Business Commons^™

Is Anti-Herding Always A Smart Choice? Evidence From Mutual Funds, John Byong-Tek Lee, Jun Ma, Dimitris Margaritis, Wanyi Yang

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

Recent empirical studies document a negative relation between herding behaviour and the skill of mutual fund managers. We explore this relationship further by focusing on fund managers' contrarian buy and sell behaviour against the market. Our study reveals an asymmetry in the performance of mutual funds with contrarian buy behaviour and contrarian sell behaviour. The contrarian-buy behaviour reflects skill by positively predicting the cross-section of next period's mutual fund returns, while the contrarian-sell behaviour reflects a lack of skill associated with a negative prediction. These findings are robust to various risk-adjusted performance measures. Contrarian-buy funds outperform momentum-buy funds by 3% …

Essays On Performance Evaluation Of Portfolio Managers Of Mutual And Hedge Funds, Yuekun Liu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays focusing on the performance evaluation of portfolio managers of mutual and hedge funds. The first essay shows the performance of corporate bond mutual funds tends to be estimated using models with limited empirical validation. I test several models and find considerable variation in quality. That variation leads to meaningful differences with respect to the stylized facts of corporate bond fund performance. Using my preferred BENCH4 model—a novel model based on funds’ common benchmarks—I find average underperformance, substantial relative performance persistence, a small number of funds with positive alphas unattributable to luck, and positive alphas …

Comparing Actively Managed Mutual Fund Categories To Index Funds Using Linear Regression Forecasting And Portfolio Optimization, Luke Weiner

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The global investment industry offers a wide variety of investment products especially for individual investors. One such product, index funds, which are younger than actively managed mutual funds, have typically outperformed managed funds. Despite this phenomenon, investors have displayed a tendency to continue investing in actively managed funds. Although only a small percentage of actively managed funds outperform index funds, the costs of actively managed funds are significantly higher. Also, managed fund performances are most often determined by their fund category such as growth or real estate. I wanted to answer the following question for individual investors: can we …

Air Pollution, Behavioral Bias, And The Disposition Effect In China, Jennifer (Jie) Li, Massimo Massa, Hong Zhang, Jian Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Inspired by the recent health science findings that air pollution affects mental health and cognition, we examine whether air pollution can intensify the cognitive bias observed in the financial markets. Based on a proprietary data set obtained from a large Chinese mutual fund family consisting of complete trading information for more than 773,198 ac-counts in 247 cities, we find that air pollution significantly increases investors' disposition effects. Analysis based on two plausible exogenous variations in air quality (the vast dissi-pation of air pollution caused by strong winds and the Huai River policy) supports a causal interpretation. Mood regulation provides a …

The Impact Of Crises On The Shift In Capital Flows From Active To Passive Investment Strategies, Jordan Wang

Honors Scholar Theses

The study investigates the plausibility of an active to passive transition, the impact of crises on the potential transition, and the performance-flow relationship of both active and passive investment products, which includes US equity, open-end and ETF, funds. The analysis compares active and passive funds through the lens of fund flows, absolute returns, and risk-adjusted returns. The study shows that there seemed to be an active to passive transition from 2007 – 2019 and that 2020 – 2021 exhibits measures that could describe changes in the active to passive narrative. A performance-flow relationship exists across both active and passive funds. …

The Role Of Mutual Funds In Corporate Social Responsibility, Zhichuan Li, Saurin Patel, Srikanth Ramani

Business Publications

This paper examines the role of mutual funds in corporate social responsibility (CSR). Using a fund-level, holdings-based CSR score, we find that CSR-friendly mutual funds improve firms’ CSR standings. This effect is more pronounced for firms with higher mutual fund ownership and stronger corporate governance. We further show that while CSR-friendly mutual funds have influence on almost all CSR categories, they focus on increasing CSR strengths rather than reducing CSR concerns. We also discover that CSR-friendly funds are more likely to vote in favor of CSR proposals, and that firms owned by CSR-friendly funds are more likely to link their …

Girls Just Wanna Have Funds, Caley Prunier

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Three Essays On Mutual Funds, Fund Management Skills, And Investor Sentiment, Feng Dong

Finance Theses & Dissertations

The mutual fund research focus has switched from whether average active fund managers have fund management skill to whether a subset of active fund managers have skills that produce investor benefits. In this dissertation we participate into the study stream by investigating the relation between managerial skills possessed by mutual fund managers and fund performance.

