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We examine whether US mutual funds managed by females have a higher portfolio liquidity than those of their male counterparts. Single female managers' holdings are 8–25% more liquid than those of single‐male‐managed funds. When there is a transition from a male to a female manager, fund holdings liquidity increases compared with a male to male transition. The findings are consistent with the risk‐averse and conservative decision‐making behaviour of female managers. We do not find evidence to support the excessive trading hypothesis that predicts a higher portfolio liquidity for overconfident male fund managers. Our findings add to growing evidence that gender affects professionals' investment choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We document a substantial customer complaint gap between stock and mutual financial firms. To assess whether this 21% per year complaint gap stems from complaint-prone customers in stock insurers, we examine state-adjudicated complaint success. To further delineate between customer selection or treatment explanations, we exploit within insurer complaints around random claims (natural disasters) and attention shocks (media scrutiny). Further tests reveal the complaint gap widens with greater competition, near insolvency thresholds, and with more price regulation. Overall, the results are inconsistent with the hypothesis that mutual financial firms exhibit low customer satisfaction, suggesting customers find this a beneficial organizational structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We test for the presence of a tail risk premium in the cross-section of mutual fund returns and find that the top tail risk quintile of funds outperforms the bottom by 4.4% per annum. This premium is not simply a reward for market risk, nor do commonly used risk factors offer an adequate explanation. Our findings hold across double-sorted portfolios formed on tail risk and a number of fund characteristics. We also find that funds susceptible to tail risk tend to be small, young, have high management fees, and have managers who do not risk their own capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mutual fund managers with degrees from elite universities tend to outperform their counterparts from less elite universities. We show that the better performance of elite graduates is generated from their better connections with underwriters that facilitate allocations to underpriced initial public offerings (IPOs). Indeed, we find that the funds outperform only in months when they are connected to underwriters issuing IPOs. A strategy of buying mutual funds in months when they are connected to underwriters scheduled to issue IPOs generates significant abnormal returns, as high as 4.08% per annum in hot markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What economic forces limit mutual fund managers from generating consistent outperformance?We propose and test the hypothesis that buy-side competition from other funds matters. We make three contributions. First, we propose new style-based spatial methods to identify the customized rivals of each fund. Second, we construct dynamic, fundspecific measures of competition and generate measures of skill as a fund's outperformance relative to its customized peers. Third, and finally, we show that funds outperforming their customized rivals generate future alpha when they face less competition. These results are economically significant and last for over four quarters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We apply methods designed to measure mutual fund skill to a cross section of funds that is unlikely to exhibit managerial portfolio selection skill: index funds. Surprisingly, these tests imply index fund skill exists, is persistent and is in similar proportion as in activ funds.We use the distribution of passive fund performance to gauge the incremental ability of active managers. Outperformance by top active funds is lower when benchmarked to the index fund distribution and disappears when we account for residual risk. Stochastic dominance tests suggest no risk-averse investor should choose a random active fund over a random index fund. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of top management teams (TMTs) in the US mutual fund industry, focusing on the shared experience between fund managers. We find that there is a significant positive relation between shared experience in TMTs and fund performance. In our subsequent analysis, we find our shared experience measure to be associated with several documented characteristics (e.g., industry concentration, number of holdings, turnover, duration, and active management) that are found in the prior literature to be associated with positive fund performance. This provides some insights on the potential channels through which shared experience results in positive fund performance. Our overall findings have important implication for investors in considering the shared experience in TMTs when making an investment decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the overwhelming trend in mutual funds toward team management, empirical studies find no performance benefits for this phenomenon. We show it is caused by large discrepancies in reported managerial structures in Center for Research in Security Prices and Morningstar Principia data sets versus U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission records, resulting in up to 50-basis-points underestimation of the team impact on fund returns. Using