Pim van Vliet, PhD, is the creator of Excessive Returns from Low Danger: A Exceptional Inventory Market Paradox with Jan de Koning.
On the earth {of professional} investing, a scary obsession has taken maintain: the fixation on benchmarks and relative efficiency. This phenomenon, which I’m coining “benchmarkism,” is distorting incentives and pulling many institutional buyers within the improper route. It’s time to discover how we will escape this benchmark lure for smarter investing the place the main target is on secure long-term wealth progress.
The Rise of the Benchmark
The rise of funding benchmarks began within the late nineteenth century when Charles Dow launched the Dow Jones Industrial Common in 1896. At the moment, the function of benchmarks was minimal. Buyers had been primarily centered on dividends, as demonstrated by funds like these supplied by Robeco. Benchmarks performed no function in Robeco’s funds till a long time after the agency was based in 1929.
It wasn’t till the environment friendly market speculation gained prominence within the Sixties that benchmarks began changing into the funding trade’s central efficiency yardstick. Immediately, beating benchmarks is commonly seen because the definitive measure of success, overshadowing essentially the most basic guidelines of investing — don’t lose capital and obtain an sufficient return. Buyers are more and more fixated on relative short-term efficiency.
John Maynard Keynes as soon as quipped, “It’s higher to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.” Nowhere is that this assertion embraced with as a lot approbation as in at the moment’s benchmark-driven world.
The Core Downside of Benchmarkism
The crux of the issue with benchmarkism is that it shifts the investor’s focus away from absolute returns and capital preservation. Benchmarkism shifts the main target to outperforming the benchmark. However this can lead to irrational decision-making. Think about a portfolio supervisor selecting between a secure inventory providing an 8% return and an index fund that averages 8% however fluctuates wildly. Logically, most buyers would choose the secure inventory for its decrease absolute danger. But, a supervisor aiming to beat the benchmark may keep away from the secure inventory as a result of it gives intervals of no outperformance, which is a considerable danger within the realm of benchmarkism. This dilemma is illustrated in Determine 1.
Exhibit 1. Steady inventory versus unstable benchmark.
A hypothetical instance of returns of a inventory and the benchmark in two intervals.
This habits displays how the drive to beat benchmarks can push buyers to tackle further dangers, diverting consideration away from the 2 basic funding rules: capital preservation and long-term wealth progress. In bond markets, for instance, debt-laden international locations or companies typically get bigger weights in bond indices. Because of this, portfolios are sometimes tilted towards the riskiest issuers, just because they carry extra debt. That’s the paradox of benchmark investing: it encourages risk-taking in pursuit of relative positive factors, typically on the expense of frequent sense.
Historic Lesson of Fisher Black
The give attention to relative return over danger administration isn’t new. Fisher Black — one of many architects of the now 60-year-old capital asset pricing mannequin (CAPM) — tried to launch a low-risk fairness fund at Wells Fargo within the early Nineteen Seventies. His analysis demonstrated that low-beta shares might obtain market-like returns with lowered capital danger. The fund aimed to revenue from this precept of “profitable by shedding much less.” But, it didn’t take off. The issue? Black’s revolutionary technique confronted leverage constraints, and buyers had been extra centered on beating the market than lowering danger.[i]
Mockingly, it wasn’t till the dot-com bubble burst in 2000 and the monetary disaster of 2008 that defensive, low-volatility methods gained actual traction. A number of low-volatility ETFs grew to become extremely popular, attracting giant inflows within the early 2010s.[1] Immediately, Black’s thought is extra related than ever. Defensive methods have demonstrated their resilience by outperforming throughout downturns akin to in 2022. Nevertheless, the emphasis on relative efficiency typically makes these methods seem much less interesting in opposition to an more and more concentrated benchmark in bullish markets, as seen within the ongoing US tech rally of 2024.
The Broader Dangers of Benchmarkism
The unintended penalties of benchmarkism lengthen past particular person portfolios. By focusing solely on beating the benchmark, many institutional buyers have turn out to be hostages to indices. This focus can result in misallocation of capital, the place dangerous investments turn out to be overvalued and safer ones stay underappreciated. A transparent instance of this was throughout the late Nineties tech bubble, when know-how shares grew to become grossly overvalued as they gained bigger and bigger weights within the indices.
Worse nonetheless, regulatory frameworks can reinforce this habits. In international locations just like the Netherlands, company pension funds are required to elucidate why their efficiency deviates from the benchmark, typically penalizing funds that pursue extra defensive methods. In Australia, the “Your Future, Your Tremendous” regulation pressures buyers to stay to benchmark-like returns, even when it may not be in the most effective long-term curiosity of their beneficiaries.
The end result? Skilled buyers, sure by fiduciary duties and regulatory oversight, can’t cut back absolutely the danger of their fairness portfolio to keep away from falling behind their more and more concentrated benchmark, even in markets that exhibit speculative bubbles or systemic instability.
