The average alpha of mutual funds is an indication of whether it pays off to invest in actively managed funds. In this study we show that a substantial part of the variation in the average alpha can be explained by exogenous factors. The most important factors are the average expense ratio, the...

We find increasingly large variations in returns from momentum strategies in recent years. Momentum strategies did not earn significant excess returns during the period of 1993-2004 which was due to their poor performance over the period from 2001-2004. Using sub-samples of smaller...