Portfolio performance measures using holdings data are panel regressions. The returns of a fund's stocks are regressed on its lagged portfolio weights. Stock fixed effects isolate average performance from time-series predictive ability. Control variables condition fund performance on the...

This article provides a review of the rapidly developing literature on investment performance evaluation. The goals are to summarize the significant forces and contributions that have brought this field of research to its current state of knowledge and to suggest directions for future research....

The literature has not unambiguously established that a positive alpha, as traditionally measured, means that an investor would want to buy a fund. However, when alpha is defined using the client's marginal utility function, a client faced with a positive alpha would generally want to buy. When...