underperformance: A New Metric for Active Performance Management by Kevin Khang and Marvin Ertl from The Vanguard Group as of Jan. 18th, 2024 (#29): “… we define maximum cumulative underperformance (MaxCU)—the maximum underperformance of an active fund relative to the benchmark … The greater the benchmark return environment and the longer the investment horizon, the greater MaxCU investors should expect … Ex-ante, our framework can be used to articulate the investor’s tolerance for underperformance relative to the benchmark and inform the final active allocation decision at the outset. Ex-post, our framework can be used to set the base rate for terminating a manager who has suffered a sizeable underperformance“ (p. 19/20). My comment: Useful concept, but benchmark selection is very important for this approach. For the latter problem see e.g. Globale Small-Caps: Faire Benchmark für meinen Artikel 9 Fonds? (prof-soehnholz.com)
ESG bluff: 10x new research on Swiss/sustainable retail, lab meat, Weimar politics, sustainable women, SDG financial research, green funds, real estate ESG, free trading governance effects and bond factors (#shows the number of SSRN full paper downloads as of February 22nd, 2024)
Social and ecological research (in: ESG bluff?)
Sustainable retail (English version below):Ausgebummelt – Wege des Handels aus der Spass- und Sinnkrise by Gianluca Scheidegger, Johannes Bauer, and Jan Bieser as of Dec. 7th, 2023 (#21): „Die Zeit wird neu verteilt: Was keine Freude oder Sinn stiftet, wird gestrichen … Nachhaltiger Konsum gewinnt an Bedeutung … Umfassend informiert: KI erleichtert die Produktsuche für Konsument:innen …Auf einer Linie: Persönliche Werte werden bei der Produkt- und Händlerwahl entscheidend: Purpose-driven Consumers sind die weltweit größte Kundengruppe. Tendenz steigend. Diese Kund:innen kaufen nur bei Firmen ein, die ihre Werte teilen. Die Konsument:innen erwarten in Zukunft mehr von den Unternehmen. Händler müssen Stellung zu gesellschaftlichen Problemen beziehen und aktiv zu ihrer Lösung beitragen. Die gute Nachricht ist: Die Menschen trauen dies den Unternehmen zu. Jedem Kanal seine Rolle: Transaktion primär online, Inspiration eher offline. Schnell und nachhaltig: … Händler, die beide Ansprüche unter einen Hut bekommen, verschaffen sich einen klaren Wettbewerbsvorteil“ (p. 84).
Sustainable retail (German version above):Going shopping is dead – How to Restore Meaning and Fun in Retail by Gianluca Scheidegger, Johannes Bauer and Jan Bieser as of Dec. 4th, 2023 (#17): “Time is being reallocated: what’s not fun or meaningful will be crossed off the schedule … Sustainable consumption is gaining in importance Overconsumption has a massive impact on the environment. … Fully informed: AI facilitates consumers’ searches for products … In aligment: personal values becoming decisive in choosing products and retailers Purpose-driven consumers are the largest customer group worldwide. This trend is rising. These customers only buy from companies that share their values. Consumers will expect more from companies in the future. Retailers must take a stand on social problems and actively contribute to solving them. The good news is that people trust companies to do this. Each channel has its role: transactions primarily online, inspiration mostly offline … Fast and sustainable: delivery under greater scrutiny … The fastest form of delivery is often not the most sustainable. Retailers who can reconcile both requirements gain a clear competitive advantage“ (p. 84).
Lab meat:Good conscience from the lab? The State of Acceptance for Cultivated Meat by Christine Schäfer, Petra Tipaldi and Johannes C. Bauer as of Jan. 8th, 2024 (#12; German version: Gutes Gewissen aus dem Labor? So steht es um die Akzeptanz von kultiviertem Fleisch by Christine Schäfer, Petra Tipaldi, Johannes Bauer :: SSRN, #26): “Lab-grown meat instead of beef fillet, cell-cultured patties instead of burgers – for many Swiss people this sounds far from appetising. A mere 20% would even try cultivated meat, whilst 15% remain undecided. … The Swiss population is also sceptical about other kinds of novel foods, such as insects or coffee made from mushrooms. There are, however, customer groups who may be more inclined to tuck into a steaming plate of crispy lab-grown schnitzel: They are young, male, educated, mainly live in the city, already have experience with a particular diet, such as vegetarian or low carb, and know a lot about sustainable food. … Lab-grown meat is one such example of a novel food. It is cultivated from stem cells in a bioreactor and has many advantages, namely that factory farming and the use of antibiotics are all but eliminated, less space and water is needed for production, no rainforests need to be cut down to cultivate animal feed and the combination of nutrients in the meat can be adapted to specific target groups. But there are risks …. the production facilities needed eat up enormous amounts of energy … Lab-grown meat is still hard to find on the market. Customers can only taste chicken derived from cellular agriculture in a few restaurants in Singapore and the USA at the moment. As yet, it has not been approved anywhere in Europe“ (p. 2). My comment: I am skeptical about the ecological footprint and market potential of lab meat compared to plant-based meat alternatives.
Sustainable women: Sustainable leadership among financial managers in Spain: a gender issue by Elena Bulmer, Iván Zamarrón, and Benito Yáñez-Araque as of Dec. 29th, 2023 (#13): “A total of 131 senior financial managers (106 men and 25 women), from various sectors in Spanish companies (a multi-sector study), responded to two scales: the Honeybee Sustainable Leadership Scale (focusing on stakeholder orientation and a vision of social and shared leadership) and the Locust Leadership Scale (primarily centered on achieving short-term profits at any cost). … The main finding was that female financial managers scored significantly higher on the Honeybee Leadership Scale compared to their male counterparts, signifying that female presence is key to sustainable leadership” (abstract).
Deglobalization effect?The consequences of a trade collapse: Economics and politics in Weimar Germany by Björn Brey and Giovanni Facchini as of Jan. 17th, 2024 (#18): “What are the political consequences of de-globalization? We address this question in the context of Weimar Germany, which experienced a 67% decline in exports between 1928-1932. During this period, the Nazi party vote share increased from 3% to 37%. … we show that this surge was not driven by the direct effects of the export decline in manufacturing areas. At the same time, trade shock-induced declines in food prices spread economic hardship to rural hinterlands. We document that this indirect effect and the pro-agriculture policies put forward by the Nazis are instead key to explain their electoral success” (abstract).
Responsible investment research (in. ESG bluff?)
SDG research:Finance Research and the UN Sustainable Development Goals – an analysis and forward look by Yang Sua, Brian M. Lucey, and Ashish Kumar Jha as of Feb. 13th, 2024 (#183): “This study conducts a comprehensive analysis of the interplay between the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) and scholarly output in financial journals from 2010 to 2022. … The findings demonstrate a focus within finance research on Economic Growth (Goal 8) and Peace and Justice (Goal 16), while also identifying areas that warrant further scholarly attention” (abstract). My comment: For mutual funds it seems to be easiest to focus on SDGs 3 (Health), 7 (Energy) and 9 (Industry/Infrastructure). That is my experience with a bottom-up stock selection approach, see www.futurevest.fund “Nachhaltigkeitsreport”.
ESG bluff?Sustainable in Name Only? Does Bluffing or Impact Explain Success in a Moral Market? by Kevin Chuah and Witold Henisz as of Feb. 13th, 2024 (#16): “… US-domiciled equity-focused investment funds that are labeled as focusing on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. Although we find that product success in terms of investment inflows is more likely for funds with better ESG performance, the draw of larger fund operators and of superior financial returns remains substantial. We further segment our sample, finding that segments offering lower levels of ESG engagement achieve inflows that are unrelated to ESG performance, yet are a substantial part of the overall market. This suggests that bluffing by large product providers may undermine genuine attempts at social impact in moral markets“ (abstract). My comment: It certainly seems to help to grow fund assets to have huge marketing power and good returns, recently often based on high allocations to the glorious 7 which I do not consider to be very sustainable, see Glorreiche 7: Sind sie unsozial? – Responsible Investment Research Blog (prof-soehnholz.com)
Green disadvantage? Carbon Risk Pricing or Climate Catering? The Impact of Morningstar’s Low Carbon Designation on Fund Performance by K. Stephen Haggard, Jeffrey S. Jones , H. Douglas Witte, and C. Edward Chang as of Jan. 18th, 2024 (#21): “Our results show insignificant performance differences between Low Carbon Designated (LCD) funds and non-LCD funds for the most recent (three-year) period. For longer periods of five and ten years, we observe excess performance only for the Sharpe and Sortino ratios, but not for Total Return or the Treynor ratio. … our results are consistent with a catering hypothesis of climate investing. Initially, investors seeking low-carbon investments bid up the prices of low-carbon stocks. Firms respond by seeking Low Carbon Designations, whether through real efforts or greenwashing. Once enough low-carbon stocks are available to meet the demand of the lowcarbon clientele, the premium associated with low carbon disappears“ (p. 17). My comment: If low LCD funds have similar performance as high carbon funds, why invest in the latter?
Green disadvantage?Doing Good and Doing Well: The Relationships between ESG and Stock Returns of REITs by Neo Jing Rui Dominic and Sing Tien Foo as of Jan. 29th, 2024 (#31): “Using a sample of 413 REITs from both the US and other developed countries covering the period from 2018 to 2022 …We find that REITs with an ESG rating have a lower price return of 0.8% relative to REITs not assessed for ESG. … The results show that the total returns of the ESG-rated REITs were even lower when the climate change risks increased, or more specifically, when investors became more salient about climate change news, they increased their preference for ESG-rated REITs, thus reducing the total return of REITs. … we find that higher compliance and operation costs for REITs with strong ESG agendas, which may come in the form of higher compensation for the Board and Senior Management, who take on more ESG responsibilities, may have a negative impact on the ESG-rated REIT stock performance“ (p. 19/20). My comment: The higher compensation for REIT Boards and Senior Management with the associated higher pay gap compared to median employee should be explored further. With my shareholder engagement strategy I try to alert regarding this issue, see Shareholder engagement: 21 science based theses and an action plan – (prof-soehnholz.com)
Retail anti-governance?Retail Investors and Corporate Governance: Evidence from Zero-Commission Trading by Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, and Yoon-Ho Alex Lee as of Feb. 9th, 2024 (#102): “We examine the effects of the sudden abolition of trading commissions by major online brokerages in 2019, which lowered stock market entry costs for retail investors, on corporate governance. … Firms with positive abnormal returns in response to commission-free trading subsequently saw a decrease in institutional ownership, a decrease in shareholder voting, and a deterioration in environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) metrics. Finally, these firms were more likely to adopt bylaw amendments to reduce the percentage of shares needed for a quorum at shareholder meetings” (abstract).
Other investment research (in: ESG bluff)
Few good bond factors: The Corporate Bond Factor Zoo by Alexander Dickerson, Christian Julliard, and Philippe Mueller as of Nov. 14th, 2023 (#1299): “We find that the majority of tradable factors designed to price corporate bonds are unlikely sources of priced risk, and that only one factor, capturing the post-earnings an-nouncement drift in corporate bonds, which has not been utilized in prior asset pricing models, should be included in any stochastic discount factor (SDF) with very high probability. Furthermore, we find that nontradable factors capturing inflation volatility risk … and the term structure yield spread … as well as the return on a broad based bond market index, are likely components of the SDF” (p. 37/38).
