Portfolio Management on an Emerging Market: Dynamic Strategy or Passive Strategy?

Abstract

At first glance, the portfolio management strategy seems like a resolved question, but practitioners continue to perform poorly on the stock markets. This paper highlights the portfolio management in the specific case of the West African regional stock exchange, regarding two management strategies. These are dynamic strategy and passive strategy. Within this framework, we will compare an investor who is constantly betting on price fluctuations with another who is betting on dividends. Its originality lies in the approach that is used. Through a simulation methodology based on real market data, the main results indicate that an emerging market is a savings market more than it is a speculation market. Besides, other results indicate that, one can predict on the West African regional stock exchange tomorrow’s prices from today’s prices. This does not mean that investors are making good predictions because the predictability of prices is due to the absence of changes in asset prices on the market. We draw the conclusion that it is difficult for one speculator to outperform the other. A rational investor would benefit from anticipating the distribution of dividends rather than focusing on price fluctuations. Consequently, the buy and hold strategy is therefore the best to be rewarded in an emerging market. Nonetheless, this practice can lead to a decline in liquidity.