Structure And Performance Of Islamic Investment Funds Finance Essay - Free Essay Example

Khan (1998) studied the modern practices in commodity, currency and corporate stock trading in the light of Islamic economic framework and stated that under Islamic principles, Mudarabah or Shirakah certificates can be traded in stock exchanges. However there is no concept of preferred equity in Islamic finance as it Riba which is forbidden under Islam. Khan stated that liability towards losses of the organization need to be met which may have accumulated over a period in order to sell or disinvest shares of that organization which implied that each shareholder has a liability for cumulative past losses as well as current losses in proportion to the capital invested. Khan (1998) proposed a model of stock valuation which incorporates the Islamic principles that intrinsic value of shares should provide the prospective investor a fair amount of information about past performance of organization. Iv = intrinsic value of shares Pv = par value of shares Ri = Profits, R eserves etc L = losses S = No. of Share Lewis (2010) examined the current and historic structure and performance of Islamic investment funds and found out that Islamic investments have grown quickly over the past few years and now there are approximately 650 Islamic funds operating globally. Lewis also discovered that in the past Islamic funds have focused more on negative forbidden screening principles instead of focusing on both the negative and positive screening methodologies like socially responsible funds that focus primarily more on investments in companies which play a part in human welfare. However these Socially Responsible Investments (SRI) funds performed slightly poor compared to Islamic funds because Islamic funds invested a significant portion in energy companies who enjoyed profitability because of rising oil prices, SRI funds do not invest large portions in fossil fuel energy companies primarily because of their futile side effects on environment. Nik Ma heran and Masliza (2008) analyzed the performance of Islamic mutual funds at Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange to investigate if these funds underperform or over perform the market index using average return on mutual funds, standard deviation of weekly returns, coefficient of variation, Treynor and Sharpe index. They found out that most of the funds achieved a lower return than market from the period 2002 until 2006. However in terms of risk level Islamic mutual funds showed less risky behavior compared to the market since the betas of Islamic mutual funds was less than one. Rennebook, Horst and Zhang (2007) critically reviewed the available literature on socially responsible investments and concluded that a primary reason for low returns from socially responsible funds could be the multi-task nature of portfolio managers who pursue both financial and social objectives. They also found out that if investors avoid investments in unethical/asocial businesses, than they may require a low rate of return than other investors who do not show any similar type of preferences. Hussein (2007) analyzed the returns of FTSE Global Islamic index and Dow Jones Islamic Index from 1993 till 2004 and compared them with the returns of Dow jones world index and FTSE All world index. He found out that application of Shariah screening doesnt adversely impact on Islamic indices performance as Islamic indices performed as well as their counterparts over the entire period. Hussein (2007) stated that Islamic indices yield statistically positive returns in bull market period though Islamic indices underperform the all world indices in the bear period and in the long run have a superior performance compared with counterparts in entire market period. Abdullah, Hassan and Mohammad (2007) compared the performance of Islamic and conventional mutual funds in Malaysian capital market with the help of Sharpe index, adjusted Sharpe index, Jensen Alpha, timing and selective ability and found out that Islamic funds are less risky than conventional funds and both Islamic and conventional funds have diversification levels which are less than 50 per cent of the diversification level of the market portfolio. They discovered that Islamic funds performed better than conventional funds during bearish periods while conventional funds performed better than Islamic during bullish periods and concluded that Islamic funds can be used as hedging tools. Hussein (2005) compared the performance of Dow Jones Islamic market index and FTSE Global Islamic index and benchmarked it against their counterparts, Dow Jones World index and FTSE Global Index respectively, using parametric t-statistic and non-parametric signed rank test. Monthly returns data had been used ranged from 1996 2004 and the periods had been divided into bull and bear return phases to make more meaningful conclusions from results. Hussein (2005) found out that Dow Jones Islamic Index outperformed its counterpart in the entire period (1996 2004) and bull period. The mean monthly return of Dow Jones World Index was higher than the DJ Islamic index over the entire bull period which indicated that the Islamic index has greater volatility in comparison with DJ world index. Contrary to this, Dow Jones Islamic index fails to maintain its better performance over the bear market phase where the DJ world index gives better returns. In case of FTSE