Cautious Risk Takers: Investor Preferences and Demand for Active Management

Despite their mediocre mean performance, actively managed mutual funds are distinct from passive funds in their return distributions. Active value funds better hedge downside risk, while active growth funds better capture upside potential. Since such performance features may appeal to investors with tail‐overweighting preferences, we show that preferences for downside protection and upside potential estimated from the empirical pricing kernel can help explain active fund flows in the value and growth categories, respectively. This effect of investor risk preferences varies significantly with funds' downside‐hedging and upside‐capturing ability, with levels of active management, and across retirement and retail funds.     

MARKET VOLATILITY AND PERVERSE TIMING PERFORMANCE OF MUTUAL FUND MANAGERS

Prompted by the recent volatility in equity markets, I investigate performance evaluation methods and the mutual fund managers' ability to select undervalued investments and time major market movements during the high-market-volatility period of the 1980s. Specifically, I examine mutual fund managers' stock-selection and market-timing abilities by employing a five-factor risk-adjusted model based on Carhart's four-factor loading model and Bhattacharya and Pfleiderer's quadratic timing model adjusted for perverse timing behavior. Individually, some managers persistently affect fund performance through the selection of undervalued investments, however, at the expense of timing performance. In addition, funds that demonstrate an ability to time major market movements showed persistence in timing performance before and after the October market crash of 1987.     

Participation Costs and the Sensitivity of Fund Flows to Past Performance

We present a simple rational model to highlight the effect of investors' participation costs on the response of mutual fund flows to past fund performance. By incorporating participation costs into a model in which investors learn about managers' ability from past returns, we show that mutual funds with lower participation costs have a higher flow sensitivity to medium performance and a lower flow sensitivity to high performance than their higher‐cost peers. Using various fund characteristics as proxies for the reduction in participation costs, we provide empirical evidence supporting the model's implications for the asymmetric flow‐performance relationship.     

Portfolio concentration and fund manager performance

This research examines the relationships among portfolio concentration, fund manager skills, and fund performance in Taiwan's equity mutual fund industry, yielding several empirical findings as follows. First, after controlling for other factors, concentrated equity funds tend to have smaller net asset values, larger fund flows, higher turnover rates, and a younger age and prevail in smaller fund families. Second, concentrated fund managers buy and sell stocks more smartly based on economic trends or market factors than do diversified fund managers, i.e., they have better market‐timing abilities. Third, only partial evidence supports the premise that concentrated equity funds have better next‐quarter risk‐adjusted performances than do diversified ones, as these fund managers' skills positively correlate to risk‐adjusted fund performance. Fourth, fund managers who have better stock‐picking abilities and intensively invest in certain industries generally exhibit better Carhart's alpha in the next quarter than do other fund managers. Fifth, fund managers' stock‐picking abilities more closely relate to long‐term performance than do their market‐timing abilities. Lastly, positive performance persistence is much stronger than negative performance persistence, but concentrated funds do not have stronger performance persistence than do diversified funds.     

Portfolio selection, diversification and fund-of-funds: a note

The present paper examines the performance and diversification properties of active Australian equity fund‐of‐funds (FoF). Simulation analysis is employed to examine portfolio performance as a function of the number of funds in the portfolio. The present paper finds that as the number of funds in an FoF portfolio increases, performance improves in a mean–variance setting; however, measures of skewness and kurtosis behave less favourably given an investor's preferences for the higher moments of the return distribution. The majority of diversification benefits are realized when a portfolio of approximately 6 active equity funds are included in the FoF portfolio.     

ESG for All? The Impact of ESG Screening on Return,Risk, and Diversification

A large body of research has documented a positive relationship between different measures of sustainability—such as indicators of employee satisfaction and effective corporate governance—and corporate financial performance. Nevertheless, many investors still struggle to quantify the value of ESG to investment performance. To address this issue, the authors tested the effects of using different ESG filters on an investable universe that serves as the starting point for a fund manager. In this way, they attempted to determine the extent to which ESG data can add value to any investment approach, regardless of preferences towards sustainable investing. The authors report “an unequivocally positive” contribution to risk‐adjusted returns when using a 10% best‐in‐class ESG screening approach (one that effectively removes companies with the lowest 10% of ESG rankings), both on a global and a developed markets universe. More specifically, as a result of such screening, both the global and developed markets portfolios show higher returns, lower (tail) risk, and no significant reduction of diversification potential despite the reduction in the number of companies. Use of a 25% screening filter was also found to add value, especially by reducing tail risks, but with a larger deviation from the unscreened universe. Overall, then, the authors’ finding is that the incorporation of ESG information contributes to better decision‐making in every investment approach, with the optimal configuration depending on a fund manager's preferences and willingness to deviate from an unscreened benchmark.     

