Active Fundamental Performance

We propose a new measure, active fundamental performance (AFP), to identify skilled mutual fund managers. AFP evaluates fund investment skills conditioned on the release of firms' fundamental information. For each fund, we examine the covariance between deviations of its portfolio weights from a benchmark portfolio and the underlying stock performance on days when firms publicize fundamental information. Because asset prices on these information days better reflect firm fundamentals, AFP can more effectively identify investment skills. From 1984 to 2014, funds in the top decile of high AFP subsequently outperformed those in the bottom decile by 2% to 3% per year