WIXLIB

Downside Risk Timing by Mutual FundsAndriy Bodnaruk*, Bekhan Chokaev**, and Andrei Simonov***AbstractWe study whether mutual funds systematically manage downside risk of their portfolios in ways thatimprove their performance. We find that actively managed mutual funds on average possess positivedownside risk timing ability. Funds investing in large-cap and value stocks have stronger downside risktiming skills. Managers adjust funds’ downside risk exposure in response to macroeconomic information.Funds more skilled in timing downside risk outperform those which are not by 13.8bp per month (or 1.67percent per year).JEL classification: G10, G11.Keywords: downside risk, market timing, mutual funds, risk management* University of Notre Dame, abodnaru@nd.edu ** Gaidar Institute and RANEPA, chokaev@iet.ru ***Michigan State University, Gaidar Institute, and CEPR, simonov@bus.msu.edu

Downside Risk Timing by Mutual FundsAbstractWe study whether mutual funds systematically manage downside risk of their portfolios in ways thatimprove their performance. We find that actively managed mutual funds on average possess positivedownside risk timing ability. Funds investing in large-cap and value stocks have stronger downside risktiming skills. Managers adjust funds’ downside risk exposure in response to macroeconomic information.Funds more skilled in timing downside risk outperform those which are not by 13.8bp per month (or 1.67percent per year).JEL classification: G10, G11.Keywords: downside risk, market timing, mutual funds, risk management

“Our team maintains a strict focus on downsiderisk management as we remain fully invested inthe equity markets.”Jerry Miccolis, CIO of Giralda Advisors1. IntroductionThe financial economics literature has firmly established that investors do not treat upward anddownward price movements symmetrically, but exhibit greater sensitivity to losses than to gains. Lossaverse investors require a premium for holdings assets which returns correlate greatly with the market whenthe market goes down. Thus, securities which pose high downside risk have higher average returns, i.e.,they deliver abnormally positive returns in good times to compensate investors for losses sustained duringmarket declines (Ang, Chen, and Xing, 2006).The important implication of this phenomenon for asset management is that mutual fund managers canachieve superior returns by shifting funds between high and low downside risk stocks in anticipation ofbroad market movements. In our paper we examine whether mutual funds systematically manage downsiderisk of their portfolios in ways that improve their (risk-adjusted) performance.Management of portfolio’s downside risk is inherently related to managers’ market timing skills as bothstrategies rely on the ability to predict the direction of future market price movements. A fund managerengaged in market timing would increase fund’s exposure to the market by shifting funds from cash andbonds to stocks as well as increase fund’s holdings of high regular beta stocks prior to market advances andwould decrease exposure to the market prior to market declines. The abnormal performance relative to thepassive benchmark is, thus, achieved by switching to assets, which returns correlate strongly with themarket in general, before markets go up.11Earlier evidence (Treynor and Mazuy, 1966, Henriksson and Merton, 1981, Becker, Ferson, Myers, and Schill, 1999,Jiang, 2003) suggested that fund managers on average do not have market timing skills. More recent studies (e.g.,Chance and Hemler, 2001, Bollen and Busse, 2001, Jiang, Yao, and Yu, 2007), however, find positive market timingability.1

In contrast, if a manager engaged in downside risk timing (hereafter DRT) anticipates the market to goup (down), she would increase (decrease) the fund’s ownership of stocks which stand to lose in bad times,i.e., high downside risk stocks. Hence, the abnormal value created by this strategy accrues to loading onstocks, which stand to lose a lot in a down market, prior to upward market movements. These two strategies– market timing and downside risk timing – would be identical if stock returns’ comovements with marketreturns were symmetric; but they need not be the same if stocks comove more with the market when themarket goes down than when it goes up (Hong, Tu, and Zhou, 2007).Which of these strategies would a manager pursue? Market timing and downside risk timing are notmutually exclusive strategies, but could rather be used to complement each other. Indeed, if a manageranticipates the market to go up, he may move funds from safer to riskier assets (market timing) and withinthese riskier assets choose stocks with higher downside beta (downside risk timing). Additionally, mutualfunds’ mandates in general restrict funds from holding large cash positions which inhibits their ability totake bets on the direction of market movement.2 Indeed, Yan (2006) shows that aggregate cash holdings bymutual funds do not forecast future returns implying that cash management is not a good indicator of markettiming skills by the managers. By actively managing downside risk of a fund’s portfolio, a manager canbenefit from his ability to predict market returns without violating this restriction. This suggests thatdownside risk timing is likely to be of first order importance.Though our paper is the first formal academic investigation of the downside risk timing activities bymutual funds, the financial industry itself has long recognized the importance of managing downside riskfor serving clients’ needs and improving performance. For example, Janus Orion fund described itsinvestment goals in 2006 prospectus as “seek[ing] to outperform the benchmark index while managingThe following quote from the Oppenheimer Equity Income Fund’s prospectus provides an example of suchrestriction on cash holdings: “It [the fund] will invest at least 80% of its net assets, plus borrowings for investmentpurposes, in equity securities”. Simutin (2014) concludes that cash holdings while imposing drag on performance,allow managers to make quick investments in attractive stocks and satisfy outflows without costly fire sales.22

