Termination Risk, Multiple Managers and Mutual Fund Tournaments

This study analyzes the risk-taking behavior of mutual funds in response to their relative performance over the 1992 to 1999 period. Our results show that managers of funds whose performance is closer to that of the top performing funds have greater incentives to increase their portfolios' risk than managers at the top who exhibit a tendency to lock in their positions. The evidence suggests that termination risk imposes a constraint on the risk taking behavior of under-performing fund managers and the winner takes all phenomenon generates a strong incentive for the fund managers to be the top manager. We also analyze the difference in the risk taking behavior of funds managed by multiple managers and single managers.     

Risk-taking and performance of government bond mutual funds

This paper investigates the risk exposures of government bond mutual funds and how risk-taking behavior affects fund performance. Government bond mutual funds often outperform their respective benchmark bond indexes before but not after adjusting for bond market risk factors. We show that the risk-taking behavior of fund managers helps to explain the different performances of government bond funds with and without controlling for the risk factors. Our results suggest that risk-taking leads to higher returns relative to benchmarks in normal risk periods but lower returns in high risk periods, suggesting that fund managers consistently take risky bets in fund management. We further show that the risk-taking of government bond funds is persistent and that investors typically have no ability to differentiate between the skill and risk components of fund performance. These findings suggest why fund managers have incentives to take consistently risky positions.     

Good Stewards, Cheap Talkers, or Family Men? The Impact of Mutual Fund Closures on Fund Managers, Flows, Fees, and Performance

We examine a sample of 125 equity mutual funds that closed tonew investment between 1993 and 2004. We find that funds closefollowing a period of superior performance and abnormal fundinflows. Fund managers raise their fees when they close to compensatemanagers for losses in income due to the restrictions in sizeimposed by the fund closure decision. Managers reopen when fundsize declines. However, they do not earn superior returns afterreopening, suggesting that the fund closure decision does notprovide information about superior fund managers. (JEL G14,G23)     

The performance of female hedge fund managers

Using data for the period 1994–2013, we examine the return and risk-taking behavior of hedge funds having at least one female portfolio manager and funds that have all female portfolio managers. Funds with all female managers perform no differently than all male-managed funds and have similar risk profiles. For single-style funds, those with mixed teams of both genders underperform male-only funds on both a raw and risk-adjusted basis, although mixed funds incur less risk and their Sharpe ratios do not differ. For funds of funds, both all-female and mixed funds have similar performance to male-managed funds. We then consider the failure rate across all fund styles. Funds with at least one female manager fail at higher rates, driven by difficulty in raising capital—these funds are smaller and are less likely to be closed to new investment. Surviving funds with at least one female manager have better performance than male-managed surviving funds, consistent with the idea that female managers need to perform better for their funds to survive. Yet, female-managed surviving funds have fewer assets under management than surviving male-managed funds. Using media mentions as a proxy for investor interest, female-managed funds receive proportionately less attention. Our results suggest that there are no inherent differences in skill between female and male managers, but that only the best performing female managers manage to survive.     

What impact does a change of fund manager have on mutual fund performance?

Using a unique database of UK fund manager changes over the period from 1997 to 2011, we examine the impact of such changes on fund performance. We find clear evidence to suggest that a manager change does affect the benchmark-adjusted performance of UK mutual funds. In particular we find a significant deterioration in the benchmark-adjusted returns of funds that were top performers before the manager exit and, conversely, a significant improvement in the average benchmark-adjusted returns of funds that were poor performers before the manager exit. Our use of the Carhart's (1997) four-factor model reveals that the improvement in average post manager exit performance is accompanied by a reduction in market risk, a slight reduction in exposure to small cap stocks, and an increase in exposure to value and momentum stocks. Overall, our results suggest that UK fund management companies have been relatively successful in replacing bad managers with better managers, but relatively unsuccessful at finding equivalent replacements for their top performing managers. We believe that regulators should therefore try to ensure that all efforts are made by fund management companies to inform all of their investors about a change in management.     

我国开放式基金绩效及选股和择时能力研究

近年来,开放式基金逐渐成为我国基金市场的绝对主体。开放式基金能否取得较好的绩效受到市场的普遍关注。本文选取了资金管理规模前20位的公司,并从中随机挑选1只基金,运用詹森指数、特雷诺比率、夏普指数和信息比率等单因素模型和Fama-French三因素模型对开放式基金的绩效进行分析,并使用T-M模型、H-M模型、C-L模型对基金经理人股票选股与择时能力进行分析。结果发现:第一,我国开放式基金经理的选股能力存在时变性,在上升期具备选股能力,在下跌期不具备选股能力,而无论是在上升期还是下跌期,基金经理普遍不具备择时能力。第二,在市场上升期基金经理比较注意对风险的把控,系统性风险较小,而在下跌期基金投资组合的系统性风险明显上升,基金经理冒险意愿上升,当市场出现大幅度下跌时,其不理性行为会加剧市场的波动。本文的研究结论有利于提升投资者的风险意识和理性意识、促进外部监管部门的精准监管审查,并能够激励基金经理人提高自身风险管控的能力。     

