Front-Running by Mutual Fund Managers: A Mixed Bag

This paper evaluates the welfare implications of front-runningby mutual fund managers. It extends the model of Kyle (1985)to a situation in which the insider with fundamentals-informationcompetes against an insider with trade-information and in whichnoise trading is endogenized. Noise traders are small investorstrading through mutual funds to hedge non-tradable or illiquidassets. The insider with trade-information is one of the fundmanagers. We find that her front-running activity reduces theliquidity costs of her customers, but it also reduces theirhedging benefits. As a result, the customers of the front-runningmanager may be worse off and place smaller orders. The oppositeis true, however, for those investors who are not subject tofront-running. In aggregate, front-running has either no orpositive consequences for welfare. JEL Classification. G14,G23.     

Learning about Mutual Fund Managers

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.     

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.     

On the Timing Ability of Mutual Fund Managers

Existing studies of mutual fund market timing analyze monthly returns and find little evidence of timing ability. We show that daily tests are more powerful and that mutual funds exhibit significant timing ability more often in daily tests than in monthly tests. We construct a set of synthetic fund returns in order to control for spurious results. The daily timing coefficients of the majority of funds are significantly different from their synthetic counterparts. These results suggest that mutual funds may possess more timing ability than previously documented.     

监管与合作：美国证监会与共同基金

SEC与基金业的关系为合作伙伴关系，两方都担负着责任。基金业承担着操作责任和公众责任，它须使这个行业保持创新与竞争的状态，并保护投资的利益。SEC承担的诸多责任中，最重要的是尊重自由市场的神奇力量，并在可能的时候利用市场的方式如信息披露，解决市场的问题。证监会与基金业的关系为美国的投资提供了半个多世纪的良好服务。     

The Performance of Local versus Foreign Mutual Fund Managers

In this paper we examine the performance of US equity funds (locals) versus UK equity funds (foreigners) also investing in the US equity market. Based on informational disadvantages one would expect the UK funds to under‐perform the US funds, especially in the research‐intensive small company market. After controlling for tax treatment, fund objectives, investment style and time‐variation in betas, we do not find evidence for this. In the small company segment we even find a slight out‐performance for UK funds compared to US funds. Finally we observe a home bias in the UK portfolios, which is partly attributable to UK funds investing in cross‐listed stocks in the USA.     

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.     

Termination Risk, Multiple Managers and Mutual Fund Tournaments

This study analyzes the risk-taking behavior of mutual fundsin response to their relative performance over the 1992 to 1999period. Our results show that managers of funds whose performanceis closer to that of the top performing funds have greater incentivesto increase their portfolios' risk than managers at the topwho exhibit a tendency to lock in their positions. The evidencesuggests that termination risk imposes a constraint on the risktaking behavior of underperforming fund managers and the winnertakes all phenomenon generates a strong incentive for the fundmanagers to be the top manager. We also analyze the differencein the risk taking behavior of funds managed by multiple managersand single managers. JEL Classification codes: G2 L2     

投资基金经理个人交易的管制:美国的经验与启示

狭义的基金经理指投资顾问公司中直接负责基金投资操作的雇员,为自然人,在投资顾问为自然人时,投资顾问即基金经理;广义的基金经理还包括知情人员、关联人员指基金顾问中直接或间接处理基金管理事务的雇员.     

Mutual Fund Incubation

Incubation is a strategy for initiating new funds, where multiple funds are started privately, and, at the end of an evaluation period, some are opened to the public. Consistent with incubation being used by fund families to increase performance and attract flows, funds in incubation outperform nonincubated funds by 3.5% risk‐adjusted, and when they are opened to the public they attract higher flows. Postincubation, however, this outperformance disappears. This performance reversal imparts an upward bias to returns that is not removed by a fund size filter. Fund age and ticker creation date filters, however, eliminate the bias.     

Mutual Fund Survivorship

This article provides a comprehensive study of survivorshipissues using the mutual fund data of Carhart (1997). We demonstratetheoretically that when survival depends on multiperiod performance,the survivorship bias in average performance typically increaseswith the sample length. This is empirically relevant becauseevidence suggests a multiyear survival rule for U.S. mutualfunds. In the data we find the annual bias increases from 0.07%for 1-year samples to 1% for samples longer than 15 years. Wefind that survivor conditioning weakens evidence of performancepersistence. Finally, we explain how survivor conditioning affectsthe relation between performance and fund characteristics.     

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.     

Judging Fund Managers by the Company They Keep

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.     

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.     

European Mutual Fund Performance

This paper presents an overview of the European mutual fund industry and investigates mutual fund performance using a survivorship bias controlled sample of 506 funds from the five most important mutual fund countries. The latter is done using the Carhart (1997) 4-factor asset-pricing model. In addition we investigate whether European fund managers exhibit 'hot hands', persistence in performance. Finally the influence of fund characteristics on risk-adjusted performance is considered. Our overall results suggest that European mutual funds, and especially small cap funds are able to add value, as indicated by their positive after cost alphas. If we add back management fees, four out of five countries exhibit significant out-performance at an aggregate level. Finally, we detect strong persistence in mean returns for funds investing in the UK. Our results deviate from most US studies that argue mutual funds under-perform the market by the amount of expenses they charge.     

Evaluating Mutual Fund Performance

We study standard mutual fund performance measures, using simulated funds whose characteristics mimic actual funds. We find that performance measures used in previous mutual fund research have little ability to detect economically large magnitudes (e.g., three percent per year) of abnormal fund performance, particularly if a fund's style characteristics differ from those of the value-weighted market portfolio. Power can be substantially improved, however, using event-study procedures that analyze a fund's stock trades. These procedures are feasible using time-series data sets on mutual fund portfolio holdings.     

证券基金立法进行时

立法部门审议证券投资基金法草案 新华社 2002年8月23日 保障中国基金业高速、健康发展的重要法律<中华人民共和国证券投资基金法(草案)>,提请九届全国人大常委会第29次会议审议.草案对中国基金的组织和运作方式、保护基金份额持有人的合法权益以及外资参股中国基金管理机构等重要问题作出明确规定.     

基于持股信息的基金业绩评价研究综述

当前的研究表明,不论从经济意义还是统计意义上来看,基于持股数据的基金业绩评价方法能够提高研究结论的准确性,但应注意该方法也具有一定的缺陷,应采用多种方法对基金业绩进行评测与比较,方可得出科学的结论。     

Mutual Fund Tax Clienteles

Mutual funds are held by investors in taxable and tax‐qualified retirement accounts. We investigate whether the characteristics, investment strategies, and performance of mutual funds held by these diverse tax clienteles differ. Examining both mutual fund distributions and mutual fund holdings, we find that funds held primarily by taxable investors choose investment strategies that result in lower tax burdens than funds held primarily in tax‐qualified accounts. Despite these differences, we find no evidence that any investment constraints that may arise from these tax‐efficient investment strategies result in performance differences between funds held by different tax clienteles.     

Indirect Incentives of Hedge Fund Managers

Indirect incentives exist in the money management industry when good current performance increases future inflows of capital, leading to higher future fees. For the average hedge fund, indirect incentives are at least 1.4 times as large as direct incentives from incentive fees and managers’ personal stakes in the fund. Combining direct and indirect incentives, manager wealth increases by at least $0.39 for a $1 increase in investor wealth. Younger and more scalable hedge funds have stronger flow‐performance relations, leading to stronger indirect incentives. These results have a number of implications for our understanding of incentives in the asset management industry.