Essay 1 focuses on whether investor sentiment affects the performance of skilled mutual fund managers. Stocks during periods of high investor sentiment are more likely to have noise, while during low investor sentiment periods stocks are more likely to trade close to their fundamental values. …

Mutual Fund Trading Costs And Diseconomies Of Scale, Jeffrey Busse, Tarun Chordia, Lei Jiang, Yuehua Tang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Larger mutual funds underperform smaller funds even though they have lower percentage transaction costs. Larger funds hold and trade a larger fraction of bigger, more liquid stocks, which leads to lower percentage transaction costs than smaller funds. Smaller funds outperform larger funds primarily when small cap stocks outperform large cap stocks. Overall, we find that it is not trading costs but fund holding characteristics, especially the market capitalization of stock holdings, that drive diseconomies of scale in the mutual fund industry.

Can Investors Benefit From Using Morningstar's Stewardship Grades?, Scott B. Moore, Gary E. Porter

2017 Faculty Bibliography

Interest in governance led Morningstar to develop a summary measure for mutual fund governance. In contrast to previous work in this area, we focus on whether and how individual investors can use the Stewardship Grade Overall to improve mutual fund selection. We find that regardless of fee structure, top overall governance grade funds impose lower costs on investors regardless of fund investment style. We also find some evidence that choosing funds with the highest stewardship grade may earn positive risk adjusted returns. Stewardship Grade overall may therefore help less sophisticated investors identify better-performing mutual funds.

Portfolio Manager Compensation And Mutual Fund Performance, Linlin Ma, Yuehua Tang, Juan-Pedro Gomez

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We use a novel dataset to study the relation between individual portfolio manager compensation and mutual fund performance. Managers with explicit performance-based pay exhibit superior subsequent fund performance, especially when investment advisors link pay to performance over a longer time period. In contrast, alternative compensation arrangements, such as fixed salary, assets-based pay, or advisor-profits-based pay are not associated with superior performance. Our tests further show that the positive relation between performance-based contracts and fund performance is not driven by the selection of talented managers proxied by education background. Lastly, managers with performance-based pay engage less in risk-shifting activities.

Off The Rack Versus Savile Row: The Value Of Custom Tailoring For Equity Investors, Steven Dolvin, John Gonas

Steven D. Dolvin

eparately managed accounts (SMAs) generally carry a higher fee structure than standard mutual funds, but managers tout the ability to customize accounts as being worthy of this higher cost. This customization may increase returns, or it may simply allow for more personalized tax management or control over other unique circumstances. • Very little research exists on the relative return benefit of SMAs compared with actively managed mutual funds. We fill this gap by examining firms that offer concurrently managed funds-SMAs as well as matching mutual funds run by the same manager(s) and following the same general strategy. • We find …

Mutual Funds’ Soft Dollar Arrangements: Determinants, Impact On Shareholder Wealth, And Relation To Governance, Yaman Ö. Erzurumlu, Vladimir Kotomin

Faculty Publications - Finance, Insurance, and Law

Mutual fund advisers either expense the cost of research and other services or pay for them with soft dollars. This study is the first to use actual soft dollar and total brokerage commission figures for a large number of funds and to examine how soft dollars are linked to mutual fund governance. Employing a survivorship bias-free sample of actively managed US mutual funds, we find that higher soft dollar and total brokerage commissions are associated with higher advisory fees but not with higher risk-adjusted fund returns. These findings suggest that mutual fund shareholders, on average, do not benefit from the …

The Why And How Of Mutual Fund Standard Deviations, Ladd Kochman, Randy Goodwin

Ladd Kochman

To the interested observer, mutual fund standard deviations raise two tantalizing questions: Are standard deviations relevant when funds, by definition, eliminate the unsystematic component of total risk? and How can two respected giants in the investments field like Fidelity and Morningstar use the same returns, intervals and measurement period for the same fund and end up with glaringly different standard deviations? To answer the question of relevance, we recall Evans and Archer's (1968) argument that as much as 90 percent of a portfolio's unsystematic risk can be diversified away with 12 to 18 stocks. Since that diversifiable risk is a …

Do Mutual Funds Herd In Industries?, Umut Celiker, Jaideep Chowdhury, Sokhan Sonaer

Business Faculty Publications

This study examines whether mutual funds herd in industries and the extent to which such herding impacts industry valuations. Using two herding measures proposed by Lakonishok et al. (1992) and Sias (2004) we document that mutual funds herd in industries. We show that industry herding is not driven by fund flows and that it is not a manifestation of individual stock herding. We also find evidence indicating that herding in industries by mutual funds is related to the industry momentum phenomenon first documented by Moskowitz and Grinblatt (1999), but it does not drive industry valuations away from their fundamentals.