Investment manager characteristics, strategy, top management changes and fund performance

The present study examines the performance of Australian investment management organisations with direct reference to their specific characteristics and strategies employed. Using a unique information source, performance is evaluated for actively managed institutional balanced funds, Australian share funds and Australian bond funds. For balanced mandates, performance is evaluated with respect to the investment strategy adopted, the experience and qualifications held by investment professionals, and the tenure of the key investment professionals. The present study examines the performance of top management and the impact on returns when turnover arises. The research documents that a significant number of active Australian equity managers earned superior risk-adjusted returns in the period, however, active managers perform in line with market indices for balanced funds and Australian bond funds. A number of manager characteristics are also found to predict risk-adjusted returns, systematic risk and investment expenses for balanced funds.     

Pension fund manager skills over the economic cycle: the (non-)specialization cost

We study whether pension fund managers, as professionals of important social and financial products, are able to add value for their clients and adapt to economic changes. To this end, we analyze the performance and skills (market timing and stock picking) over the economic cycle from both pension fund and manager perspectives. This double analysis allows examining whether skills reside in managers and/or funds and control for manager substitutions. Despite the long-term nature of pension funds, we find that both fund and manager skills vary with market conditions, showing better evidence of stock-picking in booms, and of market timing in recessions. Nonetheless, top (bottom) funds and managers exhibit both (incorrect) skills in booms and in recessions. Some of the top (bottom) funds and managers are the best (worst) in both abilities in the same periods, but not in different periods, showing that not all managers have the ability to adapt to market conditions. Additionally, managers with limited skills tend to specialize because diversification requires multi-task skills and the non-specialization of these managers usually results in incorrect skills.     

Testing the effect of portfolio holdings disclosure in an environment absent of mandatory disclosure

This study examines a number of portfolio disclosure regimes with respect to accuracy and susceptibility to copycat behaviour in an environment absent of mandatory disclosure. We find that periodic portfolio disclosure tends to underestimate true excess performance as well as idiosyncratic risk in top‐quartile fund managers, with longer inter‐reporting intervals tending to result in greater differences. ‘Copycat funds’ following the disclosed holdings of top‐tier managers significantly underperform the underlying fund, while copycats following bottom‐tier managers significantly outperform the underlying fund. Our findings suggest that periodic reporting at monthly intervals or longer would not affect fund alpha generation.     

Should Asset Managers Hedge Their “Fees at Risk”?

Although the recent financial crisis afflicted all asset managers, the problem of general market exposure was in some respects worse for the long-only funds that rely almost completely on asset-based fees than for the “absolute return” and other kinds of hedge funds that also receive performance-based fees. While the revenue generated by performance-based fees is expected to be volatile, asset-based fees tend to be viewed as an “annuity” stream that involves little or no earnings risk. But, especially in the case of long-only funds, large shortfalls in asset fees were caused by the combination of significant redemptions and sharp reductions in assets under management that accompanied the plunge in asset prices. In this article, the author attempts to quantify the expected effect of market fluctuations on the asset fees and profitability of long-only asset managers. Having done so, he then argues that traditional long-only asset managers—managers whose only reason for being is their ability to generate above-market returns (or “alpha”) on a fairly consistent basis—routinely retain too much beta risk in their primarily asset-based fee structures. The author offers two main reasons for long-only asset managers to hedge beta risk: (1) it would reduce the need for fund management firms to hold liquid capital to ensure solvency and fund important projects during market downturns; (2) it would provide the firm's current and prospective clients with a clearer signal of whether its managers are succeeding in the firm's mission of generating alpha, as well as the possibility of more equity-like and cost-effective incentive compensation systems for those managers.     

Do Female Mutual Fund Managers Manage Differently?

We examine the performance and investment behavior of female fixed‐income mutual fund managers compared with male fixed‐income mutual fund managers. We find that male‐ and female‐managed funds do not differ significantly in terms of performance, risk, and other fund characteristics. Our results suggest that differences in investment behavior often attributed to gender may be related to investment knowledge and wealth constraints. Despite the similarities between male and female managers, we find evidence that gender influences the decision making of mutual fund investors. We find that the net asset flows into funds managed by females are lower than for males, especially for the manager's initial year managing the fund.     

Behavioural analysis of socially responsible investment managers: specialists versus non-specialists

We analyse the performance and performance persistence of US socially responsible investment (SRI) managers from a managers’ perspective, differentiating between specialist managers (only running SRI mutual funds) and non-specialists (running SRI and conventional mutual funds). We find that the SRI fund nature has a significantly negative influence on the non-specialist performance. Furthermore, top managers of both groups persistently outperform SRI funds. However, non-specialist managers obtain superior performance to specialist managers, perhaps because of learning synergies in both fund niches. Results also show more persistence with non-specialists, especially with regard to conventional mutual funds.     