A Glimpse Behind a Closed Door: The Long‐Term Investment Value of Buy‐Side Research and Its Effect on Fund Trades and Performance

We examine proprietary research produced by buy‐side analysts working for a large fund management company. We find that the buy‐side research has investment value for a one‐year horizon, and the analysts producing this research exhibit differential ability that tends to persist over time. The buy‐side research strongly influences trades made by the company's funds, especially when it coveys information that is independent of the fund managers' own information, when it is produced by buy‐side analysts with good track records, and when the underlying stocks have little sell‐side coverage. The influence of sell‐side research is concentrated primarily in stocks not followed by buy‐side analysts and in funds with low overall buy‐side coverage. The company's funds that rely more heavily on buy‐side research generate superior performance.     

A Dynamic Model of Optimal Creditor Dispersion

Borrowing from multiple creditors exposes firms to rollover risk due to coordination problems among creditors, but it also improves firms' repayment incentives, thereby increasing pledgeability. Based on this trade‐off, I develop a dynamic debt rollover model to analyze the evolution of creditor dispersion. Consistent with empirical evidence, I find that firms optimally increase creditor dispersion after poor performance. In contrast, cross‐sectionally higher‐growth firms can support more dispersed creditors. Frequent debt renegotiation limits firms' ability to increase pledgeability by having more creditors. Finally, holding a cash balance while borrowing from multiple creditors improves firms' repayment incentives uniformly across all future states.     

Time-varying performance of international mutual funds

We examine the ability of one- and two-factor regime switching models to describe US, developed, and emerging market mutual fund returns. We find that a two-factor fixed transition probability model adequately describes the multivariate series of mutual fund returns without the need to model time-varying transition probabilities. Mutual fund performance, as measured by a state dependent Jensen's alpha, varies with economic regimes that are defined according to the global equity market mean. Our primary two-factor fixed transition probability model shows that emerging market mutual fund alphas are often significantly positive in global bull regimes. Consideration of alternative second risk factors suggests that both the foreign exchange factor, or the recently proposed Hou, Karolyi and Kho (2011) value factor can improve series forecasts and out-of-sample portfolio performance.     

Mutual Fund Flows and Cross‐Fund Learning within Families

We develop a model of performance evaluation and fund flows for mutual funds in a family. Family performance has two effects on a member fund's estimated skill and inflows: a positive common‐skill effect, and a negative correlated‐noise effect. The overall spillover can be either positive or negative, depending on the weight of common skill and correlation of noise in returns. Its absolute value increases with family size, and declines over time. The sensitivity of flows to a fund's own performance is affected accordingly. Empirical estimates of fund flow sensitivities show patterns consistent with rational cross‐fund learning within families.     

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.     

Measuring fund style,performance and activity: a new style‐profiling approach

We construct new measures of fund style, performance and activity from linear combinations of off‐the‐shelf stock‐market indices. A fund's benchmark portfolio is a linear combination of two or more reference portfolios that in a least‐squares sense most closely approximates the fund's portfolio. The resulting linear combination scalar is itself a measure of fund style and the distance between a fund and its benchmark is a measure of fund activity. Our approach has a number of advantages over existing characteristic‐matching methods. We illustrate our approach using a data set of US institutional funds.     

Managerial optimism: New observations on the unifying theory

Managerial optimism theory is behavioral finance's greatest achievement. It explains two prominent features of corporate financial behavior – over‐investment and pecking‐order capital structure preferences – that otherwise require two different theories with mutually incompatible assumptions about managerial loyalties to shareholder‐value maximization. After reviewing the development of managerial optimism as a unifying theory, I use a simple change of measure to transform risk‐averse optimism to risk‐neutral probabilities that can be pessimistic or optimistic depending on wealth changes. This unexplored feature has implications for, among other things, pay for performance when managers are excessively optimistic.     

