Since the 2003 mutual funds scandal, it has become quite clear that thoughtful, long-term individual investors should focus on identifying and investing in stewardship funds. The purpose of this study is to provide readily available approaches for individual investors to use in the...

An idealized model of the investment process redefines the respective roles of security analysts and portfolio managers, quantifies such concepts as activity and aggressiveness, and explains how the individual analyst's efforts at forecasting returns translate into improved portfolio performance

The Pension Protection Act of 2006 identified target-date funds as an appropriate default investment for defined contribution retirement plans. Using the 2009 National Financial Capability Study, this paper examines the relation between investor sophistication and the decision to primarily...

Since the 2003 mutual funds scandal, it has become quite clear that thoughtful, long-term individual investors should focus on identifying and investing in stewardship funds. The purpose of this study is to provide readily available approaches for individual investors to use in the...

This paper analyzes the “return gap” between dollar-weighted returns that account for intermediate investor flows (internal rate of return) and buy-and-hold returns that funds typically report. Our sample constitutes all US-domiciled open-end mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs),...

We investigate the role of extreme positive payoffs in the distribution of monthly fund returns in investors' mutual fund preferences. We document a positive and significant relationship between the maximum style-adjusted monthly return (MAX) and future fund flows. The relationship is robust to...

In this paper we show that simple buy-and-hold strategies over-perform market-timing strategies effectively used by Italian investors in equity mutual funds. We estimate returns from market-timing strategies using aggregate data on net flows for a large sample of equity mutual funds, available...

We examine the daily activity and performance of a large panel of individual investors in Sweden's Premium Pension System. We find that active investors earn significantly higher returns and risk-adjusted returns than inactive investors. A performance decomposition analysis reveals that most of...

We examine the daily activity and performance of a large panel of individual investors in Sweden's Premium Pension System in the period 2000 to 2010. We find that active investors outperform passive investors, and that there is a causal effect of fund changes on performance. Chosen funds...

We examine the daily activity and performance of a large panel of individual investors in Sweden's Premium Pension System. We find that active investors earn significantly higher returns and risk-adjusted returns than inactive investors. A performance decomposition analysis reveals that most of...