indices, FTSE Global Islamic index outperforms FTSE All world index in the entire and bull periods. However FTSE Islamic index underperforms FTSE world index over bear period. Hussein (2005) also found out that the beta of both Islamic indices is greater than one and higher than their counterparts which imply that both Islamic indices are riskier than their counterparts. Hence Hussein (2005) stated that the application of Shariah screening principles has no adverse effect on Islamic indices performance over the years and concluded that Shariah investing offer su perior performance compared to unscreened portfolios. Albaity and Ahmad (2008) examined the performance of KLSI, A Shariah Compliant Index at Bursa Malaysia, and benchmarked it against KLCI which is a conventional stock market index at Bursa Malaysia using measures of risk adjusted returns and found out that KLCI is outperforming KLSI. Albaity and Ahmed (2008) also found out that KLCI has a higher beta as evident from conventional Non-Islamic indices and that in the short run both indices move in the same direction and tend to cause each other. Hence they concluded that there is no significant difference in the returns and movements of both indices. Hakim and Rashidian (2002) applied Islamic equity screening principles on Wilshire 5000 index and created a Shariah Compliant Portfolio and compared the return characteristics of the created Wilshire Islamic portfolio and Dow Jones Islamic market index portfolio with the parent Wilshire 5000 index and found out that the reduced div ersification characteristic of newly created portfolio has not adversely affected its performance when compared with parent Wilshire 5000. Hakim and Rashidian (2002) examined the causality between the Islamic index, the Wilshire 5000 and the Tbill rate and found out that the Islamic index is influenced by factors independent from the broad market or interest rates which are contrary to the widely accepted notion that Dow Jones Islamic Index exhibits high correlation with broad market. They concluded that such correlation is temporary and false Sauer (1997) measured and analyzed the average monthly returns and variability, Jensen Alpha and Sharpe performance of the Domini 400 Social index portfolio and benchmarked it against the performance of two unrestricted portfolios (SP 500 and CRSP value weighted market indexes). Sauer (1997) discovered that the application of socially responsible strategy in stock selection does not impact the investment performance adversely. He concluded that the potential performance costs of implementing socially responsible criteria, as represented by the performance of Domini social index are negligible. Sauer (1997) also stated that the performance of Domini Social equity Mutual fund compares favorably to the performance of Vanguard SP 500 index. Bauer, Koedijik and Otten (2004) analyzed the performance of 103 German, UK and US ethical mutual funds and found no indication of substantial difference in return behavior between ethical and conventional mutual fund returns after controlling for factors like book to market and size. Bauer, Koedijik and Otten (2004) also concluded that ethical mutual funds are typically less exposed to market variability compared to conventional funds. Hamilton, Jo and Statman (1993) studied 32 socially responsible mutual funds and compared their returns with a portfolio of 177 conventional mutual funds. They found out that market do not price social responsibility characteristics so investors c an expect to lose nothing by investing in socially responsible mutual funds; social responsibility factors have no effect on expected stock returns or companies cost of capital. Derigs and Marzban (2009) analyzed SP, DJIM, FTSE, MSCI and HSBC Shariah Complaint indices and stated that current Shariah compliant strategies result in much lower portfolio performance than portfolios without considering Shariah Compliance. They suggested that the return from Shariah complaint strategies can be increased by making Shariah compliance an attribute of portfolio constructed rather than measuring compliance on as asset level. Derigs and Marzban (2009) argued, Funds are investment vehicles, which are financially independent of the institutions that establish them. Therefore, a fund takes the form of an independent company, such as a limited liability company (Norman, 2004), in which investors act as shareholders. So they proposed that with respect to compliance a fund which itself invests in multiple companies has to be evaluated in the same way as a conventional independent company. Hassan and Antoniou (2006) examined the potential impact of Islamic screening restrictions on investment performance by comparing the performance characteristics of a diversified of Islamic screened stock indices with conventional benchmarks (Data stream Global Index) and the degree of correlation and volatility in price movements between both indices. Hassan and Antoniou (2006) concluded that the impact of stock screens is closely related to the performance of stock markets and further stated that any argument that Islamic equity investments are less profitable than conventional types of investments is questionable which is supported by relatively major differences between Sharpe and Treynor measures and significant positive Alpha over the positive returns period when the Dow Jones Islamic Market Index outperformed the Data stream Global Index.