Portfolio Manager Ownership and Mutual Fund Performance

This paper examines the association between a mutual fund manager's personal fund investment and mutual fund performance. From a data set of newly released managerial ownership disclosures, I find that fund ownership levels are diverse and, in many instances, quite large. Mutual fund returns are increasing in the level of managerial investment, consistent with personal ownership realigning decision-maker and shareholder interests. Also consistent with the reduction of agency costs, I find that managerial ownership is inversely related to fund turnover. However, there is no evidence of an association between managerial ownership and a mutual fund's tax burden.     

Mandatory Disclosure,Voluntary Disclosure,and Stock Market Liquidity: Evidence from the EU Bank Stress Tests

We use the EU stress tests and the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis to study the consequences of supervisory disclosure of banks’ sovereign risk exposures. We test the idea that a mandatory one‐time disclosure induces an increase in voluntary disclosures about sovereign risk in the following periods and, through the shift in the voluntary disclosure equilibrium, increases the liquidity of banks’ shares. First, we find that the timing and content of different mandatory disclosure events helps explain the levels of stress‐test banks’ voluntary disclosures about sovereign risk. Second, although the bid‐ask spreads of stress test participants generally increased after the mandatory stress test in 2011, our results suggest that the decrease in market liquidity is entirely attributable to those stress‐test participants that did not commit to voluntarily maintaining the disclosures of sovereign risk exposure.     

Mutual Fund Liquidity Costs

One dollar in purchases or redemptions generates an average cost of $0.006 for US equity mutual funds during the period 1997‐2009, approximately 70% lower than prior estimates derived from older data. However, large cross‐sectional differences exist between funds. Many funds have costs near zero, but funds that hold relatively illiquid equities, have relatively concentrated portfolios, and manage relatively large amounts of assets have average liquidity costs significantly greater than the full sample average. Furthermore, despite a large difference in underlying asset liquidity, US bond funds and US equity funds have similar average liquidity costs.     

证券投资基金与公司绩效关系研究——基于中国A股上市公司的证据

机构投资者倾向于长期投资和价值投资,可以对上市公司的治理发挥积极作用,从而改善公司绩效。在这种观点的影响下,近年来政府监管部门出台了一系列促进机构投资者发展的政策和措施,中国证券投资基金也出现了大规模增长,那么证券投资基金与上市公司绩效的关系究竟如何是值得我们关注的问题,本文运用面板数据的固定效应模型分析证券投资基金持股比例与公司绩效的关系,并对结果进行稳健型检验。     

Mutual Fund Herding and the Impact on Stock Prices

We analyze the trading activity of the mutual fund industry from 1975 through 1994 to determine whether funds "herd" when they trade stocks and to investigate the impact of herding on stock prices. Although we find little herding by mutual funds in the average stock, we find much higher levels in trades of small stocks and in trading by growth-oriented funds. Stocks that herds buy outperform stocks that they sell by 4 percent during the following six months; this return difference is much more pronounced among small stocks. Our results are consistent with mutual fund herding speeding the price-adjustment process.     

Mutual Fund Family Size and Mutual Fund Performance: The Role of Regulatory Changes

We examine whether the previously documented positive association between fund family size and fund performance is affected by significant regulatory changes (i.e., Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD), the Global Settlement (GS), and increased scrutiny as a result of trading scandals) that have occurred in the last decade. Using Reg FD as a beginning point for these structural changes, we find that, while fund family size was positively associated with fund performance in the period prior to the regulatory changes, this advantage is significantly weaker in the period subsequent to the regulatory changes. Consistent with the weakened advantage of fund family size in fund performance, we find that the greater stock‐picking skill of larger fund families, measured using the earnings announcement returns of the stocks they trade, also weakened subsequent to the regulatory changes. Using narrower event windows around the regulatory changes, we find that the previously documented superior return of large fund families was partly attributable to selective disclosure. We also find that fund families implicated in the trading scandals experienced a decline in their performance during the scandal period. Finally, we examine the role of large investment banks in providing an advantage to large fund families. Family size was positively associated with the extent to which funds traded in the same direction as forecast revisions by analysts from large investment banks in the period prior to Reg FD and the GS and this association declined significantly after the two regulatory events.     