Nutrition changes: 13x new research on biodiversity, food, socially responsible buying, SFDR, ESG data, green indices, derivatives, impact investing, ESG compensation, stock and bond risks, and financial advisor biases by Patrick Velte, BaFin, Morningstar and many others (# shows number of full SSRN downloads as of Feb. 15th, 2024):
Social and ecological research (in: “Nutrition changes”)
Man vs. biodiversity: The Main Drivers of Biodiversity Loss: A Brief Overview by Christian Hald-Mortensen as of Oct. 18th, 2023 (#101): “The drivers of biodiversity loss are complex – this paper has examined the main drivers, namely agricultural expansion, climate change, overfishing, urbanization, and the introduction of invasive species. To avoid further biodiversity loss, the role of agricultural expansion and land use change becomes apparent as a cause of 85% of at-risk species” (p. 5/6).
Nutrition changes (1): European Food Trends Report: Feeding the Future Opportunities for a Sustainable Food System by Christine Schäfer, Karin Frick and Johannes C. Bauer as of Nov. 7th, 2023 (#41): “…Industry, logistics, retail and research are developing new solutions for a diet that does not come at the expense of the planet. By employing methods of agro-ecology and precision agriculture, farmers can produce in a more resource-efficient way. Smart data enables more efficient logistics. New virtual distribution channels and a vibrant creator economy – which includes food bloggers, influencers and online chefs – are shaking up the industry and are able to bring important issues to consumers’ attention. By using packaging that is recyclable or biodegradable, the processing industry is able to reduce its ecological footprint. Meanwhile, researchers have long since explored alternative protein sources based on cells or fermentation, the production of which generates fewer greenhouse gas emissions compared with conventional meat production” (p. 2).
Nutrition changes (2): From Intention to Plate: Why Good Dietary Resolutions Fail by Petra Tipaldi, Christine Schäfer and Johannes C. Bauer as of Jan. 11th, 2024 (#17): “What we eat accounts for more than 30% of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. … The majority of the Swiss population is aware of this: 98% want to change the way they eat, at least partially. 91% want to avoid generating food waste, more than three-quarters want to eat more healthy, seasonal and regional foods and even 42% want to often cut out fish and meat. Despite Swiss people being so motivated, the same products mostly end up on their plates like before, as a representative survey from the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute shows. The study reveals: there is an intention-behaviour gap. … Consumers can do the most for the environment by avoiding food waste, reducing their consumption of fish, meat and animal products in general and buying food with the lowest possible CO2 emissions. The study also shows the extent to which companies, the retail industry and politicians can support consumers to seize their opportunities for action so that sustainable diets do not remain an intention but become a reality on consumers’ plates”.
Community & supply SCR:Which CSR Activities Motivate Socially Responsible Buying? by Katherine Taken Smith, Donald Lamar Ariail, Murphy Smith, and Amine Khayati as of Feb. 8th, 2023 (#14): “In support of prior research, our findings revealed consumers to be more inclined to purchase from companies engaged in CSR activities. … While consumers voiced support for CSR activities in each of the social issues, only two were identified as motivating socially responsible buying: i.e., community and supply chain. As a CSR issue, the term supply chain encompasses ethical labor concerns such as child labor and human trafficking. The term community refers to a company investing resources in the local economy. … females displayed significantly higher buying intentions towards companies that practice CSR. Females, compared to males, were more supportive of CSR activities related to ethics and philanthropy. … Non-conservative consumers, compared to conservative, exhibited a higher degree of socially responsible buying. … religious consumers, compared to non-religious, were more supportive of CSR activities related to community and ethics“ (p. 18/19). My comment: My shareholder engagement activities include a focus on suppliers by asking buyers to use comprehensive ESG-ratings, see Supplier engagement – Opinion post #211 – Responsible Investment Research Blog (prof-soehnholz.com)
Responsible investment research (in: “Nutrition changes”)
Sustainable fund details: SFDR Article 8 and Article 9 Funds: Q4 2023 in Review? by Hortense Bioy, Boya Wang, Arthur Carabia, Biddappa A R from Morningstar as of Jan. 25th, 2024: “In the fourth quarter of 2023, Article 8 funds registered the largest quarterly outflows on record and Article 9 funds their very first quarterly outflows … Over the entirety of 2023, Article 8 funds registered net outflows of EUR 27 billion, while Article 9 funds collected EUR 4.3 billion and Article 6 funds garnered EUR 93 billion. Actively managed funds drove all the outflows in the fourth quarter as well as over the full year. Passive funds sustained their positive momentum. Assets in Article 8 and Article 9 funds rose by 1.7% over the quarter to a new record of EUR 5.2 trillion. Together, Article 8 and Article 9 funds saw their market share climb further to nearly 60% of the EU universe primarily due to continued reclassification from Article 6 to Article 8 or 9. We identified 256 funds that altered their SFDR status in the fourth quarter, including 218 that upgraded to Article 8 from Article 6, while only four funds downgraded to Article 8 from Article 9” (p. 1). My comment: There are only very few Article 9 funds with a focus on SDGs (if so, mostly ecology oriented funds) or small and midcaps. There is still limited competition (and overlap with other funds) for my small/midcap (social) SDG fund which – since inception – has a similar performance as traditional small/midcap funds (see Fonds-Portfolio: Mein Fonds | CAPinside)
ESG rating deficits: BaFin Marktstudie – Durchführung einer Marktstudie zur Erhebung von und Umgang mit ESG-Daten und ESG-Ratingverfahren durch Kapitalverwaltungsgesellschaften vom 14.2.2024: „Mithilfe einer Befragung von 30 deutschen KVGen und 6 ESG-Ratinganbietern untersucht die vorliegende Marktstudie der BaFin den Status Quo hinsichtlich der Erhebung und des Umgangs der KVGen mit ESG-Daten und Ratings. … 84% der KVGen zieht MSCI als Datenanbieter heran, gefolgt von ISS (44%), Bloomberg (28%) und Sustainalytics sowie Solactive (jeweils 20%). Über 70% der KVGen, die externe Datenanbieter heranziehen, nutzen mehr als einen Anbieter… Nur rund 38% der KVGen betrachten die Qualität extern erhobener ESG-Daten und Ratings als „hoch“ … Als Gründe werden neben der zum Teil schlechten Datenabdeckung auch die zum Teil unzureichende Aktualität der Daten genannt … während 64% der KVGen sich eine schnellere Beantwortung ihrer Fragen durch die Anbieter wünschten“ (p. 3-5). My comment: MSCI is not necessarily the best sustainability data provider. The costs of <50k EUR p.a. for ESG data seems low and not high to me. Most likely, (indirect) costs charged to the portfolio managers of the funds are not included in that figure. And those costs can be very high, if detailed and transparent reporting to end-investors is offered. Also, there is a (under)performance risk if there is crowding in highly MSCI rated investments (compare: Glorreiche 7: Sind sie unsozial? – Responsible Investment Research Blog (prof-soehnholz.com)).
Green index variations:Resilience or Returns: Assessing Green Equity Index Performance Across Market Regimes by An Duong as of Jan. 5th, 2024 (#20): “… we embark on a comprehensive examination of the performance differential between green equity indices, specifically the FTSE4Good series, and conventional equity indices across a diverse set of economies: the US, UK, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, and Taiwan. … in periods of market stress, green indices often demonstrate slightly less negative returns than their conventional counterparts, … in developing economies, green indices exhibit higher volatility, indicating greater sensitivity to market downturns, contrasted with the lower volatility observed in developed markets. … In addition, Green indices show a higher likelihood of remaining in bearish states, suggesting either a resilience to rapid shifts or a slower adaptation to positive market changes “ (p. 31).
Commodity ESG: ESG and Derivatives by Rajkumar Janardanan, Xiao Qiao, and K. Geert Rouwenhorst as of Feb. 8th, 2024 (#40): “We present a simple conceptual framework to illustrate how ESG considerations can be applied to derivatives in practice, using the market for commodity futures as an example. Because derivatives do not target individual firms, we link the S and G scores to the geography of global production. … Some preliminary simulation evidence suggests that, for now, including ESG considerations in the selection of commodity futures would have not materially impacted the risk and return properties of investor portfolios” (p. 14).
Impact investment research (in: “Nutrition changes”)
Beyond ESG: From ESG to Sustainable Impact Finance: Moving past the current confusion by Costanza Consolandi and Jim Hawley as of Feb. 5th, 2024 (#86): “We argue that ESG/Sustainability is moving from being based primarily on ESG ratings and rankings … to sustainability (ESG) being based on mandated disclosure and analysis of externalities. We briefly examine the basis of ESG ranking and ratings confusion concluding that based on current methodologies of major providers results in neither significant change nor accurate disclosures by firms. Alternatively, we suggest an integration of externality data will significantly modify Modern Portfolio Theory as it does not account for externality effects either … Not accounting for externalities leads to sub-optimum economic system performance … Finally, we place these concepts and developments the context of global emerging regulatory and standard setting” (abstract).
Risk versus time:The Long and Short of Risk and Return by Leo H. Chan as of Dec. 20th, 2023 (#31): “I show that risk increases as the measurement time frame shortens, while it decreases as the measurement time frame increases. … Over the long horizon, risk (as measured by standard deviation of returns) is no longer a concern. Rather, an investor should pay more attention to the total return of an investment portfolio. In this regard, what is considered risky (stocks) is a far better choice than what is considered safe (bonds)” (abstract).
Only stocks or more?Stocks for the Long Run? Sometimes Yes, Sometimes No by Edward F. McQuarrie as of Feb. 13th, 2024: “Digital archives have made it possible to compute real total return on US stock and bond indexes from 1792. The new historical record shows that over multi-decade periods, sometimes stocks outperformed bonds, sometimes bonds outperformed stocks and sometimes they performed about the same. New international data confirm this pattern. Asset returns in the US in the 20th century do not generalize. Regimes of asset outperformance come and go; sometimes there is an equity premium, sometimes not” (abstract).
Advisor bias:Financial Advisors and Investors’ Bias by Marianne Andries, Maxime Bonelli, and David Sraer as of Jan. 27th, 2024 (#73): “We exploit a quasi-natural experiment run by a prominent French brokerage firm that removed stocks’ average acquisition prices from the online platform used by financial advisors. … First, even in our sample of high-net-worth investors receiving regular financial advice, the disposition effect – investors’ tendency to hold on to their losing positions and sell their winning stocks – is a pervasive investment bias. Second, financial advisors do exert a significant influence on their clients’ investment decisions. Third, financial advisors do not actively mitigate their clients’ biases: when advisors have access to information relevant to their clients’ disposition effect – whether stocks in their portfolio are in paper gains or losses – clients exhibit more, not less, disposition effect“ (p. 25). … “(a) decrease in disposition effect bias leads to higher portfolio returns, increased client inflow, and a lower likelihood of leaving the firm” (abstract).
Impact washing: 8 new research studies on ESG performance, sustainable finance labels, sdg funds, diversification, bank purpose, SME loans, Millenials and fractional shares (#: SSRN full paper downloads as of Feb. 8th, 2024)
Responsible investment research (In: Impact washing?)
ESG study overview:Global Drivers for ESG Performance: The Body of Knowledge by Dan Daugaard and Ashley Ding as of Feb. 2nd, 2024 (#22): “… the literature on what drives ESG performance is highly fragmented and current theories fail to offer useful insights into the disparity in ESG performance. Hence, this study draws upon an accumulated body of knowledge of ESG-related literature and explores the major drivers of ESG performance. … this article reveals the fundamental debate underpinning ESG responsibility, the breath of pertinent stakeholders, the theories necessary to understand ESG management and the conditions which will best achieve ESG progress” (abstract).