The Position of Index Committees
The affect of benchmark suppliers, akin to MSCI, is one other vital issue to contemplate. These committees wield immense energy in deciding which shares or international locations are included in an index. Their choices, typically formed by lobbying efforts, have profound implications for world funding flows. A notable instance is the inclusion of native Chinese language shares in world indices since 2018, which prompted buyers worldwide to allocate capital to China, no matter particular governance points or geopolitical danger concerned.
Index suppliers are additionally lobbying to embed their benchmarks into regulatory frameworks. Current strikes in Brussels to include Paris-Aligned benchmarks into the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) illustrate how the subjective selections of index suppliers can steer large-scale funding flows. But these indices should not all the time constant.
For instance, Nexans, an organization central to the vitality transition, was excluded from the Paris-Aligned Excessive Yield Index attributable to its carbon emissions, whereas Ford Motor — a largely carbon-fuel-based automaker — was included. Such inconsistencies reveal the dangers of relying too closely on benchmarks.
Benchmarks Unchained: Is There an Escape?
How can buyers break away from the benchmark lure? Over the previous decade, sustainable and influence investing have gained appreciable momentum. Excluding tobacco or fossil gasoline shares, as an example, typically results in deviations from normal benchmarks. As extra buyers undertake sustainability standards, they’re compelled to rethink the function of benchmarks. They’ll now not justify their funding choices by merely saying, “It’s within the index.”
This shift encourages a rethinking of funding aims. By incorporating sustainability standards and influence of their funding course of, buyers are beginning to transfer past the slim give attention to relative danger and return, embracing a 3rd dimension: sustainability. This opens the door to lowering benchmark dependence, prioritizing absolute danger, and fostering a clearer understanding of “figuring out what you personal.”
Worse than Marxism?
A provocative article by Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in 2016, “Why Passive Funding is Worse than Marxism,” ignited the controversy on benchmark investing. Whereas the comparability was exaggerated, it highlighted an vital query: Who might be left to find out market costs — speculators or buyers?
If skilled buyers adhere too strictly to benchmarks, market costs will more and more be set by a small group of lively gamers. The composition of this group is essential, however there’s no assure they are going to make markets extra environment friendly. As we noticed with the 2021 GameStop brief squeeze, speculative retail buyers leveraging high-risk positions can drive costs to bubble ranges and push extra disciplined buyers who’re centered on fundamentals to the sideline. The extra buyers align with benchmarks, the extra fragile markets turn out to be as capital is allotted based mostly on the composition of an index moderately than fundamentals.
Adapting Rules and Funding Rules
To completely escape the benchmark captivity, there must be a broader rethinking of regulation and funding rules. Regulators, as an example, might focus extra on absolute danger moderately than relative danger when evaluating efficiency. This is able to shift consideration away from short-term monitoring error and as a substitute emphasize long-term danger administration. By specializing in a portfolio’s volatility or resilience throughout market downturns, moderately than its proximity to the benchmark, buyers can regain the liberty to make extra considerate, risk-aware choices.[ii]
Furthermore, pension funds and institutional buyers frequently revisit their funding rules. Benchmarks can turn out to be inflexible requirements that don’t align with the fiduciary responsibility to guard and develop capital over the long run. Common assessment of the benchmarks’ function in portfolio administration can assist make sure that managers stay centered on sustainable progress and preservation of capital, moderately than getting slowed down in short-term relative efficiency discussions.
A Return to the Basic Benchmark
In the end, one of the simplest ways to beat the benchmark is to disregard it — at the very least within the brief time period. Warren Buffett’s well-known rule, “Don’t lose capital,” ought to be the guiding benchmark for all buyers. By specializing in absolute returns and minimizing pointless danger, buyers can keep away from the distortions attributable to benchmarkism.
Underrepresented segments in benchmarks, akin to small caps or defensive shares, typically present compelling alternatives, particularly in intervals of elevated market focus like at the moment. Equally, fallen angels — bonds that downgrade from funding grade to excessive yield — can turn out to be attractively priced attributable to compelled promoting by benchmark-driven buyers. These inefficiencies are the funding alternatives that contrarian buyers can exploit.
An investor’s edge may subsequently come not from being smarter, however from being much less constrained. Right here lies the paradox: by letting go of the fixation on benchmarks and specializing in fundamentals and important dangers like shedding capital, buyers can unlock hidden worth and obtain long-term efficiency — even outperforming the benchmark.
Listed here are some film concepts: Misplaced in Benchmarkland, The Benchmark Redemption, Gone with the Benchmark, and Breaking Benchmarks
Hyperlink to analysis papers by Pim van Vliet.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/low-volatility-etfs-attracting-big-inflows-2011-12
[i] See Bernstein (2012) Capital Concepts: The Inconceivable Origins of Trendy Wall Road.
[ii] Swinkels, L., Blitz, D., Hallerbach, W., & van Vliet, P. (2018). Fairness Solvency Capital Necessities-What Institutional Regulation Can Study from Personal Investor Regulation. The Geneva Papers on Danger and Insurance coverage-Points and Apply, 43(4), 633-652.
