Performance and Characteristics of Actively Managed Institutional Equity Mutual Funds

In this study, we provide extensive evidence on the performance characteristics of 1,118 U.S. domestic, actively managed institutional equity mutual funds. We measure performance using such measures as three-year Sharpe ratios, Jensen's alphas, and Miller's active alphas as well as annualized Russell Index-adjusted returns over multiple periods (1, 3, 5, 10, 15 years). We relate performance to fund attributes including expense ratio class, net assets, 12b-1 fees dummy, turnover ratio, beta, cash, and dividend yield.We analyze the disparity of expense ratios of actively managed institutional equity mutual funds and find that expense ratios differ widely among Morningstar categories. Consistent with previous mutual fund studies, we find strong evidence that the average actively managed institutional equity mutual fund cannot beat a representative benchmark after expenses