The Market Timing Ability of UK Mutual Funds

Abstract:  We apply a recent nonparametric methodology to test the market timing skills of UK equity and balanced mutual funds. The methodology has a number of advantages over the widely used regression based tests of Treynor-Mazuy (1966) and Henriksson-Merton (1981) . We find a relatively small number of funds (around 1%) demonstrate positive market timing ability at a 5% significance level while around 19% of funds exhibit negative timing and on average funds miss-time the market. However, controlling for publicly available information we find very little evidence of market timing ability based on private timing signals. In terms of investment styles, there are a small number of successful positive market timers amongst Equity Income and 'All Company' funds but not among either Small Stock funds or Balanced funds, although a few small stock funds are found to time a small stock index rather than a broad market index.     

Mutual fund liquidity timing ability in the higher moment framework

Using mutual fund data in Thailand, this study shows that fund managers can time the market-wide liquidity in the higher moment framework. High-performing fund managers demonstrate significantly positive liquidity timing ability, while low-performing fund managers do not. Thus, high-performing fund managers increase (decrease) the funds' exposure to the market during a high (low) market liquidity period, while low-performing fund managers do not show the liquidity timing ability. Moreover, only top-performing bank-related mutual funds possess the liquidity timing ability, supporting the information advantage hypothesis. Nonbank-related funds do not possess the liquidity timing ability at both the aggregate and portfolio levels. Several robustness tests confirm the findings.     

The timing ability and global performance of Tunisian mutual fund managers: A multivariate GARCH approach

It is well-established in the financial literature that the global performance of mutual fund managers is the result of two skills: selectivity and market timing. This paper examines whether the multivariate Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) approach improves our perception of the global performance of fund managers compared with the unconditional approach and the conditional approach based on instruments. We find strong evidence that the multivariate GARCH method makes mutual fund performance looks better relative to the existent approaches, but this improvement in the global performance does not mean necessarily that mutual funds outperform traditional benchmarks. Indeed, mixed mutual funds yield neutral performance relative to benchmarks, whereas bond mutual funds generate significant positive global coefficients. The strong performance of bond fund managers comes from their ability to pick profitable bonds, not from their ability to time the market. Also, the empirical tests highlight that the best (worst) bond funds in the past remain at the top (bottom) of the ranking in the following years. These findings suggest that the Tunisian bond market presents strong opportunities for sophisticated investors.     

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.     

Assessing Selectivity and Market Timing Performance of Mutual Funds for an Emerging Market: The Case of Turkey

This paper derives and analyzes the selectivity and market timing performance of the mutual funds for the Turkish economy for the financial crisis period by employing high-frequency data. The determinants of these derived abilities are investigated within a regression analysis. The results suggest weak evidence about selection ability and some evidence about superior market timing quality. They also indicate that management fees are negatively correlated with the ability measure, which is quite surprising. Experience emerges as an important factor, especially for market timing ability.     

Emerging Market Bond Funds: A Comprehensive Analysis

We analyze U.S.‐based emerging market bond funds over a ten‐year (1996–2005) complete cycle of ups and downs in the dominant emerging bond markets. Emerging market bond funds outperform comparable domestic and global bond funds. The results are robust across both conditional and unconditional models. The funds also provide international diversification benefits to U.S. and international bond and equity portfolios. The funds exhibit persistence in performance and seasonality. Active funds, large funds and funds with high minimum purchases perform better on a total return basis but not on a risk‐adjusted basis.     

Market structure and diversification of mutual funds

This study characterizes a systematic relationship between the diversification incentives and the market structure of the mutual funds industry with investors differentiated by their attitude towards risk. With sufficiently low competition the subgame perfect portfolio equilibrium exhibits maximal risk differentiation. With intensified competition intermediate funds, i.e., those attracting investors with intermediate attitudes towards risk, select diversified portfolios. Finally, we offer a general characterization of how imperfect competition between risk-differentiated funds will generate an equilibrium relationship between risk and expected returns.     

Revisiting mutual fund performance evaluation

Mutual fund manager excess performance should be measured relative to their self-reported benchmark rather than the return of a passive portfolio with the same risk characteristics. Ignoring the self-reported benchmark results in different measurement of stock selection and timing components of excess performance. We revisit baseline empirical evidence fund performance evaluation utilizing stock selection and timing measures that incorporate the self-reported benchmark. We introduce a new factor exposure based approach for measuring the – static and dynamic – timing capabilities of mutual fund managers. We overall conclude that current studies are likely to be misstating skill because they ignore the managers’ self-reported benchmark in the performance evaluation process.     

Market timing and return prediction under model instability

Despite mounting empirical evidence to the contrary, the literature on predictability of stock returns almost uniformly assumes a time-invariant relationship between state variables and returns. In this paper, we propose a two-stage approach for forecasting of financial return series that are subject to breaks. The first stage adopts a reversed ordered Cusum (ROC) procedure to determine in real time when the most recent break has occurred. In the second stage, post-break data is used to estimate the parameters of the forecasting model. We compare this approach to existing alternatives for dealing with parameter instability such as the Bai–Perron method and the time-varying parameter (TVP) model. An out-of-sample forecasting experiment demonstrates considerable gains in market timing precision from adopting the proposed two-stage forecasting method.     

我国开放式基金的证券选择和市场时机把握能力研究

运用参数检验方法对我国42只股票型开放式基金的证券选择和市场时机把握能力进行了分年度检验,结果发现,开放式基金在2003年具有较强的证券选择能力,但不具备市场时机把握能力,在2004年上半年显示出了一定的市场时机把握能力,却从总体上表现出负向证券选择能力.基于2003年的基金年报分析显示,开放式基金在对未来市场趋势的预测上存在明显的"羊群行为".     

