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Equity Markets.
Recently Indian equity market has been in the news, scaling new heights and
attracting massive international inflows in the form of investment by foreign
institutional investors. This raises the issue of how attractive is Indian equity market in
comparison with that of developed economies equity markets. The present paper is a
comparative study of return and risk of Indian equity and that of selected developed
economies markets from the perspective of an investor in the respective developed
country. In this exercise conversion from Indian currency to the currency of the foreign
country becomes relevant. Hence the above risk and return have to be adjusted for
currency conversion. The author has selected Japan, USA and UK for this study. Using
selected stock indices and exchange rate data for the last one year, the study compares
the risk-return measures of Indian equity with those of Japan, USA and UK.
Suggestions are made for foreign institutional investors.
The twentieth century has seen international flows of capital. However till
eighties it was predominantly debt capital in the form of bank loans and bond issues.
The international new issues market with globally syndicated offerings emerged during
eighties.
The initial thrust came from desire on the part of institutional investors to
diversify their portfolio’s globally in search of higher return and risk reduction.
Financial deregulation and elimination of exchange controls in a number of countries
permitted large institutional investors to increase their exposure to foreign equities.
The trend has seen some hiccups like the stock market crash of October 1987
While some markets remained bullish despite the crash of October 1987, institutional
investors reduced their exposure to equities in general during 1988-89. The trend has
turned upward again.
Data on international equity flows bringout the substantial increase in net equity
flows, from 1986 onwards. It is interesting to note that there is substantial increase in
equity flows to markets other than US, Japan, UK and Europe – like South Korea,
Taiwan, Indonesia.
Whatever may be the form of investment, the underlying equity market databases
become relevant.
An attempt is made in this study to critically compare the risk return profile of
Indian equity market with that of selected developed countries from the point of view of
an investor in the developed economy.
International investing:
Investors go in for international investing for it offers opportunities for higher
return and at a lower overall risk. International Investing offers good diversifying
opportunities, which lowers risk in the portfolio for an investor. Recent surge in the
equity capital inflow to India illustrates the opportunities for developing economies for
investing in India.
But international investing brings in new set of threats in the form of new risks
like political, economic, legal, exchange rate related risks.
For ex. when a Japanese fund invests in Japanese equity market, it is domestic
equity investing.
We analyse the risk – return profile of the equity market from the point of view of
the Japanese investing fund. Two market returns become relevant for the Japanese
institution
Here we analyse the risk-return profile from the developed economies view.
Hence India is considered on foreign economy.
For each of the countries we collect data on one popular stock index, as follows
Relevant data on weekly stock prices is collected for the year 2005 and the weekly
mean return and standard deviation are computed using MS Excel. Later they are
converted to annual returns and risks.
Currency behaviour:
In the period under study,
Yen depreciated against rupee by 8%
Dollar depreciated against rupee by 5%
Pound appreciated against rupee by 4.5%
Stock Returns:
Home country Indian stock-foreign currency return
Japan 34.02% 32.34%
US 4.5 35.73%
UK 20.44% 46.10%
In the period under study investors from USA and UK are benefited by investing
in India. They are getting higher return but the risk is also high.
In the case of Japan, that country’s stock market itself is doing very well. Further
in the period studied the yen depreciated against rupee by 8% annually. It fell from .4
to .38 per rupee. The decline has off set the gain made in stock returns in India.
In case of all the developed countries studied the risk in respective countries
market is lower than risk in India. This is understandable as India is an emerging
economy still to be developed.
Correlation:
Japan Nikkie vs Indian stock market index converted using yen = .92
US S & P vs Indian stock market index converted into dollar = .73
UK FTSE – 100 vs Indian stock market index converted into pound = .98
I USA UK
J 1
USA .67 1
UK .86 .78 1
.91 .73 .9698 1
Interpretation:
Indian market offers superior returns compared to selected developed equity
markets. Hence foreign institutional investors are pouring money into India.
Limitations:
The study analyses historical price movements. But investors’ decisions are
based on future expectations. Hence research should focus on future forecasts
The study for simplicity assumes that the investing fund in the developed foreign
country converts the returns into foreign country on a real time basis. But the
fund may convert if anytime in future when we take this possibility into account
the study takes dimension which needs to be addressed taking into account
advanced techniques beyond the scope of this study.
References:
1. Apte P.G – International Financial Management, Tata McGraw Hill Pub. Co.
2. Shapiro Allen – Multinational Financial Management, Prentice Hall of India
3. Business World – Jan 2006
Editorial
Our teacher friends have responded to our ‘call for paper’ for this seminar and
contributed papers on the major theme and the various sub themes. We bring out their
views in the form of abstracts.
Which has dramatically changed the way we live the way we function. Thanks to
the electronics age, we are able to bring out a CD containing full papers of all
contributors.
Portfolio is a set of securities so formed as to not to keep all eggs in the same
basket. Investor while selecting equity in the portfolio, will consider
Data:
In this paper, we attempt a comparison of Indian Equity Prices with developed
economy’s equity prices. The developed economies markets we consider are
i) US equity market represented by S & P index
ii) UK and European market represented by FTSE index
iii) Japan represented by Nikkie index
The data on index levels and the corresponding exchange rates was collected
from the magazine The Economist different issues for 1st January to 31st December 2005
Analysis of Data:
Following table describes the return and risk for the selected markets studies
We find that in the year 2005 Indian Equity market has given the highest return
on investment but the risk also is highest.
Japan US UK India
Japan
US
UK
India