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。     

Dynamic portfolio strategy by loss-averse fund managers facing performance-induced fund flows

In a continuous-time framework, we establish an optimal dynamic portfolio strategy for a loss-averse fund manager facing performance-induced fund flows. Using the martingale approach, we derive closed-form solutions to both the optimal terminal value and optimal dynamic strategy of the fund under management. The model shows that the loss-averse manager strives to earn high returns in good market conditions at the risk of losing all investments at the terminal date in bad market conditions. The prospect of higher fund inflows induced by superior performance motivates fund managers to take more aggressive investment strategies, increasing the fund's risk exposure, whereas the prospect of fund outflows due to underperformance has no impact on the fund manager's investment decision. While the prospect of higher fund inflows increases dynamic optimal wealth as well as optimal terminal wealth in good market conditions, in bad market conditions, it reduces dynamic optimal wealth and results in a higher chance of a complete loss at the terminal date. Finally, a manager with a higher degree of loss aversion tends to take a conservative investment strategy with a lower risk exposure especially in bad market conditions, leading to a lower dynamic and terminal wealth in good market conditions and also a lower chance of a complete loss in bad market conditions.     

Why mutual funds “underperform”

I propose a parsimonious model that reproduces the negative risk-adjusted performance of actively managed equity mutual funds. In the model, a fund manager can generate state-dependent active returns at a disutility. Negative expected performance and mutual fund investing simultaneously arise in equilibrium because the active return the fund manager generates covaries positively with a component of the pricing kernel that the performance measure omits, consistent with recent empirical evidence. Using data on U.S. funds, I also document new empirical evidence consistent with the model's cross-sectional implications.     

All Guts,No Glory: Trading and Diversification among Online Investors

I explore cross‐sectional portfolio performance in a sample containing 324,736 transactions conducted by 16,831 Swedish investors at an Internet discount brokerage firm during the period May 1999 to March 2002. On average, investors hold undiversified portfolios, show a strong preference for risk, and trade aggressively. I measure performance using a panel data model, and explain the cross‐sectional variation using investors' turnover, portfolio size and degree of diversification. I find that turnover is harmful to performance due to fees, and is therefore more predominant among investors with small portfolios. I argue that the degree of diversification is a proxy for investor skill, and it has a separate and distinct positive effect on performance. Investors underperform the market by about 8.5% per year on average, of which half can be attributed to trading costs.     

基金业绩如何影响风格漂移和经理离职?——理论与经验分析

本文通过一个两期模型,刻画了基金业绩如何通过影响市场信念,进而影响基金风格漂移和基金公司的解雇行为。若上期基金业绩很好,基金经理就会在乐观的自我能力预期下,完全按照自己的判断选择基金投资风格;若上期业绩一般,基金经理会因为调整成本而不太愿意切换投资风格;而若上期业绩很差导致自我能力预期悲观,基金经理就宁愿模仿上期绩优基金的投资风格。综合起来,基金风格漂移将随上期基金业绩呈现出显著的U型关系。进一步,因为业绩很差的基金经理会采取模仿策略,因此在市场风格发生切换时更有可能发生基金经理解雇事件。此外,本文基于中国开放式基金的季度数据,检验了风格漂移与滞后一期基金业绩之间的关系,经验证据稳健地支持了理论分析的各种结论。     

Do Funds Make More When They Trade More?

We model fund turnover in the presence of time‐varying profit opportunities. Our model predicts a positive relation between an active fund's turnover and its subsequent benchmark‐adjusted return. We find such a relation for equity mutual funds. This time‐series relation between turnover and performance is stronger than the cross‐sectional relation, as the model predicts. Also as predicted, the turnover‐performance relation is stronger for funds trading less‐liquid stocks and funds likely to possess greater skill. Turnover is correlated across funds. The common component of turnover is positively correlated with proxies for stock mispricing. Turnover of similar funds helps predict a fund's performance.     

The shrouded business of style drift in active mutual funds

This study investigates the motivation and performance consequence of intentional style drift in an exclusively in-house fund management industry in China. With style drift, fund investors are exposed to investment portfolio outside their risk-return preference but are generally unaware that their risk and return expectations are disrupted, and the functioning of the fund market undermined. Our study provides evidence for the first time about the incentive that motivates style drift behavior. We find that style drift increases a fund's subsequent net inflows, thus affirming the maximization of AUM-linked compensation as the motivation for fund manager's style drift behavior. We also find that larger funds have greater incentive to drift. We demonstrate that style drift behavior interferes with the picking of quality stocks to deliver fund performance for fund investors. Style drift as an unobserved risk behavior harms fund investor interest and undermines market integrity.