The goal of this study is to determine which fund or country-specific characteristics predict accurate performance in terms of tracking country-specific stock market indices. Ninety-three country-specific exchange-traded funds from 47 different countries are included in this study. In accordance...

Hedge funds do not easily fit into the current way institutions go about investing. Based on a survey of recent academic and practitioner research, this article reviews six competing frameworks for how to incorporate hedge funds in institutional portfolios. Each framework has very different...

This paper studies the role of mutual fund yield in driving investor flows and performance of bond funds. Using two common measures, the SEC yield and 12-month distribution yield, we find strong evidence that investors tend to chase bond funds with higher yields, even after controlling for total...

We find that the performance distribution of the individual stocks inside a mutual fund can toss out additional information about the fund manager's stock picking ability. When a mutual fund contains mostly mediocre-performing stocks but one super-performer, it is likely that the overall fund...

This study establishes a multi-tier framework to evaluate how fund manager characteristics systematically affect mutual fund performance. The framework includes three tiers of performance elements: 1) comprehensive performance, 2) return and risk, and 3) timing skill and picking ability. Using...

We investigate the determinants and performance implications of cash holdings for a large sample of actively-managed equity funds domiciled in the European Union (EU). In line with recent evidence from the US, we observe that cash holdings are strongly influenced by a fund's fee structure, past...

The consensus wisdom of active mutual fund managers, as reflected in their average over- and underweighting decisions, contains valuable information about future stock returns. Analyzing a comprehensive sample of active U.S. equity funds 1984-2008, we find that stocks heavily overweighted by...

The paper builds on a simple yet novel idea that the way investors react to the recent mutual fund performance depends largely upon the long-term historical performance of that fund. In particular, I find that investors react more actively to the fund's recent performance in case of the funds...

We examine how active share—the extent to which a portfolio's holdings differ from its benchmark's holdings—affects the performance, risk management, and flows of bond mutual funds. Measuring active share at both the issue and issuer level, the average bond fund has an issue-level...