more accurate Morningstar Direct data, we find that team-managed funds outperform single-managed funds across various performance metrics. The relation between team size and fund performance is nonlinear. Also, team-managed funds take on no more risk than single-managed funds. Overall, team management benefits fund industry performance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using data on 3,225 actively managed U.S. mutual funds from 1980 to 2006, we test hypotheses designed to disentangle risk and change as outcomes of behavioral performance feedback routines. We theorize that managers make decisions involving risk and decisions involving change under different conditions and motivated by different concerns. Our results show internal social comparison across units within a firm will motivate risk, whereas external social comparison across firms will motivate change. When a fund experiences a performance shortfall relative to internal social comparison, the manager is likely to make decisions that involve risk because the social and spatial proximity of internal comparisons trigger individual concern and fear of negative individual consequences, such as job loss. In contrast, when a fund experiences a performance shortfall in comparison with external benchmarks, the manager is more likely to consider the shortfall an organizational concern and make changes that do not necessarily involve risk. Although we might assume that negative performance in comparison with both internal and external benchmarks would spur risky change, our results indicate that risky change occurs most often when a decision maker receives unfavorable internal social performance feedback and favorable external social performance feedback. By questioning assumptions about why and when organizational change involves risk, this study begins to separate change and risk outcomes of the decision-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Franklin Templeton started its Indian operations in the year 1996. On 24th April 2020 it made an announcement that it would be winding up Franklin India Credit Risk Fund and five other funds. This case is about the debacle of Franklin India Credit Risk Fund. Liquidity crisis in the debt market due to various events that happened in 2019, exposure towards debt instruments that turned risky (such as Yes Bank and Vodafone), reduction of inflows, redemption pressure, debt market becoming illiquid due to COVID-19 pandemic, were cited as some of the reasons for winding up of Franklin India Credit Risk Fund. The important thing to note is that when other credit risk funds have not taken the decision of winding up, why Franklin India Credit Risk Fund took this call? This case presents an opportunity to the students to analyse the factors that have contributed to the debacle and whether the decision taken is correct? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide a first look at short selling by mutual funds, a phenomenon not examined by prior research. Mutual funds that short do so frequently and in significant amounts, averaging about 16% of fund assets. These funds outperform benchmarks by 1.5% per year. An analysis of portfolio holdings shows that these funds generate abnormal performance from their short (4.1% per year) and long (1.5% per year) positions. Managers of short-selling mutual funds also exhibit superior performance in other funds they manage that do not use short sales. These findings suggest that managers of short-selling mutual funds are skilled. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We show that familiarity affects the portfolio decisions of mutual fund managers. Controlling for fund location, funds overweight stocks from their managers' home states by 12% compared with their peers. In team-managed funds, home-state overweighting is 37% larger than the fund location effect. The home-state bias is stronger if the manager is inexperienced, is resource-constrained, or spent more time in his home state. Home-state stocks do not outperform other holdings, confirming that home-state investments are not informed. The overweighting also leads to excessively risky portfolios. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent research finds that the stocks that mutual fund managers buy outperform the stocks that they sell (e.g., Chen, Jegadeesh, and Wermers (2000)). We study the nature of this stock-picking ability. We construct measures of trading skill based on how the stocks held and traded by fund managers perform at subsequent corporate earnings announcements. This approach increases the power to detect skilled trading and sheds light on its source. We find that the average fund’s recent buys significantly outperform its recent sells around the next earnings announcement, and that this accounts for a disproportionate fraction of the total abnormal returns to fund trades estimated in prior work. We find that mutual fund trades also forecast earnings surprises. We conclude that mutual fund managers are able to trade profitably in part because they are able to forecast earnings related fundamentals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many U.S. households, retirement saving is their most important savings goal. Over the past two decades, 40 1(k) plans have risen in importance in U.S. households' retirement saving. Households' management of those assets will have an impact on their accumulations at retirement. This article analyzes the asset allocation of 401(k) participants' account balances. Over the past decade, there has been a trend toward