Label-chaos?New trends in European Sustainable Finance Labels by Karina Megaeva, Peter-Jan Engelen, and Luc Van Liedekerke as of Feb. 1st, 2024 (#38): “… we … review the current market of labelled sustainable investments in the context of the major changes in the EU regulation of sustainable finance and to determine their (new) role and place” (abstract). “… the evolvement of the voluntary certification on the sustainable investments market will depend a lot on how the future EU Eco-label is received on that market, the reactions of the financial market participants (both asset managers and investors) and certainly on further developments of the EU regulatory initiatives” (p. 42).
Impact washing?Impact investing – Do SDG funds fulfil their promises? by ESMA – The European Securities and Markets Authority as of Feb. 1st, 2024: “… investments made with the intention to generate positive, measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial return – attracts growing interest from investors. … Impact claims are often based on well-known sustainability frameworks, including the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), … This article proposes and summarises a methodological approach towards identifying SDG funds and assessing the extent to which their holdings align with their claims by bringing together a unique set of different data sources. Our results highlight some of the challenges in assessing real-world impact claims and show that SDG funds do not significantly differ from non-SDG counterparts or ESG peers regarding their alignment with the United Nations SDGs“ (p. 3). “ … our final sample of SDG funds consists of 187 funds (p. 7) … average holding of 187 stocks and bonds for SDG funds compared with 586 for non-SDG funds (p. 9) … for scope 3 emissions, where SDG funds seem to have more than 50% more emissions compared to non-SDG funds (p. 11) … My comment: “United Nations Global Compact is a voluntary initiative whose aim is … delivering the SDGs through accountable companies and ecosystems that enable changes”. … This corresponds to 2,721 unique United Nations Global Compact companies” (p. 8). This does not seem to be the best basis to measure SDG alignment. I suggest activity-based company revenue shares instead which is available from independent data providers such as clarity.ai. This provider also covers many (small and midsize) companies which are not UNGC members. My fund, for example, currently has >70% such SDG Revenue share. Also, concentrated SDG funds (my fund focuses on the 30 most sustainable stocks according to my criteria) may have higher such shares than more diversified ones, a topic which could be analyzed in future studies.
Other investment research (In: Impact washing?)
Good concentration:Bad Ideas: Why Active Equity Funds Invest in Them and Five Ways to Avoid Them by C. Thomas Howard as of Feb. 1st, 2024: “The best and worst idea stocks are, respectively, those most and least held by the best US active equity funds. … The two best ideas category stocks eclipse their benchmarks by 200 and 59 basis points (bps) …. The bad idea stocks, by contrast, underperform. (These results would have been even more dramatic had we excluded large-cap stocks since stock-picking skill decreases as market cap increases: The smallest market-cap quintile best idea returns far outpace those of the large-cap top quintile best ideas.)”
Profitable purpose:Purpose, Culture, and Strategy in Banking by Anjan Thakor as of Oct. 5th, 2023 (#73): “What the research is showing, however, is that in many instances, acting to serve the greater good actually helps the bottom line as well, and the channel for this effect is employee motivation. … Part of the reason for this relationship is that adoption of an authentic higher purpose engenders employee trust in the organization’s leaders (e.g. Bunderson and Thakor (2022)) and this facilitates the design of more complex and profitable products and services (e.g. Thakor and Merton (2023))” (p. 18). My comment: With my shareholder engagement I try to activate employee and other stakeholder (ESG) motivation, see Shareholder engagement: 21 science based theses and an action plan – (prof-soehnholz.com)
Climate vs. SME credits: Climate vulnerability and SME credit discouragement: Nurturing a vicious circle by Jeremie Bertrand, Christian Haddad, and Dupire Marion as of Dec. 4th, 2023 (#9): “… based on a sample of SMEs from 119 developing countries in the 2010–2019 period .. our findings indicate a positive association between vulnerability to climate change and credit discouragement” (abstract).
Millennials are different:Bitcoin: Between A Bubble and the Future by Yosef Bonaparte as of Dec. 20th, 2023 (#28): “… we find that social holidays has greater impact during the Millennials segment than previous generations, while the impact of post trading days of traditional holidays declines. We also find that days of the week and month of the year anomalies are different for Millennials than previous generations. Thus, we suggest that anomalies are subject to generations. At the cross-sectional level, we demonstrate that some sectors are positively sensitive to generations, especially to the Millennials (including Textiles, Defense and Beer and Liquor) while others negatively (Coal, Construction and Mines). At the micro portfolio choice level, we find that Millennials exhibit a unique portfolio choice strategy with more aggressiveness (higher participation and more investing in risky assets) and more diverse (invest in many stocks and more international stocks). We also find that the Millennials employ a unique search strategy for stocks as they rely more on professionals help when they invest“ (p. 21/22).
Fractional share benefits: Nominal Price (Dis)illusion: Fractional Shares on Neobroker Trading Platforms by Matthias Mattusch as of Feb.6th, 2023 (#53): “… we examine neotrading behavior in the light of three key innovations of neobrokers: commission-free trading, easy availability, and fractional shares trading. … we identify a substantial and enduring surge in demand for stocks with lower nominal prices. … Notifications on trading apps, specifically regarding corporate actions, elicit observable market reactions. … most importantly, the introduction of fractional shares suggests that most of these nominal price reactions will be weakened, if not eliminated. … Introducing fractional shares boosts overall trading activity … The introduction of fractional shares could likely eliminate anomalies in asset pricing, which would pave the way for interesting future research“ (p. 20/21).
Neutral ESG: 14x new research on migration gender topics, re-migration, AI, broadband, political ESG investments, ESG ratings, ESG alpha, ESG credit risk, greenium, anomalies, robo-advisors, private equity and finfluencers (# shows the number of SSRN full paper downloads as of Jan. 25th, 2024).
Social and ecological research (Neutral ESG)
Female migration disadvantages:Does Granting Refugee Status to Family-Reunified Women Improve Their Integration? by Linea Hasager as of Jan. 18th, 2024 (#4): “… I estimate the impact of recognizing women, who are initially admitted through family-reunification procedures, as refugees themselves. When they are recognized as refugees, they are able to divorce their husbands without automatically being returned to their origin countries. … I show that the divorce rate increases following asylum recognition. In addition, I document that the risk of being a victim of violence decreases when women change residency. … Asylum recognition also has positive consequences for females’ employment and earnings trajectories“ (p. 14).
Ukrainian return-migration:The Effect of Conflict on Ukrainian Refugees’ Return and Integration by Joop Adema, Cevat Giray Aksoy, Yvonne Giesing, and Panu Poutvaara as of Jan. 18th, 2024 (#16): “Our analysis has highlighted that the vast majority of Ukrainians in Ukraine plan to stay and most Ukrainian refugees in Europe plan to return. … we find that close to 2% of Ukrainian refugees returned every month. … Ukrainians’ confidence in their government and optimism have reached exceptionally high levels in international comparison (Fig. 6). … Confidence in the judiciary remains low, and corruption is perceived to be high“ (p. 24).
Is AI bad for migrants?The Impact of Technological Change on Immigration and Immigrants by Yvonne Giesing as of Jan. 18th, 2024 (#17): “We analyse and compare the effects of two different automation technologies: Industrial robots and artificial intelligence … (with) data on Germany … (we) identify how robots decrease the wage of migrants across all skill groups, while neither having a significant impact on the native population nor immigration flows. In the case of AI, we determine an increase in the wage gap as well as the unemployment gap of migrant and native populations. This applies to the low-, medium- and high-skilled and is indicative of migrants facing displacement effects, while natives might benefit from productivity and complementarity effects. In addition, AI leads to a significant inflow of immigrants“ (abstract).
Healthy broadband?Broadband Internet Access and Health Outcomes: Patient and Provider Responses in Medicare by Jessica Van Parys and Zach Y. Brown as of Jan. 23rd, 2024 (#16): “… we show that patients had better health outcomes and visited higher quality providers when they gained access to broadband internet. Our results imply that internet access makes patient demand more elastic with respect to quality. This mechanism is particularly important in hospital markets that are highly concentrated. … Overall, counterfactual simulations imply that broadband expansion was responsible for 16% of the total reduction in poor health outcomes for joint replacements from 1999 to 2008” (p. 25/26). My comment: I include this rather specific research because I have been discussing e.g. with ratings experts if telecommunications infrastructure can be SDG-aligned or not (for my approach see
ESG investment research (Neutral ESG)
Right-wing or green:Climate Polarization and Green Investment by Anders Anderson and David T. Robinson as of Jan. 24th, 2024 (#11): “Over the last decade, one of the world’s largest retirement systems (Sö: Sweden) went from offering very few climate-friendly investment choices to being dominated by them. … For men, proximity to extreme weather events increased the likelihood that they grew more concerned about global warming, while women across the board became more concerned about the climate, regardless of their proximity to adverse weather events. At the same time, men living in right-wing strongholds were generally less concerned about climate change after the extreme weather events than they were before” (p.28).
Negative or neutral ESG?Understanding the effect of ESG scores on stock returns using mediation theory by Serge Darolles, Gaelle Le Fol, and Yuyi He as of Dec. 7th, 2023 (#42): “We show that the information contained in corporate E, S, G or overall ESG scores is effectively incorporated into stock prices through both the investor demand channel and the fundamental/profitability channel. … institutional ownership is positively correlated with a firm’s environmental, social, governance and overall ESG scores. … We also find that they are more sensitive to G-performance and overall ESG performance than S and then E performance. Our results also show that ESG is priced by the market and that all scores have a significant negative impact on future returns. …” (p. 25/26). My comment: It would be interesting to see this approach applied not only to US stocks (mainly large caps) and more recent stock price levels.
Positive or neutral ESG?Material ESG Alpha: A Fundamentals-Based Perspective by Byung Hyun Ahn, Panos N. Patatoukas, and George S. Skiadopoulos as of Jan.17th, 2024 (#81): “We provide a fundamentals-based perspective on why firms with improving material ESG scores outperform. More financially established firms—firms with larger size, lower growth, and higher profitability relative to their sector—are associated with subsequent improvements in their material ESG score. … we find that the materiality portfolio does not generate alpha after we account for its exposure to profitability and growth pricing factors “ (p. 30). My comment: An investment strategy which focuses on ESG-improvement would have to ignore investments which already have high ESG-ratings or sell them to buy one with lower ratings to show improvement. This is not a responsible investment strategy.
Low ESG credit risks: ESG criteria and the credit risk of corporate bond portfolios by Andre Höck, Tobias Bauckloh, Maurice Dumrose, and Christian Klein as of Oct. 25th, 2023: “… our findings highlight that the implementation of an ESG-best-in-class strategy significantly affects the credit risk exposure without any performance or diversification penalty. … the higher the sustainability, the lower the credit risk. … The findings of this study are robust to the usage of ESG ratings from different providers and different asset pricing models” (p. 579).
Unstable greenium: The European Carbon Bond Premium by Dirk Broeders, Marleen de Jonge, and David Rijsbergen from De Nederlandsche Bank as of Jan. 16th, 2024 (#36): “We present evidence of the existence of a significant carbon premium in euro area corporate bonds, which has steadily increased since early 2020. Over the whole sample period, from 2016 to 2022, we observe that a doubling of a firm’s Scope 1 and 2 emissions on average implies 6.6 basis point higher bond yield spreads. … From early 2020, the carbon premium increases steadily so that the effect more recently, in early 2022, is substantially higher than the sample average. A doubling of Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by early 2022 on average results in a higher spread of 13.9 basis points. This means that European firms with high levels of carbon emissions face increasingly high financing costs. Our research also reveals a distinctive carbon premium term structure, rising with longer maturities. … the premium between short-term and long-term maturity bonds has diminished in recent years. … Our findings highlight, to some extent, why various studies have come to conflicting conclusions on the presence and magnitude of a carbon premium in financial asset prices. We show that the choice of sample period is an important determinant of the presence and extent of a carbon premium. … Additionally, we illustrate how climate litigation has become an important frontier of transition risk in the last years, which may have urged investors to progressively price a carbon premium” (p. 33/34).
