Socially Responsible Investing Strategies under Pressure: Evidence from the COVID-19 Crisis

Abstract

By matching socially responsible (SR) stock indexes worldwide with their conventional benchmarks, the authors study the resilience of SR investment strategies during the COVID-19 crisis. Overall, SR indexes exhibited dynamics very similar to their benchmarks. The sample is composed of 573 SR stock indexes from MSCI, STOXX, and FTSE. In the first half of 2020, the average daily return was –0.11% for SR indexes and their benchmarks, with annualized volatility of 40% for each. SR indexes remained very close to their benchmarks during both the fever period (February 24–March 20) and the rebound period (March 23–May 29). The financial performance of SR strategies shows substantial heterogeneity, however, with SR impact strategies slightly outperforming their benchmarks. In addition, the resilience of SR strategies was a little stronger in countries and during periods in which the number of COVID-19 cases was increasing. In robustness checks, the authors control for public attention to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the economic effects of new policies implemented during the crisis, including lockdowns, and fiscal and monetary policy changes. Their findings call for careful SR investment selection because not all such investments have provided equal returns in the face of the COVID pandemic.

TOPICS: Security analysis and valuation, mutual funds/passive investing/indexing, ESG investing, performance measurement

Key Findings

• ▪ On average, socially responsible investing (SRI) indexes neither significantly outperformed nor underperformed their conventional benchmark during the COVID-19 crisis.

• ▪ SRI strategies show substantial heterogeneity, with impact strategies delivering better performance.