Purpose Focusing on the Brazilian equity mutual fund industry, this study analyzes whether including the investor sentiment index in asset pricing models is important for explaining fund alpha. Design/methodology/approach The investor sentiment index and risk factors in the Fama and French...

When evaluating a manager, investors should attempt to separate luck from skill. We find a mutual fund manager's demonstrated skill better predicts future performance than past fund performance. Despite that fact, investors tend to buy the funds with the best past performance, not the funds...

We examine why mutual funds appear to underperform hedge funds. Utilizing a unique panel of mutual fund contracts changes, we explore several possible channels, including: alternative investment practices (e.g., short sales and leverage), performance-based compensation, and the ability to...

Just over 20 years have passed since the publication of Carhart's landmark 1997 study on mutual funds. Its conclusion—that the data did “not support the existence of skilled or informed mutual fund portfolio managers”—was the capstone of an academic literature beginning with Jensen...

Since their introduction in 2002, bond ETFs have grown dramatically with over $243 billion in assets by the end of 2012. Using data on gross flows from N-SAR filings, we provide the first comprehensive examination of bond ETF characteristics and cash flows. We find evidence of return chasing in...

We make use of a unique dataset of SEC Form N-SAR filings to examine the gross flows of U.S. bond funds. We find that gross inflows and outflows average around 4% of TNA per month, but net flows average only 0.26%. When modeling these flows, we see that, like equity funds, bond fund investors...

Mutual fund managers should choose to increase the concentration of their portfolio when they possess information of great enough expected value to offset the risks of increased concentration. Consistent with that idea, we find that fund performance improves after concentration increases....