Market Indices

AgPa #7: Spotify Streaming and Stock Returns

Music sentiment and stock returns around the world (2021)
Alex Edmans, Adrian Fernandez-Perez, Alexandre Garel, Ivan Indriawan
Journal of Financial Economics, In Press, Corrected Proof, URL

This week’s AGNOSTIC Paper examines the role of music sentiment in the stock market. What sounds like statistical hocus-pocus is part of an important question. Do other factors than rational information drive stock markets?

I like the paper for its creative use of alternative data and its clean methodology. But to be honest, I was somewhat skeptical when I first heard about it. However, the authors present an intuitive economic rationale and rigorously test their hypotheses in various robustness checks. The results are quite interesting…

  • Music sentiment is related to stock market returns
  • Music sentiment is more important in less efficient markets
  • Music sentiment is also related to fund flows and bond market returns

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AgPa #5: The Return on Everything

The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870–2015 (2019)
Òscar Jordà, Katharina Knoll, Dmitry Kuvshinov, Moritz Schularick, Alan M. Taylor
The Quarterly Journal of Economics 134(3), 1225-1298, URL

This week’s AGNOSTIC Paper is a deep dive into financial history. The authors estimate the total return of equity, housing, bonds, and bills in 16 advanced economies for the period from 1870 to 2015.

The paper is very comprehensive and I focused on the issues that are (in my opinion) most interesting for investors:

  • Real returns on risky assets were 7-8% from 1870 to 2015
  • Returns on risky assets were substantial but volatile
  • Realized risk premiums fluctuate widely across time and countries

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AgPa #4: Measuring the World’s Assets (2/2)

Historical Returns of the Market Portfolio (2019)
Ronald Doeswijk, Trevin Lam, Laurens Swinkels
The Review of Asset Pricing Studies 10(3), 521-567, URL

This is the second post on the global market portfolio and again examines two papers. It is designed to be a sequel, so I recommend to read the first part before.

The global market portfolio is a tough empirical challenge. Different methodology leads to different results and the papers disagree on several points. But there are some common insights that enhance our understanding of the market portfolio.

  • Most assets are not publicly traded
  • Stock markets are relatively small
  • Recent historical returns were 4.4% to 6.3% per year
  • The market portfolio is a good starting point

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AgPa #3: Measuring the World’s Assets (1/2)

The Global Market Portfolio (2021)
Gregory Gadzinski, Markus Schuller, Andrea Vacchino
The Journal of Portfolio Management 47(8), 151-163, URL

This week’s AGNOSTIC Paper attempts to translate an important theoretical concept into practice – the global market portfolio.

The global market portfolio captures all available assets and each is weighted by its market value. The authors develop two proxies for this portfolio and present some interesting insights:

  • Global assets were worth about $667T in 2019
  • The investable market portfolio returned 4.7% p.a. from 2005-2020/Q1
  • The non-investable market portfolio returned 5.9% p.a. from 2005-2020/Q1

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