克隆明星基金的收益与风险分析

本文在认可公募基金经理具有选股能力的基础上，对绩优的明星基金季报披露的重仓股按业绩筛选出股票，建立组合投资，对2005年二季度至2006年四季度期间的持有收益和风险进行验证。结论表明，在我国证券市场上克隆基金是一种可以给投资者带来较大收益的行之有效的战略手段。同时，本文认为，由此揭示出来的投资基金公开信息披露制度问题值得深入探讨。     

Inexperienced investors and bubbles

We use mutual fund manager data from the technology bubble to examine the hypothesis that inexperienced investors play a role in the formation of asset price bubbles. Using age as a proxy for managers’ investment experience, we find that around the peak of the technology bubble, mutual funds run by younger managers are more heavily invested in technology stocks, relative to their style benchmarks, than their older colleagues. Furthermore, young managers, but not old managers, exhibit trend-chasing behavior in their technology stock investments. As a result, young managers increase their technology holdings during the run-up, and decrease them during the downturn. Both results are in line with the behavior of inexperienced investors in experimental asset markets. The economic significance of young managers’ actions is amplified by large inflows into their funds prior to the peak in technology stock prices.     

Blockholder mutual fund participation in private in-house meetings

The Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) in China is unique worldwide in requiring disclosure of the timing, participants, and selected content of private in-house meetings between firm managers and outsider investors. We investigate whether these private meetings benefit hosting firms and their major outside institutional investors—blockholder mutual funds (i.e., funds with ownership ≥5%). Using a large data set of SZSE firms, we find that blockholder mutual funds have more access to private in-house meetings, and top management is more likely to be present, especially when a meeting is associated with negative news. Furthermore, when blockholder mutual funds attend negative-news meetings with top management, they are less likely to sell shares, their investment relationship with the hosting firm lasts longer, and hosting firms experience lower postmeeting stock return volatility. These findings suggest that private in-house meetings are an informative disclosure channel that improves social bonding between top management and blockholder mutual funds in ways that benefit hosting firms.     

基金业绩排名与基金经理的冒险行为

本文利用2005-2010年间开放式股票型和混合型基金的数据,研究年度基金业绩排名对基金经理冒险行为的影响。与相对业绩排名激励机制会导致基金经理过度冒险的假设相一致,本文发现,年中业绩排名靠后的基金经理(输家)在下半年提高所持有资产组合的风险的程度要大于年中业绩排名靠前的基金经理(赢家)。进一步研究发现,基金经理提高下半年所持有资产组合的风险并不能显著提高下半年基金的业绩。特别是在熊市中,提高下半年所持有资产组合的风险反而显著降低了基金下半年的业绩。     

Fund ownership,wealth, and risk-taking: Evidence on private equity managers

Private equity (PE) managers are required to invest their own money in the funds they manage. We examine the incentive effects of this ownership on the delegated acquisition decision. A simple model shows that PE managers select less risky firms and use more debt, the higher their ownership. We test these predictions for a sample of Norwegian PE funds, using managers’ wealth to capture their relative risk aversion. As predicted, the target company’s cash-flow risk decreases and leverage increases with the manager’s ownership scaled by wealth. Moreover, the overall portfolio risk decreases with ownership, mitigating widespread concerns about excessive risk-taking.     

Incentive Fees and Mutual Funds

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.     

Portfolio Distortions Among Institutional Investors: Evidence from China

The behavior of institutional investors often deviates from established personal or social norms; this deviation may reflect either an informational advantage or a psychological bias. In this paper, we investigate the reasons Chinese mutual funds hold lottery-type stocks, which are characterized by low average returns and high risk. We find that funds at the aggregate level do not exhibit a propensity to gamble, but when they do gamble, they earn abnormal returns on lottery-type investments. Gambling-related outperformance is greater among held firms with characteristics that enable fund managers to obtain more informational advantages. Our results suggest that portfolio distortion is driven by the ability of managers to capitalize private information rather than by behavioral bias.     

Carrot and stick: A role for benchmark-adjusted compensation in active fund management

Investors delegating their wealth to privately informed managers face not only an intrinsic asymmetric information problem but also a potential misalignment in risk preferences. In this setting, we show that by tying fees symmetrically to the appropriate benchmark investors can tilt a fund portfolio toward their optimal risk exposure and realize nearly all the value of managers’ information. They attain these benefits despite an inherent inefficiency in the choice of the benchmark, and at no extra cost of compensating managers for exposure to relative-performance risk. Under certain conditions, benchmark-adjusted performance fees are necessary to prevent passive alternatives from dominating active management. Our results shed light on a recent debate on the appropriate fee structure of active funds in contexts of high competition from passive funds.