Investor Behavior In The Mutual Fund Industry: Evidence From Gross Flows, George D. Cashman, Federico Nardari, Daniel N. Deli, Sriram V. Villupuram

Finance Faculty Research and Publications

Using a large sample of monthly gross flows from 1997 to 2003, we uncover several previously undocumented regularities in investor behavior. First, investor purchases and sales produce fund-level gross flows that are highly persistent. Persistence in fund flows dominates performance as a predictor of future fund flows. More importantly, failing to account for flow persistence leads to incorrect inferences with respect to the relation between performance and flows. Second, we document that investors react differently to performance depending on the type of fund, and that investor trading activity produces meaningful differences in the persistence of fund flows across mutual fund …

Emerging Market Mutual Funds: Recent Trends In Performance, Expenses, Composition And Growth, Will Bertin, Laurie Prather, Li-Anne Woo

Li-Anne Woo

Emerging market mutual funds are a rapidly growing mutual fund category. This growth is most likely due to their impressive realized returns, although their returns may be quite volatile. This study reports on emerging market mutual funds' characteristics and performance relative to domestic and international equity mutual funds and also details the significant growth in these funds. We further consider the investment allocations of the three categories of funds among developing versus mature markets. Our results suggest that the superior performance of emerging market mutual funds more than adequately compensates for their higher risk, and thus provides a sound justification …

Emerging Market Mutual Funds: Recent Trends In Performance, Expenses, Composition And Growth, Will Bertin, Laurie Prather, Li-Anne Woo

Laurie Prather

Emerging market mutual funds are a rapidly growing mutual fund category. This growth is most likely due to their impressive realized returns, although their returns may be quite volatile. This study reports on emerging market mutual funds' characteristics and performance relative to domestic and international equity mutual funds and also details the significant growth in these funds. We further consider the investment allocations of the three categories of funds among developing versus mature markets. Our results suggest that the superior performance of emerging market mutual funds more than adequately compensates for their higher risk, and thus provides a sound justification …

Three Essays On Investments, Xin Hong

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

This dissertation consists of three essays on investments. The first essay examines the incidence, determinants, and consequences of hedge fund share restriction changes. This paper finds that nearly one in five hedge funds change their share restrictions (e.g., lockup) over the period of 2007-2012. Share restriction changes are not random. Fund’s asset illiquidity, liquidity risk, and performance are related to share restriction changes. A hazard model indicates that funds who actively manage liquidity concerns live longer by adjusting share restrictions. The paper examines whether changes in share restrictions create an endogeneity bias in the share illiquidity premium (Aragon, 2007) and …

Who Calls The Shots?: How Mutual Funds Vote On Director Elections, Stephen J. Choi, Jill E. Fisch, Marcel Kahan

All Faculty Scholarship

Shareholder voting has become an increasingly important focus of corporate governance, and mutual funds control a substantial percentage of shareholder voting power. The manner in which mutual funds exercise that power, however, is poorly understood. In particular, because neither mutual funds nor their advisors are beneficial owners of their portfolio holdings, there is concern that mutual fund voting may be uninformed or tainted by conflicts of interest. These concerns, if true, hamper the potential effectiveness of regulatory reforms such as proxy access and say on pay. This article analyzes mutual fund voting decisions in uncontested director elections. We find that …

Convenience In The Mutual Fund Industry, George D. Cashman

Finance Faculty Research and Publications

Abstract

I examine the role of convenience in the mutual fund industry. I find that investors pay more for relatively convenient funds, and that the flows to convenient funds are less responsive to performance. These findings suggest that investors do not evaluate mutual funds independently, but rather that investors select a primary fund, likely based on beliefs about managerial ability, and then select funds which are relatively convenient to this primary fund.

Highlights

► I find that investors pay a significant premium to invest in convenient mutual funds. ► I find that the flows to convenient funds are indifferent to …

Mutual Fund Industry Selection And Persistence, Jeffrey A. Busse, Qing Tong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We analyze mutual fund industry selectivity — the performance of a fund’s industry allocation relative to the market. We find that industry selection accounts for a full third of fund performance based on two-digit SIC codes, with the remaining attributable to the performance of individual stocks relative to their own industries. We find that industry-selection skill drives persistence in relative performance, particularly over longer investment horizons. Unlike individual-stock-selection ability, industry selectivity is not eroded by increasing fund assets. Our results suggest that accounting for a manager’s ability to pick outperforming industries provides information beyond standard performance measures that can enhance …

Agency Problems In Target-Date Funds, Vallapuzha Sandhya

Finance Dissertations

Target-Date Funds (TDFs) facilitate retirement planning by varying asset allocation over time with the goal of reducing portfolio risk. We explore potential agency problems in TDFs by examining their return performance and flow-performance relation. We find that TDFs under-perform balanced funds (BFs) which are also approved as a default option along with TDFs in 401(k) plans with automatic enrollment. We show that the under-performance is driven by TDFs that have a fund-of-fund structure and constituent funds with high expense ratios or poor performance within the fund family. Additionally, we discover an absence of flow-performance relation in TDFs while BFs exhibit …