increasing diversification of investments among 401(k) plan participants. On average, at year-end 2008, 56% of 401(k) participants' assets were invested in equity securities through equity funds, the equity portion of balanced funds (including lifecycle/target date funds), and company stock. Forty-one percent of 40 1(k) participants' assets were invested in fixed-income securities such as stable value investments and bond and money market funds. Three-quarters of 40 1(k) plans included lifecycle funds in their investment lineup at year-end 2008. Also known as "target date" funds, they are designed to simplify investing and automate account rebalancing. New employees continued to use balanced funds, including lifecycle funds. In addition, the share of 401(k) accounts invested in company stock continued to shrink Recently hired 40 1(k) participants contributed to this trend as well; they were less likely to hold employer stock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports a unique analysis of private engagements by an activist fund. It is based on data made available to us by Hermes, the fund manager owned by the British Telecom Pension Scheme, on engagements with management in companies targeted by its UK Focus Fund. In contrast with most previous studies of activism, we report that the fund executes shareholder activism predominantly through private interventions that would be unobservable in studies purely relying on public information. The fund substantially outperforms benchmarks and we estimate that abnormal returns are largely associated with engagements rather than stock picking. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We develop a continuous-time model in which a portfolio manager is hired by a management company. On the basis of observed portfolio returns, all agents update their beliefs about the manager's skills. In response, investors can move capital into or out of the mutual fund, and the management company can fire the manager. Introducing firing rationalizes several empirically documented findings, such as the positive relation between manager tenure and fund size or the increase of portfolio risk before a manager replacement and the following risk decrease. The analysis predicts that the critical performance threshold that triggers firing increases significantly over a manager's tenure and that management replacements are accompanied by capital inflows when a young manager is replaced but may be accompanied by capital outflows when a manager with a long tenure is fired. Our model yields much lower valuation levels for management companies than simple applications of discounted cash flow (DCF) methods and is thus more consistent with empirical observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fund managers' bias toward geographically proximate securities is a well-researched phenomenon, yet the origins of managers' location choices have received little empirical scrutiny. This paper traces the employment and geographic heritage of 358 entrepreneurial fund managers and analyzes the determinants of where they locate their firms and stock selections. The evidence suggests that start-ups tend to be based close to the origins of their founders and in regions with more investment management firms, banking establishments, and large institutional money managers. New money managers show a strong local bias in their equity holdings, three times the levels previously documented for mutual funds. The propensity to invest closer to home correlates strongly with the presence of sub-advisory opportunities from institutional investors in the vicinity. While home bias levels between managers who relocate with their start-ups and the rest of the entrepreneurs are similar, preferences for stocks that were formally local persist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We apply a new bootstrap statistical technique to examine the performance of the U. S. Open-end, domestic equity mutual fund industry over the 1975 to 2002 period. A bootstrap approach is necessary because the cross section of mutual fund alphas has a complex nonnormal distribution due to heterogeneous risk-taking by funds as well as nonnormalities in individual fund alpha distributions. Our bootstrap approach uncovers findings that differ from many past studies. Specifically, we find that a sizable minority of managers pick stocks well enough to more than cover their costs. Moreover, the superior alphas of these managers persist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate whether mutual fund families strategically transfer performance across member funds to favor those more likely to increase overall family profits. We find that "high family value" funds (i.e., high fees or high past performers) overperform at the expense of "low value" funds. Such a performance gap is above the one existing between similar funds not affiliated with the same family. Better allocations of underpriced initial public offering deals and opposite trades across member funds partly explain why high value funds overperform. Our findings highlight how the family organization prevalent in the mutual fund industry generates distortions in delegated asset management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine whether mutual funds change their names to take advantage of current hot investment styles, and what effects these name changes have on inflows to the funds, and to the funds' subsequent returns. We find that the year after a fund changes its name to reflect a current hot style, the fund experiences an average cumulative