Positive ESG pay: ESG-linked Pay Around the World —Trends, Determinants, and Outcomes by Sonali Hazarika, Aditya Kashikar, Lin Peng, Ailsa Röell and Yao Shen as of April 15th, 2023 (#308): “We study ESG-linked executive compensation contracts using an inclusive global sample of major firms across 59 countries over the period 2005-2020. We document a substantial increase in firms’ adoption of ESG-linked pay over the last decade, especially for firms from developed markets and those that belonging to the extractive and utility industries. The adoption decision is also strongly associated with the culture, shareholder rights and legal origin of the country where the firm resides. Among firm characteristics, large firms and firms with greater return on assets are more likely to adopt. The ESG-linked pay adopters exhibit significantly higher ESG scores, better ESG disclosure, and higher operating profit margin and return on assets. … we show that the treatment firms’ increased reliance on incentives tied to employee satisfaction is a plausible channel to achieve a “win-win” outcome” (p. 29/30). My skeptical comment: See HR-ESG shareholder engagement: Opinion-Post #210 and especially Wrong ESG bonus math? Content-Post #188
Other investment research
Normalized anomalies:Does U.S. Academic Research Destroy the Predictability of Global Stock Returns? by Guohao Tang, Yuwei Xie and Lin Zhu as of Jan. 16th, 2024 (#52): “We conduct a thorough investigation into 87 cross-sectional return anomalies, as documented in leading finance and accounting journals, spanning 38 countries. … In the global market, post-sample and post-publication returns diminish by 65% and 73%, respectively, from the in-sample mean. Intriguingly, predictors that demonstrate higher in-sample returns experience a more pronounced reduction in the post-publication phase“ (p. 16).
Robo-limits:Taming Behavioral Biases in Consumer Decision-Making: The Role of Robo-Advisors by Francesco D’Acunto and Alberto G. Rossi as of Dec. 20th, 2023 (#41): “… in many cases robo-advising applications can help consumers make better choices but this is in no way universal. Indeed, not only do robo-advisors in some cases exacerbate the effect of underlying behavioral biases, but they sometimes even exploit behavioral biases in ways that might improve or worsen choices. Even for those cases in which extant research shows a positive average effect of exposure to robo-advising on medium-term outcomes for consumers, the effects are often highly heterogeneous“ (p. 26).
Political PE:Political Connections and Public Pension Fund Investments: Evidence from Private Equity by Jaejin Lee as of Dec. 29th, 2023 (#36): “This paper investigates the effects of political connections on private equity (PE) investment decisions by public pension funds, using a regression discontinuity design on U.S. state elections. A comparison of PE managers (GPs) donating to winning and losing candidates reveals a twofold increase in the probability of post-election PE investments from pension funds for GPs supporting winners. Pension funds with such connections show underperformance in PE investments. These effects are pronounced among pension board members with connections and in states with high corruption levels. These connected pension funds pay higher PE fees and exhibit more home-state bias, suggesting politicians influence investment decisions for personal gain” (abstract).
Finfluencer issues:The Finfluencer Appeal: Investing in the Age of Social Media Serena by Espeute and Rhodri Preece from the CFA Institute as of Jan. 25th, 2024: “Our analysis of finfluencer content posted on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram in the markets we studied shows that the most discussed asset classes were individual shares, index funds, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). We found that 45% of this content offered guidance, 36% contained investment promotions, and 32% contained investment recommendations … Only 20% of the finfluencer content that contained recommendations, however, included any form of disclosure (such as the professional status of the finfluencer or whether the finfluencer received commissions or other forms of payment for recommending certain products). Further, just over half (53%) of the content that contained promotions made any form of disclosure. … Moreover, when disclosures regarding affiliate links (such as sign-up links to open accounts with trading platforms or free shares) were made, they were often generic, such as “some of the links may be affiliate links,” which obscured exactly which websites and/or product sign-ups the finfluencers were being remunerated for. … Finfluencers appeal to Gen-Z investors because they produce educational and engaging content that is free and instantly accessible. They are also relatable and, in some cases, perceived to be trustworthy“ (p. 3).
Houseowner risks: 13x new research on houseowner and job risks, migration, good lobbying, online altruism, criminal lawyers, rule of law, biodiversity, green bank risks, climate votes, private equity and innovation (“#” shows the number of SSRN full paper downloads as of Jan. 4th, 2023)
Social and ecological research: Houseowner risks
Houseowner risks (1):Feeling Rich, Feeling Poor: Housing Wealth Effects and Consumption in Europe by Serhan Cevik and Sadhna Naik from the International Monetary Fund as of Dec. 13th, 2023 (#24): “Residential property accounts for, on average, about 55 percent of aggregate household wealth in Europe, but exhibits significant variation across countries. This paper provides a dynamic analysis of housing wealth effects on consumer spending in a panel of quarterly observations on 20 European countries during the period 1980–2023…. Estimation results confirm that household consumption responds strongly to house price movements and disposable income growth in real terms. … Our seasonally-adjusted quarter-on-quarter estimations imply that the average decline of 1.96 percent in real house prices in the first quarter of 2023 could dampen consumer spending by about -0.51 percentage points in our sample of European countries on a cumulative basis over a horizon of eight quarters” (p. 11/12).
Houseowner risks (2): Who Bears Climate-Related Physical Risk? by Natee Amornsiripanitch and David Wylie as of Dec. 1st, 2023 (#74): “This paper combines data on current and future property-level physical risk from major climate-related perils (storms, floods, hurricanes, and wildfires) that owner-occupied single-family residences face in the contiguous United States. Current expected damage from climate-related perils is approximately $19 billion per year. Severe convective storms and inland floods account for almost half of the expected damage. The central and southern parts of the U.S. are most exposed to climate-related physical risk, with hurricane-exposed areas on the Gulf and South Atlantic coasts being the riskiest areas. Relative to currently low-risk areas, currently high-risk areas have lower household incomes, lower labor market participation rates, and lower education atainment, suggesting that the distribution of climate-related physical risk is correlated with economic inequality” (abstract).
Job climate risks:Do firms mitigate climate impact on employment? Evidence from US heat shocks by Viral V Acharya, Abhishek Bhardwaj, and Tuomas Tomunen as of Dec. 20th, 2023 (#32): “… we studied how firms respond to extreme temperature shocks … We found that firms operating in multiple counties respond to these shocks by reducing employment in the affected county and increasing it in unaffected ones, … Single location firms simply scale down their employment. We found that the effect is stronger for firms that are more profitable, less levered and financially constrained … We also found that the effect is stronger for firms that are more concerned about their climate change exposure and that have a larger fraction of ESG funds as their owners … We also found that counties experiencing heat shocks experience employment shift from small to large firms within the county” (p. 27).
Positive immigration:The Macroeconomic Effects of Large Immigration Waves by Philipp Engler, Margaux MacDonald, Roberto Piazza, and Galen Sher of the International Monetary Fund as of Dec. 28th, 2023 (#9): “In OECD, large immigration waves raise domestic output and productivity in both the short and the medium term, pointing to significant dynamic gains for the host economy. We find no evidence of negative effects on aggregate employment of the native-born population. In contrast, our analysis of large refugee flows into emerging and developing countries does not find clear evidence of macroeconomic effects on the host country …”.
Pro lobbying: The Lobbying for Good Movement by Alberto Alemanno as of Dec. 13th, 2023 (#735): “Lobbying is about providing ideas and sharing concerns with policymakers to make them—and the whole policy process—more responsive. … lobbying is one of the most effective ways to enact political, economic, and social change … Only a handful of nonprofits lobby …. “ (abstract).
Online Altruism: What it is and how it Differs from Other Kinds of Altruism by Katherine Lou and Luciano Floridi as of Nov. 10th, 2023 (#80): “Online altruism often contrasts with the ideals of Effective Altruism. Altruistic acts online are often not particularly planned by the giver in advance, they are not the most effective uses of a certain amount of money, and they definitely do not aim toward a long-term vision that solves humanity’s most pressing problems. That is because participants in online altruism tend to focus on the experience and immediate effects on another human being, enabled through online platform mechanisms. … creating a more altruistic society and meeting the needs of people in the present, regardless of whether such altruism is maximally effective or in pursuit of any larger vision, seems just as crucial to be able to build a better world. … It is complementary to other forms of altruism, not an alternative” (p. 23/24).
Criminal lawyers?Lawyers and the Abuse of Government Power by Margaret Tarkington as of Nov. 29th, 2023 (#16): “The legal profession needs to amend the rules of professional conduct to protect our constitutional system of government from those most likely to effectively undermine it: lawyers. The historic federal indictment against former President Donald Trump for conspiring to stay in power after losing the 2020 presidential election included five attorney co-conspirators: … Eight lawyers were indicted in Georgia on similar charges. …. Lawyers weren’t just involved in Trump’s plot; they devised and enabled it. Rather than accurately advise Trump that he had lost and needed to concede, lawyers crafted a plan to circumvent court losses and subvert States’ certified electors—effectively disenfranchising seven entire States to enable Trump to win with only 232 electoral votes. To accomplish this end, lawyers recreated a faux version of the 1876 constitutional crisis by fabricating false electoral slates—manipulating law and fact to enable a coup and give it the trappings of legality and thus legitimacy. Only lawyers could have performed these services” (abstract).
Responsible investment research
Rule of law:Does Rule of Law Matter For Firms? Evidence From Shifting Political Control in Hong Kong by Jonathan S. Hartley as of Dec. 12th, 2023 (#58): “This paper analyzes Hong Kong’s 2020 National Security Law as introduced and imposed by the Communist Party of China as a natural experiment in diminishing the rule of law in a trade-financial hub …. this paper presents evidence that the National Security Law caused significant uncertainty in the rule of law, emigration of residents and foreign firms, and declines in the valuations of Hong Kong firms and residential real estate as well as a decline in real GDP per capita. … stock prices were most particularly sensitive in the real estate, air travel, and financial/banking sectors while less sensitive in the power and utility, hospital/gaming, and multinational/other industry categories“ (p. 11). My comment: I replaced my minimum country selection requirements for “Human Rights” with demanding minimum requirements for “Rule of Law” a few years ago, because rule of law is a broader “responsibility” measurement criterion. Therefore, I exclude e.g. investments in companies headquartered in BRICS countries.
Biodiversity premium:Do Investors Care About Biodiversity? by Alexandre Garel, Arthur Romec, Zacharias Sautner and Alexander F. Wagner as of Dec. 28th, 2023 (#2210): “… biodiversity preservation can clash with actions taken to address climate change. For example, renewable energy and electric cars require lithium, cobalt, magnesium, and nickel, the mining of which comes with severe impacts on biodiversity (and on the human communities that rely on biodiversity). … Examining a large sample of international stocks, we find that over our sample period, investors did not care about the impact of firms on biodiversity, on average. However, things appear to be changing, as we document the emergence of a biodiversity footprint premium following the Kunming Declaration (the first part of the COP15). Consistent with this effect, we document negative stock price reactions for firms with large biodiversity footprints in the days following the Kunming Declaration. Stock prices of firms with large biodiversity footprints further dropped after the Montreal Agreement (the second part of the COP15). Our results indicate that investors start to ask for a return premium in light of the uncertainty associated with future biodiversity regulation“ (p. 29/30).