Performance Chasing,Fund Flows and Fund Size in Real Estate Mutual Funds

Real estate mutual funds have grown dramatically in number, size, scope and assets under management over the last 15 years, but little assessment is evident. The present study addresses this limitation. Better prior period performance is associated with greater shares of fund inflows for a period. Returns, however, are negatively associated with increased fund flows and fund size. Investors chase past performance limiting fund managers’ ability to optimize investments. Under normal market conditions, but departing from typical mutual fund performance, real estate mutual fund returns generally exceed relevant benchmarks on a before expenses basis and match benchmark returns after expenses. The ability to meet and exceed benchmark returns, however, does not hold during the financial crisis period. Overall, more established funds are shown to have higher returns while fund turnover is not a determinant of returns.     

Short-Term Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance

We estimate parameters of standard stock selection and markettiming models using daily mutual fund returns and quarterlymeasurement periods. We then rank funds quarterly by abnormalreturn and measure the performance of each decile the followingquarter. The average abnormal return of the top decile in thepost-ranking quarter is 39 basis points. The post-ranking abnormalreturn disappears when funds are evaluated over longer periods.These results suggest that superior performance is a short-livedphenomenon that is observable only when funds are evaluatedseveral times a year.     

Mutual Fund Performance: Measurement and Evidence1

The paper provides a critical review of empirical findings on the performance of mutual funds, mainly for the US and UK. Ex‐post, there are around 0‐5% of top performing UK and US equity mutual funds with truly positive‐alpha performance (after fees) and around 20% of funds that have truly poor alpha performance, with about 75% of active funds which are effectively zero‐alpha funds. Key drivers of relative performance are, load fees, expenses and turnover. There is little evidence of successful market timing. Evidence suggests past winner funds persist, when rebalancing is frequent (i.e., less than one year) and when using sophisticated sorting rules (e.g., Bayesian approaches) ‐ but transactions costs (load and advisory fees) imply that economic gains to investors from winner funds may be marginal. The US evidence clearly supports the view that past loser funds remain losers. Broadly speaking results for bond mutual funds are similar to those for equity funds. Sensible advice for most investors would be to hold low cost index funds and avoid holding past ‘active’ loser funds. Only sophisticated investors should pursue an active ex‐ante investment strategy of trying to pick winners ‐ and then with much caution.     

投资者保护和基金投资业绩

本文从基金持仓股特征出发,研究了上市公司投资者保护与基金投资业绩的关系。由于投资者保护影响公司的盈利能力以及投资者获取信息的难易程度,基金在投资时更加偏好于投资者保护好的上市公司的股票。使用我国上市公司基金持股比例的数据,本文证实了这一结论。更为重要的是,本文发现对于有能力的基金,他们会投资于投资者保护比较差的上市公司的股票,从而获得更高的投资业绩。     

Mutual to Stock Conversion, Information Cost, and Thrift Performance

In the 1980s, a large number of thrifts converted from the mutual to the stock form of ownership. The literature has noted that investors in those conversions earned abnormally high short-term returns. However, over the long run the converters earned very poor returns. The major reason for the poor returns was the extra noninterest operational costs associated with the stock form of ownership. Since those extra operational costs were predictable, the stock offerings may have been overpriced, ex ante as well as ex post.     

Outsourcing Mutual Fund Management: Firm Boundaries,Incentives, and Performance

We investigate the effects of managerial outsourcing on the performance and incentives of mutual funds. Fund families outsource the management of a large fraction of their funds to advisory firms. These funds underperform those run internally by about 52 basis points per year. After instrumenting for a fund's outsourcing status, the estimated underperformance is three times larger. We hypothesize that contractual externalities due to firm boundaries make it difficult to extract performance from an outsourced relationship. Consistent with this view, outsourced funds face higher powered incentives; they are more likely to be closed after poor performance and excessive risk‐taking.     