abnormal flow of 28%, with no improvement in performance. The increase in flows is similar across funds whose holdings match the style implied by their new name and those whose holdings do not, suggesting that investors are irrationally influenced by cosmetic effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mutual fund managers may decide to deviate from a well-diversified portfolio and concentrate their holdings in industries where they have informational advantages. In this paper, we study the relation between the industry concentration and the performance of actively managed U.S. mutual funds from 1984 to 1999. Our results indicate that, on average, more concentrated funds perform better after controlling for risk and style differences using various performance measures. This finding suggests that investment ability is more evident among managers who hold portfolios concentrated in a few industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a performance evaluation approach in which a fund manager's skill is judged by the extent to which the manager's investment decisions resemble the decisions of managers with distinguished performance records. The proposed performance measures use historical returns and holdings of many funds to evaluate the performance of a single fund. Simulations demonstrate that our measures are particularly useful in ranking managers. In an application that relies on such ranking, our measures reveal strong predictability in the returns of U.S. equity funds. Our measures provide information about future fund returns that is not contained in the standard measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how mutual funds from 26 developed and developing countries allocate their investment between domestic and foreign equity markets and what factors determine their asset allocations worldwide. We find robust evidence that these funds, in aggregate, allocate a disproportionately larger fraction of investment to domestic stocks. Results indicate that the stock market development and familiarity variables have significant, but asymmetric, effects on the domestic bias (domestic investors overweighting the local markets) and foreign bias (foreign investors under or overweighting the overseas markets), and that economic development, capital controls, and withholding tax variables have significant effects only on the foreign bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the“smart money” effect documented by Gruber (1996) and Zheng (1999)reflect fund selection ability of mutual fund investors? We examine the finding that investors are able to predict mutual fund performance and invest accordingly. We show that the smart money effect is explained by the stock return momentum phenomenon documented by. Further evidence suggests investors do not select funds based on a momentum investing style, but rather simply chase funds that were recent winners. Our finding that a common factor in stock returns explains the smart money effect offers no affirmation of investor fund selection ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of incentive fees on the behavior of mutual fund managers. Funds with incentive fees exhibit positive stock selection ability, but a beta less than one results in funds not earning positive fees. From an investor's perspective, positive alphas plus lower expense ratios make incentive-fee funds attractive. However, incentive-fee funds take on more risk than non-incentive-fee funds, and they increase risk after a period of poor performance. Incentive fees are useful marketing tools, since more new cash flows go into incentive-fee funds than into non-incentive-fee funds, ceteris paribus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how information becomes reflected in prices when investment decisions are delegated to fund managers whose tenure may be shorter than the time it takes for their private information to become public. We consider a sequence of managers, where each subsequent manager inherits the portfolio of their predecessor. We show that the inherited portfolio distorts the subsequent manager's incentive to trade on long-term information. This allows erroneous past information to persist, causing mispricing similar to a bubble. We investigate the magnitude of the mispricing. In addition, we examine endogenous information quality. In some cases, information quality increases when the manager's expected tenure decreases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the determinants of mutual fund mergers and their subsequent wealth impact on shareholders of target and acquiring funds. Results indicate significant improvements in postmerger performance and a reduction in expense ratios for target fund shareholders. In contrast, acquiring fund shareholders experience a significant deterioration in postmerger performance. The net asset flows continue to remain negative for the combined fund in the year following the merger. The likelihood of a fund merger is inversely related to fund size for both within- and across-family mutual fund mergers. However, poor past performance is a significant determinant for only within-family mergers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study 120 rights offerings by closed-end funds from 1988-1998. On average, rights offerings are announced when funds trade at a premium. This premium turns into a discount over the course of the offering. The premium decline is more severe when increases in the investment advisor's compensation are larger and when the fund uses affiliated broker-dealers