downside risk.”3 A simple Factiva search identifies close to one thousand mutual funds discussingmanagement of downside risk in their 2013 prospectuses.4To organize our thinking of the concept of downside risk timing, we extend Henriksson and Merton(1986) model of market timing. We show that managers which do not possess forecasting abilities aboutfuture direction of the market choose optimally not to engage in market timing of any kind. Managers withintermediate abilities engage in classical market timing. Finally, managers with higher forecasting abilityare more likely to follow downside risk timing strategies.To evaluate downside risk timing of mutual funds, we follow the approach of Jiang, Yao, and Yu (2007)and construct a measure based on observed mutual fund portfolio holdings. Specifically, for each fund weestimate its relative beta as the weighted average of downside market betas of the individual stocks held inthe portfolio net of the weighted average of their regular market betas. We then test whether the covariancebetween the abnormal changes in fund’s relative beta and holding period market returns – which we denoteas Downside Risk Timing or DRT – is significant. Since we focus on changes in downside beta net ofchanges in regular beta this covariance measures downside risk timing in excess of market timing byconstruction.Our holdings-based measure of downside risk timing skills has several advantages over traditionallyused returned based measures which are derived from nonlinear regressions of realized fund returns againstcontemporaneous market returns (e.g., Henriksson and Merton, 1981, Treynor and Mazuy, 1966). First, anynon-linear relation between fund returns and market returns may not reflect the timing abilities of themanagers, but instead could be induced by certain dynamic trading strategies or option-like featuresembedded in returns of some portfolio stocks (Jagannathan and Korajczyk, 1986). Second, return-basedmeasures suffer from look-ahead bias as they rely on ex-post realized returns to estimate beta shifting.Holdings-based measures use only ex-ante information on portfolio holdings.3At the beginning of 2006, the fund was ranked in the 89th percentile in terms of downside risk timing skills estimatedover the previous 60 month window.4The reported number includes fixed income funds as well as multiple classes of shares by equity mutual funds.3

We conduct our analysis on a sample of 4,921 actively managed U.S. equity mutual funds over theperiod from 1982 and 2011. We demonstrate that, on average, mutual funds have significant positive DRTability over three and six month horizons. This result is robust to explicitly accounting for funds’ markettiming activities and most pronounced in more actively managed funds as measured by “active share”(Cremers and Petajisto, 2009).Downside risk timing ability does not depend on fund size, expense ratio, or turnover. However, fundswhich tend to invest in large-cap and value stocks appear to have stronger downside risk timing skills.Managers also adjust funds’ downside risk exposure in response to macroeconomic information, inparticular to the level of both short-term and long-term interest rates, credit premium, and aggregateearning-to-price ratio. Our results, however, remain strong even after controlling for both fund-specific andmacroeconomic variables.Funds skilled in downside risk timing tend to increase their ownership of small stocks and are lessinclined to move into growth stocks prior to market increases; they are also less eager to unload momentumstocks prior to market declines. The observed differences in portfolio reallocations, however, are relativelysmall in magnitude suggesting that changes in downside risk exposure are achieved by shifting fundsbetween stocks with similar characteristics, but different downside betas.Finally, we assess the economic consequences of downside risk timing. We demonstrate that fundswhich are more skilled in timing downside risk outperform those who do not: zero-cost strategies based onfunds’ DRT abilities generate abnormal performance of 13.8 bp per month (or 1.67 percent per year). Thisperformance is stronger during the down markets; however, it is still economically and statisticallymeaningful in upmarkets.The paper which is most complementary to ours is Polkovnichenko, Wei, and Zhao (2015). They arguethat actively managed mutual funds respond to investors’ demand to curtail tail risk by reducing downsiderisk of their portfolios while at the same time still trying to capture upside potential. Polkovnicheko et al.(2015) show that returns of actively managed value funds exhibit stronger downside hedging properties4