Unknown climate risks: The effects of climate change-related risks on banks: A literature review by Olivier de Bandt, Laura-Chloé Kuntz, Nora Pankratz, Fulvio Pegoraro, Haakon Solheim, Greg Sutton, Azusa Takeyama and Dora Xia as of Dec. 6th, 2023: “The survey acknowledges the great number of new research papers that have very recently been made available … Apart from a few outliers … the microeconomic impacts of climate change on particular portfolios are relatively small, below 50 bp on loan and bond spreads. … several authors conclude that realized returns on climate change-related risks are below expected return, providing evidence of an underestimation of risk. … Liquidity issues arising from climate change-related shocks are still insufficiently researched. … The overall impact of climate change, which becomes multifaceted and affects various portfolios at the same time and in a correlated fashion, may therefore be more significant. In particular, the difficulty to model possible non-linear effects related to climate change and to capture tipping points might lead to an underestimation of risks. … There are still data issues, notably in terms of granularity, as well as methodological issues, which prevent a definite assessment of the situation, both for physical risks (lack of exact location of the exposures in many instances) and transition risks (notably lack of evaluation for SMEs)” (p. 28/29). My comment: I try to invest in listed stocks with low ESG-risks and high SDG-alignments which should reduce risks, see Divestments: 49 bei 30 Aktien meines Artikel 9 Fonds – Responsible Investment Research Blog (prof-soehnholz.com)
Voting deficits:Climate Votes: The Great Deception: An assessment of asset managers’ climate votes in 2023 by Agathe Masson from Reclaim Finance as of December 2023: “… the assessment of 2023 voting reveals that asset managers are encouraging fossil fuel companies to pursue expansion plans, exacerbating the global warming crisis. They therefore fail their responsibility to make long-term investment decisions integrating climate-related risks, and are at real risk of being accused of greenwashing“ (p. 4). My comment: For my direct equity portfolios, I only accept 0% fossil energy production. Unfortunately, many of the strictest “sustainable” ETFs still include such production so that I cannot make sure that my responbile ETF-Portfolios have 0% exposure to fossil energy production. Regarding my opinion on “transition investments” see ESG Transition Bullshit? – Responsible Investment Research Blog (prof-soehnholz.com)
ESG affects PE:ESG Incidents and Fundraising in Private Equity by Teodor Duevski, Chhavi Rastogi, and Tianhao Yao as of Dec. 14th, 2023 (#55): “Using a sample of global buyout investments, we find that experiencing an environvimental and social (E&S) incident in its portfolio companies … Affected PE firms are less likely to raise a subsequent fund and the subsequent funds are smaller. The relative size of subsequent funds are 7.6% smaller for PE firms experiencing higher-than-median number of E&S incidents, compared to those with no incidents. The effect is stronger for less reputable PE firms” (abstract).
Other investment research (in: Houseowner risks)
Innovative VC: How Resilient is Venture-Backed Innovation? Evidence from Four Decades of U.S. Patenting by Sabrina T. Howell, Josh Lerner, Ramana Nanda, and Richard Townsend as of Oct. 5th, 2023 (#742): “This paper shows that while patents filed by VC-backed firms are of significantly higher quality than the average patent, VC-backed innovation is substantially more procyclical. We trace this to changes in innovation by early-stage VC-backed startups“ (p. 22).
2023: Vereinfacht zusammengefasst haben meine Portfolioregeln in 2023 diese Wirkung gehabt: Passive Allokation und ESG gut, SDG schlecht und Trendfolge sehr schlecht…. Im Jahr 2022 hatten dagegen besonders meine Trendfolge und SDG-Portfolios gut rentiert (vgl. SDG und Trendfolge: Relativ gut in 2022).
Passives Allokations-Weltmarktportfolio 2023 mit guter Rendite
Das nicht-nachhaltige Alternatives ETF-Portfolio hat in 2023 mit 7,2% rentiert, also deutlich schlechter als Aktien insgesamt mit ca. 17%. Das regelbasierte „most passive“ Multi-Asset Weltmarkt ETF-Portfolio hat mit +9,9% trotz seines hohen Anteils an Alternatives dagegen relativ gut abgeschnitten, denn die Performance ist sogar etwas besser als die flexibler aktiver Mischfonds (+8,2%).
Eine vergleichbare Performance gilt für das ebenfalls breit diversifizierte ESG ETF-Portfolio mit +9%. Das ESG ETF-Portfolio ex Bonds lag dagegen mit +12,8% aufgrund des hohen Alternatives- und geringen Tech-Anteils erheblich hinter traditionellen Aktien-ETFs. Die Rendite ist aber ganz ähnlich wie die +12,1% traditioneller aktiv gemanagter globaler Aktienfonds. Das ESG ETF-Portfolio ex Bonds Income verzeichnete ein geringeres Plus von +9,1%. Das ist etwas schlechter als die +9,8% traditioneller Dividendenfonds.
Mit +0,8% schnitt das ESG ETF-Portfolio Bonds (EUR) ähnlich wie die +1,5% für vergleichbare traditionelle Anleihe-ETFs ab. Aktive Fonds haben jedoch +4,6% erreicht. Anders als in 2022, hat meine Trendfolge mit -1,8% für das ESG ETF-Portfolio ex Bonds Trend aber nicht gut funktioniert.
SDG ETF-Portfolio: 2023 naja
Das aus thematischen Aktien-ETFs bestehende SDG ETF-Portfolio lag mit +2,6% stark hinter traditionellen Aktienanlagen zurück und das SDG ETF-Trendfolgeportfolio zeigt mit -10% eine sehr schlechte Performance. Für thematische Investments mit ökologischem Fokus lief es allerdings in 2023 generell nicht so gut.
Um das Portfolioangebot zu straffen, werden künftig nur noch 4 ESG ETF-Portfolios aktiv angeboten: Multi-Asset (Start 2016), Aktien, renditeorientierte Anleihen und sicherheitsorientierte Anleihen (alle Start 2019). Hinzu kommen, wie gehabt, die beiden SDG ETF-Portfolios (Start 2019 und 2020).
Direkte pure ESG-Aktienportfolios OK
Das aus 30 Aktien bestehende Global Equities ESG Portfolio hat +14,6% gemacht und liegt damit besser als traditionelle aktive Fonds (+12,1%) aber hinter traditionellen Aktien-ETFs, was vor allem an den im Portfolio nicht vorhandenen Mega-Techs lag. Das nur aus 5 Titeln bestehende Global Equities ESG Portfolio S war mit +8,9% etwas schlechter, liegt aber seit dem Start in 2017 immer noch vor dem 30-Aktien Portfolio.
Das Infrastructure ESG Portfolio hat -5,1% verloren und liegt damit erheblich hinter den +0,8% traditioneller Infrastrukturfonds und den +9,2% eines traditionellen Infrastruktur-ETFs. Das Real Estate ESG Portfolio hat +7,2% gewonnen, während traditionelle globale Immobilienaktien-ETFs +6,9% und aktiv gemanagte Fonds +7,9% gewonnen haben. Das Deutsche Aktien ESG Portfolio hat +6,7% zugelegt. Das wiederum liegt erheblich hinter aktiv gemanagten traditionellen Fonds mit +15,1% und nennenswert hinter vergleichbaren ETFs mit +16,2%.
Direkte ESG plus SDG-Aktienportfolios: Nicht so gut
Das auf soziale Midcaps fokussierte Global Equities ESG SDG hat mit -0,7% im Vergleich zu allgemeinen Aktienfonds sehr schlecht abgeschnitten. Das ist vor allem auf den hohen Gesundheitsanteil zurückzuführen. Das Global Equities ESG SDG Trend Portfolio hat mit -8,4% – wie die anderen Trendfolgeportfolios – besonders schlecht abgeschnitten. Das Global Equities ESG SDG Social Portfolio hat dagegen mit +10,4% im Vergleich zum Beispiel zu Gesundheits-ETFs bzw. aktiven Fonds (-0,6 bzw. -1,0%) dagegen ziemlich gut abgeschnitten.
Aufgrund mangelnder Nachfrage werden die direkten ESG-Aktienportfolios für globale Aktien, deutsche Aktien, Infrastrukturaktien und Immobilienaktien (alle Start 2016 und 2017) künftig nicht mehr aktiv angeboten, sondern nur noch die ESG + SDG-Aktienportfolios (Start 2017 und 2022).
Fondsperformance: Nicht so gut
Mein FutureVest Equity Sustainable Development Goals R Fonds (Start 2021) zeigt nach einem im Vergleich zu anderen Portfolios sehr guten Jahr 2022 (-8,1%) in 2023 mit +0,5% eine starke Underperformance gegenüber traditionellen Aktienmärkten. Das liegt vor allem an der Branchenzusammensetzung des Portfolios mit Fokus auf Gesundheit und an den relativ hohen nachhaltigen Infrastruktur- und Immobilienanteilen (weitere Informationen wie z.B. auch den aktuellen detaillierten Engagementreport siehe FutureVest Equity Sustainable Development Goals R – DE000A2P37T6 – A2P37T). Hinzu kommt, dass die sogenannten Glorreichen 7 bewusst in keinem meiner direkten Portfolios enthalten sind (vgl. Glorreiche 7: Sind sie unsozial? – Responsible Investment Research Blog (prof-soehnholz.com)). Dafür sind das letzte Quartal 2023 mit +9,4% und vor allem der Dezember mit +9,0% besonders gut gelaufen.
Sustainable investment can be radically different from traditional investment. „Asset Allocation, Risk Overlay and Manager Selection“ is the translation of the book-title which I wrote in 2009 together with two former colleagues from FERI in Bad Homburg. Sustainability plays no role in it. My current university lecture on these topics is different.
Sustainability can play a very important role in the allocation to investment segments, manager and fund selection, position selection and also risk management. Strict sustainability can even lead to radical changes: More illiquid investments, lower asset class diversification, significantly higher concentration within investment segments, more active instead of passive mandates and different risk management. Here is why:
Central role of investment philosophy and sustainability definition for sustainable investment
Investors should define their investment philosophy as clearly as possible before they start investing. By investment philosophy, I mean the fundamental convictions of an investor, ideally a comprehensive and coherent system of such convictions (see Das-Soehnholz-ESG-und-SDG-Portfoliobuch 2023, p. 21ff.). Sustainability can be an important element of an investment philosophy.
Example: I pursue a strictly sustainable, rule-based, forecast-free investment philosophy (see e.g. Investment philosophy: Forecast fans should use forecast-free portfolios). To this end, I define comprehensive sustainability rules. I use the Policy for Responsible Investment Scoring Concept (PRISC) tool of the German Association for Asset Management and Financial Analysis (DVFA) for operationalization.
When it comes to sustainable investment, I am particularly interested in the products and services offered by the companies and organizations in which I invest or to which I indirectly provide loans. I use many strict exclusions and, above all, positive criteria. In particular, I want that the revenue or service is as compatible as possible with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations (UN SDG) („SDG revenue alignment“). I also attach great importance to low absolute environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks. However, I only give a relatively low weighting to the opportunities to change investments („investor impact“) (see The Soehnholz ESG and SDG Portfolio Book 2023, p. 141ff). I try to achieve impact primarily through shareholder engagement, i.e. direct sustainability communication with companies.