Dedicated REIT Mutual Fund Flows and REIT Performance

This study examines the effects of weekly and monthly capital flows into the dedicated REIT mutual fund sector on aggregate REIT returns and, simultaneously, the effects of industry-level REIT returns on subsequent REIT mutual fund flows. The dynamic relation between REIT capital flows and returns is estimated using vector autoregression (VAR) techniques. Unlike static regression techniques, our dynamic model produces estimates of the short-run relationships, long-run relationships, impulse response functions, and forecast variance decompositions. We find evidence that REIT mutual fund flows are positively and significantly related to prior returns, while prior REIT mutual fund flows do not significantly influence REIT returns. However, contemporaneous flows do appear to have an initial positive effect, which is partially reversed one period later. The positive contemporaneous effect, however, is the result of unexpected REIT mutual fund flows, while the expected portion is insignificant.     

Seasonality, Market Timing and Performance Amongst Benchmarks and Mutual Fund Evaluation

Abstract:  Mutual fund performance is normally measured by comparing results of active management with those obtained by one or several benchmarks that should represent the fund's investment. In this context, this paper examines the effect on mutual fund assessment if a relevant benchmark is omitted. This effect is analysed in three elements of active management: stock selection, market timing, and seasonality. The latter is defined as fund management at specific moments of time with the objective of achieving positive abnormal returns to improve performance. For a sample of Spanish mutual funds, we find that the omission of style benchmarks, particularly that corresponding to small-cap stocks, leads to greater evidence of negative market timing and positive seasonality at year beginning. However, the positive abnormal returns of the seasonality at year end, month end and especially at the beginning of July hold regardless of benchmark omission. The paper therefore also analyses the relation between performance and seasonality, finding that positive seasonality at year beginning and at July beginning improves performance; however, at other moments it implies a possible window dressing strategy in mutual fund management.     

Mutual Fund Performance: Evidence from the UK

This paper uses a large sample containing the complete return histories of 2300 UK open-ended mutual funds over a 23-year period to measure fund performance. We find some evidence of underperformance on a risk-adjusted basis by the average fund manager, persistence of performance and the existence of a substantial survivor bias. Similar findings have been reported for US equity mutual funds. New findings not previously documented for other markets include evidence that mutual fund performance varies substantially across different asset categories, especially foreign asset categories. We also identify some new patterns in performance related to the funds' distance from their inception and termination dates: underperformance intensifies as the fund termination date approaches, while, in contrast, there is some evidence that funds (weakly) outperform during their first year of existence.     

Truth in Mutual Fund Advertising: Evidence on Future Performance and Fund Flows

We examine a sample of 294 mutual funds that are advertised in Barron's or Money magazine. The preadvertisement performance of these funds is significantly higher than that of the benchmarks. We test whether the sponsors select funds to signal continued superior performance or they use the past superior performance to attract more money into the funds. Our analysis shows that there is no superior performance in the postadvertisement period. Thus, the results do not support the signaling hypothesis. On the other hand, we find that the advertised funds attract significantly more money in comparison with a group of control funds.     

Running From a Bear: How Poor Stock Market Performance Affects the Determinants of Mutual Fund Flows

Abstract:  Using a proprietary data set to study how past performance affects the determinants of mutual fund flows for a sample of load fund investors, I provide evidence that the determinants of fund flow depend on market conditions for both redemptions and purchases. Specifically, I show that, for redemptions, relative performance and risk adjusted performance are important determinants during a period of record flows into mutual funds. Conversely, during a period of poor performance, absolute performance becomes much more important and relative performance and risk adjusted performance become less important. For purchases, absolute performance, risk adjusted performance, and most relative performance measures become more important during the bear market.     

投资组合构建与调整的合理性及其对基金绩效的影响

从理论推论看,投资组合构建与调整的合理性越高,投资绩效就可能越好。为此,本文构建了衡量组合合理性高低的指标,并采用Kolmogorov-Smirnov检验法、Kruskal-Wallis检验法、基于Wilcoxon秩检验的多重比较法等方法,实证研究我国股票型基金投资组合的合理性对基金绩效的影响。研究结果一方面支持了理论推论的正确性,另一方面也印证了本文所建立的组合合理性指标的可取性。同时论文发现,在牛市熊市的不同情况下,基金组合构建的合理性及其对继续的影响存在差异。论文据此提出了相关的建议和启示。