to solicit subscriptions to the offer. A clinical analysis shows that rights offerings allow investment advisors to sidestep fee rebates and increase pecuniary benefits to affiliated entities. Overall, our results suggest the presence of significant conflicts of interest in rights offerings by closed-end funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investors in hedge funds and commodity trading advisors (CTAs) are concerned with risk as well as return. We investigate the volatility of hedge funds and CTAs in light of managerial career concerns. We find an association between past performance and risk levels consistent with previous findings for mutual fund managers. Variance shifts depend upon relative rather than absolute fund performance. The importance of relative rankings points to the importance of reputation costs in the investment industry. Our analysis of factors contributing to fund disappearance shows that survival depends on absolute and relative performance, excess volatility, and on fund age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The aim of this study is to analyze whether managers, practitioners and individual investors could obtain higher risk-adjusted returns by allocating their investments to funds that integrate specific levels of socially responsible (SR) criteria in their portfolios. This is achieved by comparing the performance of mutual funds according to their SR characteristics: environmental, governance, social, and sustainability attributes. For a large sample of 3920 equity SR mutual funds around the world, performance is measured using a multifactor model that incorporates relevant benchmarks according to the fund investment objectives, and using Carhart's (1997) methodology to measure mutual fund performance persistence. In general, fund performance is not significant, the average being negative and close to zero. Funds achieving relatively high levels of SR attributes in their portfolios seem to experience overall worse performances. This evidence is, however, mainly driven by the behavior of worst-performing funds. Moreover, investing in the previous best SR funds could lead investors to greater overall returns in most areas and levels of SR attributes considered. This evidence highlights the role of managers in enhancing the returns of a portfolio with a well-defined SR investment policy. Therefore, there is no incompatibility between pursuing higher ethical (and sustainable) values as well as greater financial performances from investments—provided managers have the skills necessary to choose the right SR funds. Highlights • We compare the performance of socially responsible (SR) funds. • Funds with high SR attributes experience overall worse performances. • Investing in the previous best SR funds leads to greater overall returns. • The evidence highlights managers' role for designing SR investment policies. • Ethical and sustainable values are compatible with greater performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses research on unit trust investments in Great Britain during 1965 and 1975. It was found that there is no ability to accurately predict share prices by unit trust managers. However, analysis of unit trust performances found that there were statistically significant inferior performances whereas there were none found to be superior. Similar results were found when researching unit trust management in the U.S. Also, beta values relating to unit trusts and market volatility are examined.

This paper analyzes the effects of a share valuation technique, amortized cost valuation, on institutional money market funds (MMFs) and their investors. The possibility of arbitrage between securities priced at market value and amortized MMFs is investigated. It is found that significant dilution has taken place as a result of this valuation technique. Losses per share have been about 10 basis points per year. Evidence that arbitrageurs will take advantage of a misvaluation of the MMF and cause losses to other shareholders may suggest that some investors should reconsider the desirability of amortized MMFs for their investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study if actively managed exchange-traded funds (AMETFs) and actively managed mutual funds (AMMFs) are complements or substitutes. It also tests if there are tax or liquidity clientele effects.Design/methodology/approach The study investigates the relation between individual AMMF flows and aggregate AMETF flows as well as individual AMETF flows and aggregate AMMF flows. A 2013 tax change is used to analyze if a tax clientele effect exists between the AMETF and AMMF markets. The authors use differences in investor groups for institutional vs retail fund share classes to test for liquidity clientele effects.Findings The authors find that equity and mixed AMETFs and AMMFs are substitutes, although not perfect substitutes. Taxation-related differences between the two products create a clientele effect for fixed income and mixed funds where tax-sensitive investors are more likely to substitute AMETFs for AMMFs surrounding tax increases. There is weak evidence that institutional investors may prefer AMETFs more than retail investors because of their enhanced liquidity.Originality/value This is the first study to investigate the flow relation between AMETFs and AMMFs. The fast-paced growth of the AMETF area coupled with the substitutability between the two products and tax advantages of AMETFs has the capability to gain significant market share from AMMFs in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between mutual fund managers’ past professional backgrounds and their portfolio performance using Chinese mutual fund data from 2003 to 2016. We focus on managers with prior work experience either as industry analysts or as macroanalysts. We hypothesize that managers who worked as industry analysts exhibit superior stock picking skills, while managers with a background as macroanalysts time the market better. These hypotheses are supported by the data after controlling for observable fund and manager characteristics. Bootstrap analyses suggest that a significant difference in performance between these two types of managers cannot be attributed purely to luck. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluates the performances of 321 Malaysian equity mutual funds for the period of June 1998 to May 2015. These mutual funds appear to generate an average monthly rate of 0.6878 percent (8.25% per annum), a performance close enough to that of the market (8.42% per annum). The Jensen's alphas show that only around 22 percent of these funds significantly outperform the market. While multifactor models are expected to produce better explanatory power, Carhart rather than q-factor model seems to fit the Malaysian funds data better. The results reveal that (i) funds' returns are closely linked to market performance, (ii) effect of fund managers' stock selection and market timing skills are both weak and insignificant on fund performance, (iii) of the five investment styles exhibited in these multifactor models, only value (HML) and profitability (RMW) have gained attention from fund managers, (iv) adoption of RMW tend to give an equal chance of deteriorating and improving funds' returns. The results of this study in general imply that investors might be better off investing in the equity market directly and passively through index-tracking and buy-and-hold strategies that are less costly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the value added by active mutual fund management by examining a comprehensive database of monthly trades of equity mutual funds because understanding how managers add value for their clients is important in the current context of a growing fraction of individual investors delegating their portfolio management to professional managers. We find that the value added by trading based on valuation criteria outperform trading decisions motivated by other reasons such as liquidity and taxes. This finding is obtained using both the measures previously proposed by financial literature as well as some refinements proposed here to evaluate the role of mutual funds' cash level as well as the interdependence between buying and selling decisions. In addition, mutual funds that trade based on valuation criteria more frequently outperform funds that follow this type of trading occasionally. The results are consistent with the notion that active mutual funds on average fail to outperform passive benchmarks and only a subset of funds have skilled managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theory predicts that individual investor's incentives to uncover new information about asset values are low if asset prices are efficient. This, in turn, implies that heterogeneity in investment manager skill, if present, should be most clearly visible among managers that focus on asset classes with less informationally efficient prices. We investigate this argument using a large sample of syndicated bank loan portfolios managed by collateralized loan obligation (CLO) managers. Using a CLO's equity tranche cash-on-cash return to measure performance, we find strong persistence that is robust to an extensive set of risk controls. Although investors seem to derive their expectation about management quality from a manager's realized performance and allocate more capital to 'skilled' managers, top performers cope to stay ahead of net-of-fees. This questions the rationality of managers and the efficiency of the syndicated loan market. This paper was accepted by Wei Jiang, finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study capital allocations to managers with two mutual funds, and show that investors learn about managers from their performance records. Flows into a fund are predicted by the manager's performance in his other fund, especially when he outperforms and when signals from the other fund are more useful. In equilibrium, capital should be allocated such that there is no cross-fund predictability. However, we find positive predictability, particularly among underperforming funds. Our results are consistent with incomplete learning: while investors move capital in the right direction, they do not withdraw enough capital when the manager underperforms in his other fund. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate whether business ties with portfolio firms influence mutual funds' proxy voting using a comprehensive data set spanning 2003 to 2011. In contrast to prior literature, we find that business ties significantly influence promanagement voting at the level of individual pairs of fund families and firms after controlling for Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) recommendations and holdings. The association is significant only for shareholder-sponsored proposals and stronger for those that pass or fail by relatively narrow margins. Our findings are consistent with a demand-driven model of biased voting in which company managers use existing business ties with funds to influence how they vote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]