The importance of asset allocation decisions in wealth management is well established. However, given its importance it is perhaps surprising that so little attention has been paid to the question of whether professional fund managers are skillful at timing market movement across asset classes...

Although there has been a substantial flow of money over the last twenty years into index tracking funds and ETFs, the vast majority of equity investment in mutual funds is still being managed on an active, discretionary basis. In the US and the UK active management still accounts for around 75%...

Using a large and long sample of US and European mutual funds we examine the impact that the membership of a fund family has on performance. We test for strategic and competitive behaviour among family funds and whether this affects performance persistence and risk taking behaviour. We find no...