This paper proposes several new holdings-based measures of fund investment horizon, and examines the relation between manager skills and fund holding horizon. We find that both aggregate holdings and trades of long-horizon funds are informative about superior future long-term stock returns,...

We analyze the flow of money between mutual fund categories, finding strong evidence of seasonality in investor risk aversion. Aggregate investor flow data reveal investor preference for safe mutual funds in autumn and risky funds in spring. During September alone, outflows from equity funds...

Theories of herding behavior predict that only investors with sufficiently precise private information or those most overconfident will deviate from the crowd. Using portfolio holdings, this paper identifies contrarian funds as those pursuing distinctive investment strategies, i.e., as those...