Jensen's alpha and the market‐timing puzzle

Theory predicts that market‐timing activities bias Jensen's alpha (JA). However, empirical studies have failed to find consistent evidence of this bias. We tackle this puzzle in a nested model analysis and show that the bias contains an exogenous market component that is unrelated to market‐timing skill. In a comprehensive empirical analysis of US mutual funds, we find that the timing‐induced bias in JA is mainly driven by this market component, which is uncorrelated with measured timing activities. Measures of total performance that allow for timing activities are virtually identical to JA, even if timing activities are present in the evaluated fund. Hence, we conclude that JA is a sufficient measure of total performance.     

Why is timing perverse?

The existence of negative market timing, even for passive portfolios, poses a relevant puzzle when assessing portfolio management. In this paper, we develop a simple theoretical model so as to explain why such perverse market timing might occur and why those stocks with the lowest beta in upward markets exhibit pronounced negative timing. Our explanation is based on the existence of higher correlations of stocks in down markets than in up markets. We find that changes in beta, which drives timing, has four components; however, just two of these, mean covariance shift and covariances dispersion map, serve to explain the asymmetric behavior across stocks. We find that a high percentage of the negative market timing ability identified for mutual funds in the literature could be explained by this bias.     

The New Basel Capital Accord: Making it Effective with Stronger Market Discipline

In January 2001 the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision proposed a new capital adequacy framework to respond to deficiencies in the 1988 Capital Accord on credit risk. The main elements or 'pillars' of the proposal are capital requirements based on the internal risk-ratings of individual banks, expanded and active supervision, and information disclosure requirements to enhance market discipline. We discuss the incentive effects of the proposed regulation. In particular, we argue that it provides incentives for banks to develop new ways to evade the intended consequences of the proposed regulation. Supervision alone cannot prevent banks from 'gaming and manipulation' of risk-weights based on internal ratings. Furthermore, the proposed third pillar to enhance market discipline of banks' risk-taking is too weak to achieve its objective. Market discipline can be strengthened by a requirement that banks issue subordinated debt. We propose a first phase for introducing a requirement for large banks to issue subordinated debt as part of the capital requirement.     

Market timing and the debt–equity choice

We test the market timing theory of capital structure using an earnings-based valuation model that allows us to separate equity mispricing from growth options and time-varying adverse selection; thus avoiding the multiple interpretations of book-to-market ratio. We find that equity market mispricing plays a significant, if not dominant, role in the security choice decision. Our results are robust to the inclusion of proxies for time-varying growth options and alternate methods of measuring misvaluation.     

A Portfolio's Country Exposure Management: The Case of Latin American Mutual Funds

This study empirically examines the forecasting ability and performance of Latin American fund managers by evaluating changes in portfolio country exposure. It employs a methodology based on attribution returns. An attribution return is defined as the difference between the actual monthly fund return and the return that would have been generated by the previous month portfolio's country exposure. The study finds three major results. In the aggregate, Latin American fund managers demonstrate forecasting ability as evidenced by a positive and statistically significant attribution return. The fund managers outperform a regional benchmark when measured with Jensen's alpha, and the attribution return is positively correlated with alpha. Attribution returns are mostly negative during periods of financial instability in the region.     

Timing is money: The factor timing ability of hedge fund managers

This paper studies the level, determinants, and implications of the factor timing ability of hedge fund managers. We find that approximately 34% of hedge funds display factor timing ability on at least one factor over the full sample, concentrated especially at the market, size, and bond factors. Better factor timing skills are on average related to funds that are more experienced and more flexible, but the cross-factor heterogeneity is considerable. Factor timing is associated with outperformance; the top factor timing funds outperform the bottom factor timing funds with a significant 4.32% per annum. Timing skills, though, do not directly lead to higher net flow.     

Why Does Performance Persistence Vary Among Closed-End Funds?

This study extends the research on closed-end fund performance persistence by investigating whether the persistence of both net asset value (NAV) and market price returns of U.S. registered closed-end funds is related to various fund characteristics. The sample consists of 505 closed-end funds, which are investigated over the period from January 1976 to December 1996. The analysis tests whether persistence is related to the fund characteristics size, goal, management fees, turnover, fund family membership, fund experience, and the exchange on which a fund is traded. The results vary across holding periods used to calculate persistence but are similar with respect to the NAV and market price returns. Funds with lower expense ratios and funds traded on the NYSE show more persistence of strong NAV and market price performance.     

Portfolio Performance Measurement: a No Arbitrage Bounds Approach

This paper presents a new method to examine the performance evaluation of mutual funds in incomplete markets. Based on the no arbitrage condition, we develop bounds on admissible performance measures. We suggest new ways of ranking mutual funds and provide a diagnostic instrument for evaluating the admissibility of candidate performance measures. Using a monthly sample of 320 equity funds, we show that admissible performance values can vary widely, supporting the casual observation that investors disagree on the evaluation of mutual funds. In particular, we cannot rule out that more than 80% of the mutual funds are given positive values by some investors. Moreover, we empirically demonstrate that potential inference errors embedded in existing parametric performance measures can be of important magnitude.     

Relative Performance Evaluation of Mutual Funds: A Non-Parametric Approach

We propose an alternative mutual fund performance index which addresses the benchmark problem and controls for economies of scale in managing mutual funds. We advance a new concept of 'return-cost' efficiency as another important element in evaluating portfolio management, in addition to the mean-variance efficiency concept. Our index based on a non-parametric estimation is shown to be similar to the Sharpe index with multiple slopes (or factors). We have shown that all fund categories, except income funds, have similar average efficiency scores after controlling for economies of scale. Most funds operate in increasing returns to scale and seem to be successful in holding mean-variance efficient portfolios, but unsuccessful in allocating transaction costs efficiently, evidenced by excessive turnovers and loads.