Other investors, for whom impact and their own opportunities for change are particularly important, often attach great importance to so-called additionality. This means, that the corresponding sustainability improvements only come about through their respective investments. If an investor finances a new solar or wind park, this is considered additional and therefore particularly sustainable. When investing money on stock exchanges, securities are only bought by other investors and no money flows to the issuers of the securities – except in the case of relatively rare new issues. The purchase of listed bonds or shares in solar and wind farm companies is therefore not considered an impact investment by additionality supporters.
Sustainable investment and asset allocation: many more unlisted or alternative investments and more bonds?
In extreme cases, an investment philosophy focused on additionality would mean investing only in illiquid assets. Such an asset allocation would be radically different from today’s typical investments.
Better no additional allocation to illiquid investments?
Regarding additionality, investor and project impact must be distinguished. The financing of a new wind farm is not an additional investment, if other investors would also finance the wind farm on their own. This is not atypical. There is often a so-called capital overhang for infrastructure and private equity investments. This means, that a lot of money has been raised via investment funds and is competing for investments in such projects.
Even if only one fund is prepared to finance a sustainable project, the investment in such a fund would not be additional if other investors are willing to commit enough money to this fund to finance all planned investments. It is not only funds from renowned providers that often have more potential subscriptions from potential investors than they are willing to accept. Investments in such funds cannot necessarily be regarded as additional. On the other hand, there is clear additionality for investments that no one else wants to make. However, whether such investments will generate attractive performance is questionable.
Illiquid investments are also far from suitable for all investors, as they usually require relatively high minimum investments. In addition, illiquid investments are usually only invested gradually, and liquidity must be held for uncertain capital calls in terms of timing and amount. In addition, illiquid investments are usually considerably more expensive than comparable liquid investments. Overall, illiquid investments therefore have hardly any higher return potential than liquid investments. On the other hand, mainly due to the methods of their infrequent valuations, they typically exhibit low fluctuations. However, they are sometimes highly risky due to their high minimum investments and, above all, illiquidity.
In addition, illiquid investments lack an important so-called impact channel, namely individual divestment opportunities. While liquid investments can be sold at any time if sustainability requirements are no longer met, illiquid investments sometimes have to remain invested for a very long time. Divestment options are very important to me: I have sold around half of my securities in recent years because their sustainability has deteriorated (see: Divestments: 49 bei 30 Aktien meines Artikel 9 Fonds).
Sustainability advantages for (corporate) bonds over equities?
Liquid investment segments can differ, too, in terms of impact opportunities. Voting rights can be exercised for shares, but not for bonds and other investment segments. However, shareholder meetings at which voting is possible rarely take place. In addition, comprehensive sustainability changes are rarely put to the vote. If they are, they are usually rejected (see 2023 Proxy Season Review – Minerva).
I am convinced that engagement in the narrower sense can be more effective than exercising voting rights. And direct discussions with companies and organizations to make them more sustainable are also possible for bond buyers.
Irrespective of the question of liquidity or stock market listing, sustainable investors may prefer loans to equity because loans can be granted specifically for social and ecological projects. In addition, payouts can be made dependent on the achievement of sustainable milestones. However, the latter can also be done with private equity investments, but not with listed equity investments. However, if ecological and social projects would also be carried out without these loans and only replace traditional loans, the potential sustainability advantage of loans over equity is put into perspective.
Loans are usually granted with specific repayment periods. Short-term loans have the advantage that it is possible to decide more often whether to repeat loans than with long-term loans, provided they cannot be repaid early. This means that it is usually easier to exit a loan that is recognized as not sustainable enough than a private equity investment. This is a sustainability advantage. In addition, smaller borrowers and companies can probably be influenced more sustainably, so that government bonds, for example, have less sustainability potential than corporate loans, especially when it comes to relatively small companies.
With regard to real estate, one could assume that loans or equity for often urgently needed residential or social real estate can be considered more sustainable than for commercial real estate. The same applies to social infrastructure compared to some other infrastructure segments. On the other hand, some market observers criticize the so-called financialization of residential real estate, for example, and advocate public rather than private investments (see e.g. Neue Studie von Finanzwende Recherche: Rendite mit der Miete). Even social loans such as microfinance in the original sense are criticized, at least when commercial (interest) interests become too strong and private debt increases too much.
While renewable raw materials can be sustainable, non-industrially used precious metals are usually considered unsustainable due to the mining conditions. Crypto investments are usually considered unsustainable due to their lack of substance and high energy consumption.
Assuming potential additionality for illiquid investments and an impact primarily via investments with an ecological or social focus, the following simplified assessment of the investment segment can be made from a sustainability perspective:
Sustainable investment: Potential weighting of investment segments assuming additionality for illiquid investments:
Source: Soehnholz ESG GmbH 2023
Investors should create their own such classification, as this is crucial for their respective sustainable asset allocation.
Taking into account minimum capital investment and costs as well as divestment and engagement opportunities, I only invest in listed investments, for example. However, in the case of multi-billion assets with direct sustainability influence on investments, I would consider additional illiquid investments.
Sustainable investment and manager/fund selection: more active investments again?
Scientific research shows that active portfolio management usually generates lower returns and often higher risks than passive investments. With very low-cost ETFs, you can invest in thousands of securities. It is therefore no wonder that so-called passive investments have become increasingly popular in recent years.
Diversification is often seen as the only „free lunch“ in investing. But diversification often has no significant impact on returns or risks: With more than 20 to 30 securities from different countries and sectors, no better returns and hardly any lower risks can be expected than with hundreds of securities. In other words, the marginal benefit of additional diversification decreases very quickly.
But if you start with the most sustainable 10 to 20 securities and diversify further, the average sustainability can fall considerably. This means that strictly sustainable investment portfolios should be concentrated rather than diversified. Concentration also has the advantage of making voting and other forms of engagement easier and cheaper. Divestment threats can also be more effective if a lot of investor money is invested in just a few securities.
Sustainability policies can vary widely. This can be seen, among other things, in the many possible exclusions from potential investments. For example, animal testing can be divided into legally required, medically necessary, cosmetic and others. Some investors want to consistently exclude all animal testing. Others want to continue investing in pharmaceutical companies and may therefore only exclude „other“ animal testing. And investors who want to promote the transition from less sustainable companies, for example in the oil industry, to more sustainability will explicitly invest in oil companies (see ESG Transition Bullshit?).
Indices often contain a large number of securities. However, consistent sustainability argues in favor of investments in concentrated, individual and therefore mostly index-deviating actively managed portfolios. Active, though, is not meant in the sense of a lot of trading. In order to be able to exert influence by exercising voting rights and other forms of engagement, longer rather than shorter holding periods for investments make sense.
Still not enough consistently sustainable ETF offerings
When I started my own company in early 2016, it was probably the world’s first provider of a portfolio of the most consistently sustainable ETFs possible. But even the most sustainable ETFs were not sustainable enough for me. This was mainly due to insufficient exclusions and the almost exclusive use of aggregated best-in-class ESG ratings. However, I have high minimum requirements for E, S and G separately (see Glorious 7: Are they anti-social?). I am also not interested in the best-rated companies within sectors that are unattractive from a sustainability perspective (best-in-class). I want to invest in the best-performing stocks regardless of sector (best-in-universe). However, there are still no ETFs for such an approach. In addition, there are very few ETFs that use strict ESG criteria and also strive for SDG compatibility.
Even in the global Socially Responsible Investment Paris Aligned Benchmarks, which are particularly sustainable, there are still several hundred stocks from a large number of sectors and countries. In contrast, there are active global sustainable funds with just 30 stocks, which is potentially much more sustainable (see 30 stocks, if responsible, are all I need).
Issuers of sustainable ETFs often exercise sustainable voting rights and even engage, even if only to a small extent. However, most providers of active investments do no better (see e.g. 2023 Proxy Season Review – Minerva). Notably, index-following investments typically do not use the divestment impact channel because they want to replicate indices as directly as possible.
Sustainable investment and securities selection: fewer standard products and more individual mandates or direct indexing?
If there are no ETFs that are sustainable enough, you should look for actively managed funds, award sustainable mandates to asset managers or develop your own portfolios. However, actively managed concentrated funds with a strict ESG plus impact approach are still very rare. This also applies to asset managers who could implement such mandates. In addition, high minimum investments are often required for customized mandates. Individual sustainable portfolio developments, on the other hand, are becoming increasingly simple.
Numerous providers currently offer basic sustainability data for private investors at low cost or even free of charge. Financial technology developments such as discount (online) brokers, direct indexing and trading in fractional shares as well as voting tools help with the efficient and sustainable implementation of individual portfolios. However, the variety of investment opportunities and data qualities are not easy to analyze.
It would be ideal if investors could also take their own sustainability requirements into account on the basis of a curated universe of particularly sustainable securities and then have them automatically implemented and rebalanced in their portfolios (see Custom ESG Indexing Can Challenge Popularity Of ETFs (asiafinancial.com). In addition, they could use modern tools to exercise their voting rights according to their individual sustainability preferences. Sustainability engagement with the securities issuers can be carried out by the platform provider.
Risk management: much more tracking error and ESG risk monitoring?
For sustainable investments, sustainability metrics are added to traditional risk metrics. These are, for example, ESG ratings, emissions values, principal adverse indicators, do-no-significant-harm information, EU taxonomy compliance or, as in my case, SDG compliance and engagement success.
Sustainable investors have to decide how important the respective criteria are for them. I use sustainability criteria not only for reporting, but also for my rule-based risk management. This means that I sell securities if ESG or SDG requirements are no longer met (see Divestments: 49 bei 30 Aktien meines Artikel 9 Fonds).
The ESG ratings I use summarize environmental, social and governance risks. These risks are already important today and will become even more important in the future, as can be seen from greenwashing and reputational risks, for example. Therefore, they should not be missing from any risk management system. SDG compliance, on the other hand, is only relevant for investors who care about how sustainable the products and services of their investments are.
Voting rights and engagement have not usually been used for risk management up to now. However, this may change in the future. For example, I check whether I should sell shares if there is an inadequate response to my engagement. An inadequate engagement response from companies may indicate that companies are not listening to good suggestions and thus taking unnecessary risks that can be avoided through divestments.
Traditional investors often measure risk by the deviation from the target allocation or benchmark. If the deviation exceeds a predefined level, many portfolios have to be realigned closer to the benchmark. If you want to invest in a particularly sustainable way, you have to have higher rather than lower traditional benchmark deviations (tracking error) or you should do without tracking error figures altogether.
In theory, sustainable indices could be used as benchmarks for sustainable portfolios. However, as explained above, sustainability requirements can be very individual and, in my opinion, there are no strict enough sustainable standard benchmarks yet.
Sustainability can therefore lead to new risk indicators as well as calling old ones into question and thus also lead to significantly different risk management.
Summary and outlook: Much more individuality?
Individual sustainability requirements play a very important role in the allocation to investment segments, manager and fund selection, position selection and risk management. Strict sustainability can lead to greater differences between investment mandates and radical changes to traditional mandates: A lower asset class diversification, more illiquid investments for large investors, more project finance, more active rather than passive mandates, significantly higher concentration within investment segments and different risk management with additional metrics and significantly less benchmark orientation.
Some analysts believe that sustainable investment leads to higher risks, higher costs and lower returns. Others expect disproportionately high investments in sustainable investments in the future. This should lead to a better performance of such investments. My approach: I try to invest as sustainably as possible and I expect a normal market return in the medium term with lower risks compared to traditional investments.