A Floating Nav For Money Market Funds: Fix Or Fantasy?, Jill E. Fisch, Eric D. Roiter

All Faculty Scholarship

The announcement by the Reserve Primary Fund, in September 2008, that it was “breaking the buck,” triggered a widespread withdrawal of assets from other money market funds and led the U.S. Government to adopt emergency measures to maintain the stability of the short term credit markets. In light of these events, the SEC heightened the regulatory requirements to which money market funds – a three trillion dollar industry -- are subject. Regulators and commentators continue to press for further regulatory change, however. The most controversial reform proposal would eliminate the ability of money market funds to purchase and sell shares …

Off The Rack Versus Savile Row: The Value Of Custom Tailoring For Equity Investors, Steven D. Dolvin, John Gonas

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

eparately managed accounts (SMAs) generally carry a higher fee structure than standard mutual funds, but managers tout the ability to customize accounts as being worthy of this higher cost. This customization may increase returns, or it may simply allow for more personalized tax management or control over other unique circumstances. • Very little research exists on the relative return benefit of SMAs compared with actively managed mutual funds. We fill this gap by examining firms that offer concurrently managed funds-SMAs as well as matching mutual funds run by the same manager(s) and following the same general strategy. • We find …

Pay-Performance Sensitivity And Firm Size: Insights From The Mutual Fund Industry, George D. Cashman

Finance Faculty Research and Publications

I examine the ex ante decision to make an agent's pay-performance sensitivity an inverse function of organization size. I focus on mutual funds and their decision to use compensation contracts that reduce the advisor's marginal compensation as the fund grows (a declining-rate contract) over the dominant contract type, where marginal compensation is unrelated to fund size (a single-rate contract). I find evidence consistent with the view that declining-rate contracts are a mechanism to keep marginal compensation in line with the advisor's declining marginal product. Specifically, I find that funds with greater exposure to diseconomies of scale are more likely to …

Management Structure And The Performance Of Funds Of Mutual Funds, William Bertin, Laurie Prather

Laurie Prather

A rapidly growing mutual fund category is funds of funds (FOFs) which invest in other mutual funds instead of individual securities. This study reports on FOFs' characteristics and performance relative to traditional equity mutual funds and finds that FOFs compare favorably. FOFs with identified managers outperform their unidentified counterparts, and FOFs that invest in-family outperform both traditional equity funds and those FOFs investing out-of-family. Finally, replicating FOFs' holdings can be prohibitively expensive since they commonly hold funds with high minimum initial investments, closed funds and/or funds that are restricted to a particular investor type.

Mutual Fund Characteristics, Managerial Attributes, And Fund Performance, Laurie Prather, William Bertin, Thomas Henker

Thomas Henker

This study provides a comprehensive examination of recent mutual fund performance by analyzing a large set of both mutual funds and fund attributes in an effort to link performance to fund-specific characteristics. The results indicate that the hypothesized relationships between performance and the explanatory variables are generally upheld. After taking into consideration general market conditions and fund investment objective, the characteristic variables that relate to fund popularity, growth, cost, and management also explain performance. Finally, after controlling for survivorship and benchmark error as well as fund-specific factors, the results refute the performance persistence phenomenon.

Mutual Fund Characteristics, Managerial Attributes, And Fund Performance, Laurie Prather, William Bertin, Thomas Henker

Laurie Prather

This study provides a comprehensive examination of recent mutual fund performance by analyzing a large set of both mutual funds and fund attributes in an effort to link performance to fund-specific characteristics. The results indicate that the hypothesized relationships between performance and the explanatory variables are generally upheld. After taking into consideration general market conditions and fund investment objective, the characteristic variables that relate to fund popularity, growth, cost, and management also explain performance. Finally, after controlling for survivorship and benchmark error as well as fund-specific factors, the results refute the performance persistence phenomenon.

The Customer Is King : Mutual Fund Relationships And Analyst Recommendations, Ping Liu

Theses & Dissertations

I investigate whether the business relations between mutual funds and brokerage firms influence sell-side analyst coverage and recommendations. Using a comprehensive sample of analyst recommendations in China over the 2004-2008 period, I find that the likelihood of analyst coverage and analysts’ relative recommendations, benchmarked against consensus recommendations, are positively associated with the mutual fund business relationship. I measure the business relation by the weight of a stock in the mutual fund client’s portfolio and the commission revenue generated from the mutual fund clients. My results show that mutual funds take advantage of these optimistic recommendations by selling the stocks. I …