Serbian Investment Practices
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SERBIAN INVESTMENT PRACTICES Retail and Institutional Investment Opportunities Examining volume driven growth strategies for institutional investors and facilitating a minimal principal value-investing plan for retail investing while building volume and capital on the domestic market. Ivan Struk www.ivanstruk.com +381 63 80 86 034 Belgrade, Serbia January 9th, 2017 Ivan Struk SERBIAN INVESTMENT PRACTICES [email protected] This report outlines the market inefficiencies of the Belgrade Stock Exchange while examining what role institutional investors currently play in the local capital and money market. Serbian banks, franchised banks, investment funds, and brokerages are considered in the evaluation of Serbia’s potential for active managed funds and retail investment in the future. Publicly available audit reports and financial statements of local market players has been used to evaluate portfolio selection. The conclusion of this examination has been that there is demand for actively managed investment products and retail investment devices, however the infrastructure of the local capital markets is still not ready to sustain the initiative. Disclaimer: The author of this publication is a Serbian citizen, however at the time of publishing holds no long positions in any Serbian equity securities. 2 Ivan Struk SERBIAN INVESTMENT PRACTICES [email protected] Table of Contents CURRENT EQUITY INVESTMENT IN SERBIA .......................................................................................... 4 OVERVIEW ........................................................................................................................................................................... 4 BELEX PERFORMANCE ..................................................................................................................................................... 5 BROKERAGE REPRESENTATION ....................................................................................................................................... 6 RETAIL INVESTMENT IN SERBIA .............................................................................................................. 7 RECENT ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENT DEVELOPMENTS .............................................................................................. 7 BARRIERS OF ENTRY AND RISK ....................................................................................................................................... 7 EXAMINING ASSET CLASSES ............................................................................................................................................. 8 FOREX & CFD ................................................................................................................................................................... 8 BELEX Capital Market Inefficiencies ..................................................................................................................... 9 SOLUTIONS TO VOLUME DRIVEN PROBLEMS ............................................................................................................. 12 Mobile Small Cap Value Investing in the U.S. .................................................................................................. 13 Institutional Use of Local Security Markets .................................................................................................... 14 SUMMARY ...................................................................................................................................................... 17 INDEX .............................................................................................................................................................. 18 CITATIONS ..................................................................................................................................................... 22 3 Ivan Struk SERBIAN INVESTMENT PRACTICES [email protected] Current Equity Investment in Serbia Overview For many decades the Republic of Serbia has been a largely unexplored and untapped financial market for institutional investors and traders. Political instability, inefficient internal bureaucracy, and repercussions of past historic events still stifling growth has played a role in impeding foreign direct investment and undermined citizens desire to reinvest into their own economy. Only recently has Serbia seen significant investment projects come from overseas that offer the economy a great potential for growth. One of the most rapidly grown industries in Serbia has been in outsourcing. Foreign companies exploit the discounted labor force, low cost of living, and geographic location of Serbia to outsource production of goods, call centers, financial accounting, and consulting. This has brought more capital into the market, helping reduce the unemployment rate, all strengthening the local currency – the Serbian Dinar. i ii Figure 1 Due to recent influx of FDI, the M1 money supply in Serbia has increased substantially beyond the pre-2008 crisis level and is now at an ATH. The Serbian Dinar (RSD) has also shown significant strength in 2017 against the Euro and the U.S Dollar (figure 2). The exchange rate for EURRSD and USDRSD has retraced back to pre 2015 levels. RSD performance in 2017 yielded great results for low-risk investment funds, and the local bond market. iii iv Figure 2: USDRSD and EURRSD both decreased in value greatly in 2017 crediting monetary and fiscal policies. Serbia aims to support the growth in 2018 by selling Euro reserves. 4 Ivan Struk SERBIAN INVESTMENT PRACTICES [email protected] BELEX Performance Despite the increasing growth of the economy most of the population remains largely unaware of any principles of investing, nor have had the desire to facilitate themselves with alternative streams of revenue from capital markets. This analyst has observed that most of the youth (under 25 years old) are not aware of the existence of the local BELEX Belgrade Stock Exchange (figure 3). Individuals familiar with the exchange are seldom able to name a handful of companies that trade on the exchange aside from Aerodrom Nikola Tesla a.d. and NIS a.d. While BELEX continues to face issues in low trading volume and lack of a local popularity amongst individual investors, the BELEX15, BELEXLine, and Wiener Borse SRX indices – all of which reflect BELEX performance – have closed out 2017 at 3-year highs. 2017 proved to be a prosperous year for investors around the world, tracking their ETFs; the SPDR Standard & Poor 500 rose 19%, the Vanguard FTSE Europe 23%, and the MSCI Serbia ETF outperformed them both with a YTD growth of 28%. v vi Figure 3: Both BELEX15 and BELEXLine idices have been demonstrating consecutive higher-highs and higher-lows for the most of 2017 marking healthy growth with no indications of over-valued assets. A limitation of the MSCI Serbia ETF is its lack of diversification, weighted in only two assets (NIS, and AERO). The Wiener Borse SRX index offers a broader composition of seven securities, weighted heavily in industrial goods and services, with significant representation in financial services from Komericijalna Banka. The SRX currently shows a 52-week performance of 10.36%. When compared with other emerging market indexes, the SRX outperforms the Bosnian and Croatian indices on a normalized return basis for the last 258 trading days (figure 4).vii 5 Ivan Struk SERBIAN INVESTMENT PRACTICES [email protected] Figure 4: Charted in red is the Wiener Borse Serbian Trading Index (SRX) Brokerage Representation The Belgrade Stock Exchange currently posts a list of 32 residing members, three of which market-makers. Despite the vast availability of brokerage resources these organizations provide very limited service offerings. Most members are representative of banks that only facilitate the purchase of BELEX shares with additional low risk portfolio management diversifying in bonds and foreign currency. There appears to be a very small presence of active portfolio management in Serbia due to the lack of volatility and volume in the exchange. Larger banks such as Raiffeisen AD offer their clients preselected portfolio funds. Raiffeisen Balanced Portfolio "Raiffeisen World" 5 Largest positions: DEKA IBOXX EUR LIQUID NON-FI ETF 7.71% FR IL FRTR 03/01/25 Bonds 7.53% Germany IL DBRI 0 1/2 04/15/30 Bonds 7.44% USA IL TII 3/8 07/15/25 Bonds 6.17% SPDR Emerging Mkts Local BD ETF 6.34% raiffeiseninvest.rs SUM 35.19% Figure 5: Valid as of Q2 2017. The Raiffeisen World portfolio consists 51.57% of ETFs, 36.94% of Government Bonds, and 11.49% of currency (figure 5). The bank also issues a recommended hold minimum of 5 years. The funds also draws a 2.5% management fee for a portfolio consisting mostly of fixed-income backed securities. As of September 2017, this fund stood at 15.23 million EURO net capitalization. In 2014, its best year, it generates 8.13%, and currently an annualized return of 5.48% (the fund was organized in August 2010). The SPDR Emerging Markets Local Bond ETF does not contain any weight of Serbian fixed income securities. Other investment funds have represented local securities with foreign securities in similar weights. viii 6 Ivan Struk SERBIAN INVESTMENT PRACTICES [email protected] A great challenge for BELEX and for Serbia is in facilitating a business environment that will bring more volume to the exchange. Current business infrastructure supports passive, growth driven investment styles, but not active fund management and trading.