First published in German on www.prof-soehnholz.com on Dec. 30th, 2023. Initial version translated by Deepl.com
Nachhaltige Geldanlage kann radikal anders sein als traditionelle. „Asset Allocation, Risiko-Overlay und Manager-Selektion: Das Diversifikationsbuch“ heißt das Buch, dass ich 2009 mit ehemaligen Kollegen der Bad Homburger FERI geschrieben habe. Nachhaltigkeit spielt darin keine Rolle. In meiner aktuellen Vorlesung zu diesen Themen ist das anders. Nachhaltigkeit kann eine sehr wichtige Rolle spielen für die Allokation auf Anlagesegmente, die Manager- bzw. Fondsselektion, die Positionsselektion und auch das Risikomanagement (Hinweis: Um die Lesbarkeit zu verbessern, gendere ich nicht).
Strenge Nachhaltigkeit kann sogar zu radikalen Änderungen führen: Mehr illiquide Investments, erheblich höhere Konzentration innerhalb der Anlagesegmente, mehr aktive statt passive Mandate und ein anderes Risikomanagement. Im Folgenden erkläre ich, wieso:
Zentrale Rolle von Investmentphilosophie und Nachhaltigkeitsdefinition für die nachhaltige Geldanlage
Dafür starte ich mit der Investmentphilosophie. Unter Investmentphilosophie verstehe ich die grundsätzlichen Überzeugungen eines Geldanlegers, idealerweise ein umfassendes und kohärentes System solcher Überzeugungen (vgl. Das-Soehnholz-ESG-und-SDG-Portfoliobuch 2023, S. 21ff.). Nachhaltigkeit kann ein wichtiges Element einer Investmentphilosophie sein. Anleger sollten ihre Investmentphilosophie möglichst klar definieren, bevor sie mit der Geldanlage beginnen.
Beispiel: Ich verfolge eine konsequent nachhaltige regelbasiert-prognosefreie Investmentphilosophie. Dafür definiere ich umfassende Nachhaltigkeitsregeln. Zur Operationalisierung nutze ich das Policy for Responsible Investment Scoring Concept (PRISC) Tool der Deutschen Vereinigung für Asset Management und Finanzanalyse (DVFA, vgl. Standards – DVFA e. V. – Der Berufsverband der Investment Professionals).
Für die nachhaltige Geldanlage ist mir vor allem wichtig, was für Produkte und Services die Unternehmen und Organisationen anbieten, an denen ich mich beteilige oder denen ich indirekt Kredite zur Verfügung stelle. Dazu nutze ich viele strenge Ausschlüsse und vor allem Positivkriterien. Dabei wird vor allem der Umsatz- bzw. Serviceanteil betrachtet, der möglichst gut mit Nachhaltigen Entwicklungszielen der Vereinten Nationen (UN SDG) vereinbar ist („SDG Revenue Alignment“). Außerdem lege ich viel Wert auf niedrige absolute Umwelt-, Sozial- und Governance-Risiken (ESG). Meine Möglichkeiten zur Veränderung von Investments („Investor Impact“) gewichte ich aber nur relativ niedrig (vgl. Das-Soehnholz-ESG-und-SDG-Portfoliobuch 2023, S. 141ff). Impact möchte ich dabei vor allem über Shareholder Engagement ausüben, also direkte Nachhaltigkeitskommunikation mit Unternehmen.
Andere Anleger, denen Impact- bzw. eigene Veränderungsmöglichkeiten besonders wichtig sind, legen oft viel Wert auf sogenannte Additionalität bzw. Zusätzlichkeit. Das bedeutet, dass die entsprechenden Nachhaltigkeitsverbesserungen nur durch ihre jeweiligen Investments zustande gekommen sind. Wenn ein Anleger einen neuen Solar- oder Windparkt finanziert, gilt das als additional und damit als besonders nachhaltig. Bei Geldanlagen an Börsen werden Wertpapiere nur anderen Anlegern abgekauft und den Herausgebern der Wertpapiere fließt – außer bei relativ seltenen Neuemissionen – kein Geld zu. Der Kauf börsennotierter Anleihen oder Aktien von Solar- und Windparkunternehmen gilt bei Additionalitätsanhängern deshalb nicht als Impact Investment.
Nachhaltige Geldanlage und Asset Allokation: Viel mehr nicht-börsennotierte bzw. alternative Investments und mehr Anleihen?
Eine additionalitätsfokussierte Investmentphilosophie bedeutet demnach im Extremfall, nur noch illiquide zu investieren. Die Asset Allokation wäre radikal anders als heute typische Geldanlagen.
Lieber keine Mehrallokation zu illiquiden Investments?
Aber wenn Additionalität so wichtig ist, dann muss man sich fragen, welche Art von illiquiden Investments wirklich Zusätzlichkeit bedeutet. Dazu muss man Investoren- und Projektimpact trennen. Die Finanzierung eines neuen Windparks ist aus Anlegersicht dann nicht zusätzlich, wenn andere Anleger den Windpark auch alleine finanzieren würden. Das ist durchaus nicht untypisch. Für Infrastruktur- und Private Equity Investments gibt es oft einen sogenannten Kapitalüberhang. Das bedeutet, dass über Fonds sehr viel Geld eingesammelt wurde und um Anlagen in solche Projekte konkurriert.
Selbst wenn nur ein Fonds zur Finanzierung eines nachhaltgien Projektes bereit ist, wäre die Beteiligung an einem solchen Fonds aus Anlegersicht dann nicht additional, wenn alternativ andere Anleger diese Fondsbeteiligung kaufen würden. Nicht nur Fonds renommierter Anbieter haben oft mehr Anfragen von potenziellen Anlegern als sie akzeptieren wollen. Investments in solche Fonds kann man nicht unbedingt als additional ansehen. Klare Additionalität gibt es dagegen für Investments, die kein anderer machen will. Ob solche Investments aber attraktive Performances versprechen, ist fragwürdig.
Illiquide Investments sind zudem längst nicht für alle Anleger geeignet, denn sie erfordern meistens relativ hohe Mindestinvestments. Hinzu kommt, dass man bei illiquiden Investments in der Regel erst nach und nach investiert und Liquidität in Bezug auf Zeitpunkt und Höhe unsichere Kapitalabrufe bereithalten muss. Außerdem sind illiquide meistens erheblich teurer als vergleichbare liquide Investments. Insgesamt haben damit illiquide Investments kaum höhere Renditepotenziale als liquide Investments. Durch die Art ihrer Bewertungen zeigen sie zwar geringe Schwankungen. Sie sind durch ihre hohen Mindestinvestments und vor allem Illiquidität aber teilweise hochriskant.
Hinzu kommt, dass illiquiden Investments ein wichtiger sogenannter Wirkungskanal fehlt, nämlich individuelle Divestmentmöglichkeiten. Während liquide Investments jederzeit verkauft werden können wenn Nachhaltigkeitsanforderungen nicht mehr erfüllt werden, muss man bei illiquiden Investments teilweise sehr lange weiter investiert bleiben. Divestmentmöglichkeiten sind sehr wichtig für mich: Ich habe in den letzten Jahren jeweils ungefähr die Hälfte meiner Wertpapiere verkauft, weil sich ihre Nachhaltigkeit verschlechtert hat (vgl. Divestments: 49 bei 30 Aktien meines Artikel 9 Fonds – Responsible Investment Research Blog (prof-soehnholz.com)).
Nachhaltigkeitsvorteile für (Unternehmens-)Anleihen gegenüber Aktien?
Auch liquide Anlagesegmente können sich in Bezug auf Impactmöglichkeiten unterscheiden. Für Aktien kann man Stimmrechte ausüben (Voting), für Anleihen und andere Anlagesegmente nicht. Allerdings finden nur selten Aktionärsversammlungen statt, zu denen man Stimmrechte ausüben kann. Zudem stehen nur selten umfassende Nachhaltigkeitsveränderungen zur Abstimmung. Falls das dennoch der Fall ist, werden sie meistens abgelehnt (vgl. 2023 Proxy Season Review – Minerva-Manifest).
Ich bin überzeugt, dass Engagement im engeren Sinn wirkungsvoller sein kann als Stimmrechtsausübung. Und direkte Diskussionen mit Unternehmen und Organisationen, um diese nachhaltiger zu machen, sind auch für Käufer von Anleihen möglich.
Unabhängig von der Frage der Liquidität bzw. Börsennotiz könnten nachhaltige Anleger Kredite gegenüber Eigenkapital bevorzugen, weil Kredite speziell für soziale und ökologische Projekte vergeben werden können. Außerdem können Auszahlungen von der Erreichung von nachhaltigen Meilensteinen abhängig gemacht werden können. Letzteres kann bei Private Equity Investments aber ebenfalls gemacht werden, nicht jedoch bei börsennotierten Aktieninvestments. Wenn ökologische und soziale Projekte aber auch ohne diese Kredite durchgeführt würden und nur traditionelle Kredite ersetzen, relativiert sich der potenzielle Nachhaltigkeitsvorteil von Krediten gegenüber Eigenkapital.
Allerdings werden Kredite meist mit konkreten Rückzahlungszeiten vergeben. Kurz laufende Kredite haben dabei den Vorteil, dass man öfter über die Wiederholung von Kreditvergaben entscheiden kann als bei langlaufenden Krediten, sofern man sie nicht vorzeitig zurückbezahlt bekommen kann. Damit kann man aus einer als nicht nachhaltig genug erkannter Kreditvergabe meistens eher aussteigen als aus einer privaten Eigenkapitalvergabe. Das ist ein Nachhaltigkeitsvorteil. Außerdem kann man kleinere Kreditnehmer und Unternehmen wohl besser nachhaltig beeinflussen, so dass zum Beispiel Staatsanleihen weniger Nachhaltigkeitspotential als Unternehmenskredite haben, vor allem wenn es sich dabei um relativ kleine Unternehmen handelt.
In Bezug auf Immobilien könnte man annehmen, dass Kredite oder Eigenkapital für oft dringend benötigte Wohn- oder Sozialimmobilien als nachhaltiger gelten können als für Gewerbeimmobilien. Ähnliches gilt für Sozialinfrastruktur gegenüber manch anderen Infrastruktursegmenten. Andererseits kritisieren manche Marktbeobachter die sogenannte Finanzialisierung zum Beispiel von Wohnimmobilien (vgl. Neue Studie von Finanzwende Recherche: Rendite mit der Miete) und plädieren grundsätzlich für öffentliche statt private Investments. Selbst Sozialkredite wie Mikrofinanz im ursprünglichen Sinn wird zumindest dann kritisiert, wenn kommerzielle (Zins-)Interessen zu stark werden und private Verschuldungen zu stark steigen.
Während nachwachsende Rohstoffe nachhaltig sein können, gelten nicht industriell genutzte Edelmetalle aufgrund der Abbaubedingungen meistens als nicht nachhaltig. Kryptoinvestments werden aufgrund fehlender Substanz und hoher Energieverbräuche meistens als nicht nachhaltig beurteilt.
Bei der Annahme von potenzieller Additionalität für illiquide Investments und Wirkung vor allem über Investments mit ökologischem bzw. sozialem Bezug kann man zu der folgenden vereinfachten Anlagesegmentbeurteilung aus Nachhaltigkeitssicht kommen:
Nachhaltige Geldanlage: Potenzielle Gewichtung von Anlagesegmenten bei Annahme von Additionalität für illiquide Investmentsund meine Allokation
Quelle: Eigene Darstellung
Anleger sollten sich ihre eigene derartige Klassifikation erstellen, weil diese entscheidend für ihre jeweilige nachhaltige Asset Allokation ist. Unter Berücksichtigung von Mindestkapitaleinsatz und Kosten sowie Divestment- und Engagementmöglichkeiten investiere ich zum Beispiel nur in börsennotierte Investments. Bei einem Multi-Milliarden Vermögen mit direkten Nachhaltigkeits-Einflussmöglichkeiten auf Beteiligungen würde ich zusätzliche illiquide Investments aber in Erwägung ziehen. Insgesamt kann strenge Nachhaltigkeit also auch zu wesentlich geringerer Diversifikation über Anlageklassen führen.
