We examine the option-implied volatility of the three most liquid ETFs (Diamonds, Spiders, and Cubes) and their respective tracking indices (Dow 30, S&P 500, and NASDAQ 100). We find that volatility smiles for ETF options are more pronounced than for index options, primarily because...

The proposition that a prudent investor should be diversified is widely accepted if not incontrovertible for ordinary investors – investors who have no reasonable expectation of influencing company management or business policy. Indeed, fiduciary duty requires that trustees and other...

Identifying outperforming mutual funds ex-ante is a notoriously difficult task. We use machine learning to exploit fund characteristics and construct portfolios of equity funds that earn positive and significant out-of-sample alpha net of all costs. In contrast, alphas of portfolios selected...

This study develops a style rotation model based on quarterly forecasts of style factor returns, across four style categories, generated using market and macroeconomic data. The prescriptions from this model are tested on a sample of U.S. active equity mutual funds' portfolio holdings. An annual...

Performance of mutual fund selection methods is typically assessed using long samples (long time series). It is, however, very often of interest how well the methods perform in shorter samples. We carry out an extensive simulation study based on an empirically motivated skill distribution. For...

This study investigates whether firm opacity impacts the investment behaviors and outcomes of retail investors using the fintech brokerage Robinhood (i.e., “RH investors”). We theorize that higher firm opacity leads RH investors to make nonrational investment decisions. The testable...

This study shows that exchange-traded fund (ETF) misvaluation — based on return differentials between ETFs and their net asset values (NAV) — comove excessively across ETFs. Excess comovements are positive (negative) and significant across ETFs in similar (distant) investment styles. Further...

This paper investigates investor disagreement and clientele effects in performance evaluation by developing a measure that considers the best potential clienteles of mutual funds. In an incomplete market under law-of-one-price and no-good-deal conditions, we obtain an upper bound on admissible...

This paper examines the relationship between mutual fund managers' past professional backgrounds and their portfolio performance, using Chinese mutual fund data from 2003 to 2016. We focus on managers with prior work experience either as industry analysts or as macro analysts, the two most...