Nachhaltige Geldanlage und Manager-/Fondsselektion: Wieder mehr aktive Investments?
Wissenschaftliche Forschung zeigt, dass aktives Portfoliomanagement meistens geringe Renditen und oft auch höhere Risiken als passive Investments einbringt. Mit sehr günstigen ETFs kann man in tausende von Wertpapieren investieren. Es ist deshalb kein Wunder, dass in den letzten Jahren sogenannte passive Investments immer beliebter geworden sind.
Diversifikation gilt oft als der einzige „Free Lunch“ der Kapitalanlage. Aber Diversifikation hat oft keinen nennenswerten Einfluss auf Renditen oder Risiken. Anders ausgedrückt: Mit mehr als 20 bis 30 Wertpapieren aus unterschiedlichen Ländern und Branchen sind keine besseren Renditen und auch kaum niedrigere Risiken zu erwarten als mit hunderten von Wertpapieren. Anders ausgedrückt: Der Grenznutzen zusätzlicher Diversifikation nimmt sehr schnell ab.
Aber wenn man aber mit den nachhaltigsten 10 bis 20 Wertpapiern startet und weiter diversifiziert, kann die durchschnittliche Nachhaltigkeit erheblich sinken. Das bedeutet, dass konsequent nachhaltige Geldanlageportfolios eher konzentriert als diversifiziert sein sollten. Konzentration hat auch den Vorteil, dass Stimmrechtsausübungen und andere Formen von Engagement einfacher und kostengünstiger werden. Divestment-Androhungen können zudem wirkungsvoller sein, wenn viel Anlegergeld in nur wenige Wertpapiere investiert wird.
Nachhaltigkeitspolitiken können sehr unterschiedlich ausfallen. Das zeigt sich unter anderem bei den vielen möglichen Ausschlüssen von potenziellen Investments. So kann man zum Beispiel Tierversuche in juristisch vorgeschriebene, medizinisch nötige, kosmetische und andere unterscheiden. Manche Anleger möchten alle Tierversuche konsequent ausschließen. Andere wollen weiterhin in Pharmaunternehmen investieren und schließen deshalb vielleicht nur „andere“ Tierversuche aus. Und Anleger, welche die Transition von wenig nachhaltigen Unternehmen zum Beispiel der Ölbranche zu mehr Nachhaltigkeit fördern wollen, werden explizit in Ölunternehmen investieren (vgl. ESG Transition Bullshit? – Responsible Investment Research Blog (prof-soehnholz.com)).
Indizes enthalten oft sehr viele Wertpapiere. Konsequente Nachhaltigkeit spricht aber für Investments in konzentrierte, individuelle und damit meist indexabweichende aktiv gemanagte Portfolios. Dabei ist aktiv nicht im Sinne von viel Handel gemeint. Um über Stimmrechtsausübungen und andere Engagementformen Einfluss ausüben zu können, sind eher längere als kürzere Haltedauern von Investments sinnvoll.
Immer noch nicht genug konsequent nachhaltige ETF-Angebote
Bei der Gründung meines eigenen Unternehmens Anfang 2016 war ich wahrscheinlich weltweit der erste Anbieter eines Portfolios aus möglichst konsequent nachhaltigen ETFs. Aber auch die nachhaltigsten ETFs waren mir nicht nachhaltig genug. Grund waren vor allem unzureichende Ausschlüsse und die fast ausschließliche Nutzung von aggregierten Best-in-Class ESG-Ratings. Ich habe aber hohe Mindestanforderungen an E, S und G separat (vgl. Glorreiche 7: Sind sie unsozial? – Responsible Investment Research Blog (prof-soehnholz.com). Ich interessiere mich auch nicht für die am besten geraten Unternehmen innerhalb aus Nachhaltigkeitssicht unattraktiven Branchen (Best-in-Class). Ich möchte branchenunabhängig in die am besten geraten Aktien investieren (Best-in-Universe). Dafür gibt es aber auch heute noch keine ETFs. Außerdem gibt es sehr wenige ETFs, die strikte ESG-Kriterien nutzen und zusätzlich SDG-Vereinbarkeit anstreben.
Auch in den in besonders konsequent nachhaltigen globalen Socially Responsible Paris Aligned Benchmarks befinden sich noch mehrere hundert Aktien aus sehr vielen Branchen und Ländern. Aktive globale nachhaltige Fonds gibt es dagegen schon mit nur 30 Aktien, also potenziell erheblich nachhaltiger (vgl. 30 stocks, if responsible, are all I need – Responsible Investment Research Blog (prof-soehnholz.com)).
Emittenten nachhaltiger ETFs üben oft nachhaltige Stimmrechtsausübungen und sogar Engagement aus, wenn auch nur in geringem Umfang. Das machen die meisten Anbieter aktiver Investments aber auch nicht besser (vgl. z.B. 2023 Proxy Season Review – Minerva-Manifest). Indexfolgende Investments nutzen aber typischerweise den Impactkanal Divestments nicht, weil sie Indizes möglichst direkt nachbilden wollen.
Nachhaltige Geldanlage und Wertpapierselektion: Weniger Standardprodukte und mehr individuelle Mandate oder Direct Indexing?
Wenn es keine ETFs gibt, die nachhaltig genug sind, sollte man sich aktiv gemanagte Fonds suchen, nachhaltige Mandate an Vermögensverwalter vergeben oder seine Portfolios selbst entwickeln. Aktiv gemanagte konzentrierte Fonds mit strengem ESG plus Impactansatz sind aber noch sehr selten. Das gilt auch für Vermögensverwalter, die solche Mandate umsetzen könnten. Außerdem werden für maßgeschneiderte Mandate oft hohe Mindestanlagen verlangt. Individuelle nachhaltige Portfolioentwicklungen werden dagegen zunehmend einfacher.
Basis-Nachhaltigkeitsdaten werden aktuell von zahlreichen Anbietern für Privatanleger kostengünstig oder sogar kostenlos angeboten. Finanztechnische Entwicklungen wie Discount-(Online-)Broker, Direct Indexing und Handel mit Bruchstücken von Wertpapieren sowie Stimmrechtsausübungstools helfen bei der effizienten und nachhaltigen Umsetzung von individuellen Portfolios. Schwierigkeiten bereiten dabei eher die Vielfalt an Investmentmöglichkeiten und mangelnde bzw. schwer zu beurteilende Datenqualität.
Ideal wäre, wenn Anleger auf Basis eines kuratierten Universums von besonders nachhaltigen Wertpapieren zusätzlich eigene Nachhaltigkeitsanforderungen berücksichtigen können und dann automatisiert in ihren Depots implementieren und rebalanzieren lassen (vgl. Custom ESG Indexing Can Challenge Popularity Of ETFs (asiafinancial.com). Zusätzlich könnten sie mit Hilfe moderner Tools ihre Stimmrechte nach individuellen Nachhaltigkeitsvorstellungen ausüben. Direkte Nachhaltigkeitskommunikation mit den Wertpapieremittenten kann durch den Plattformanbieter erfolgen.
Risikomanagement: Viel mehr Tracking-Error und ESG-Risikomonitoring?
Für nachhaltige Geldanlagen kommen zusätzlich zu traditionellen Risikokennzahlen Nachhaltigkeitskennzahlen hinzu, zum Beispiel ESG-Ratings, Emissionswerte, Principal Adverse Indicators, Do-No-Significant-Harm-Informationen, EU-Taxonomievereinbarkeit oder, wie in meinem Fall, SDG-Vereinbarkeiten und Engagementerfolge.
Nachhaltige Anleger müssen sich entscheiden, wie wichtig die jeweiligen Kriterien für sie sind. Ich nutze Nachhaltigkeitskriterien nicht nur für das Reporting, sondern auch für mein regelgebundenes Risikomanagement. Das heißt, dass ich Wertpapiere verkaufe, wenn ESG- oder SDG-Anforderungen nicht mehr erfüllt werden.
Die von mir genutzten ESG-Ratings messen Umwelt-, Sozial- und Unternehmensführungsrisiken. Diese Risiken sind heute schon wichtig und werden künftig noch wichtiger, wie man zum Beispiel an Greenwashing- und Reputationsrisiken sehen kann. Deshalb sollten sie in keinem Risikomanagement fehlen. SDG-Anforderungserfüllung ist hingegen nur für Anleger relevant, denen wichtig ist, wie nachhaltig die Produkte und Services ihrer Investments sind.
Stimmrechtsausübungen und Engagement wurden bisher meistens nicht für das Risikomanagement genutzt. Das kann sich künftig jedoch ändern. Ich prüfe zum Beispiel, ob ich Aktien bei unzureichender Reaktion auf mein Engagement verkaufen sollte. Eine unzureichende Engagementreaktion von Unternehmen weist möglicherweise darauf hin, dass Unternehmen nicht auf gute Vorschläge hören und damit unnötige Risiken eingehen, die man durch Divestments vermeiden kann.
Traditionelle Geldanleger messen Risiko oft mit der Abweichung von der Soll-Allokation bzw. Benchmark. Wenn die Abweichung einen vorher definierten Grad überschreitet, müssen viele Portfolios wieder benchmarknäher ausgerichtet werden. Für nachhaltige Portfolios werden dafür auch nachhaltige Indizes als Benchmark genutzt. Wie oben erläutert, können Nachhaltigkeitsanforderungen aber sehr individuell sein und es gibt meiner Ansicht nach viel zu wenige strenge nachhaltige Benchmarks. Wenn man besonders nachhaltig anlegen möchte, muss man dementsprechend höhere statt niedrigere Benchmarkabweichungen (Tracking Error) haben bzw. sollte ganz auf Tracking Error Kennzahlen verzichten.
Nachhaltigkeit kann also sowohl zu neuen Risikokennzahlen führen als auch alte in Frage stellen und damit auch zu einem erheblich anderen Risikomanagement führen.
Nachhaltige Geldanlage – Zusammenfassung und Ausblick: Viel mehr Individualität?
Individuelle Nachhaltigkeitsanforderungen spielen eine sehr wichtige Rolle für die Allokation auf Anlagesegmente, die Manager- bzw. Fondsselektion, die Positionsselektion und auch das Risikomanagement. Strenge Nachhaltigkeit kann zu stärkeren Unterschieden zwischen Geldanlagemandaten und radikalen Änderungen gegenüber traditionellen Mandaten führen: Geringere Diversifikation über Anlageklassen, mehr illiquide Investments für Großanleger, mehr Projektfinanzierungen, mehr aktive statt passive Mandate, erheblich höhere Konzentration innerhalb der Anlagesegmente und ein anderes Risikomanagement mit zusätzlichen Kennzahlen und erheblich geringerer Benchmarkorientierung.
Manche Analysten meinen, nachhaltige Geldanlage führt zu höheren Risiken, höheren Kosten und niedrigeren Renditen. Andere erwarten zukünftig überproportional hohe Anlagen in nachhaltige Investments. Das sollte zu einer besseren Performance solcher Investments führen. Meine Einstellung: Ich versuche so nachhaltig wie möglich zu investieren und erwarte dafür mittelfristig eine marktübliche Rendite mit niedrigeren Risiken im Vergleich zu traditionellen Investments.