Using detailed holdings of exchange-traded options, we examine how mutual funds use options and how options affect portfolio performance and risk. Options users underperform nonusers by two to three percent per year. The underperformance is especially pronounced for funds that are heavy users of...

Mutual funds are part of larger organizations, which make decisions with consequences for all their member funds. This study examines how the efficiency of trading desks operated by fund families affects the performance and trading of affiliated funds. We introduce a novel approach to measure...

We examine how speed of information diffusion within mutual fund families affects the performance and trading behavior of the corresponding member mutual funds. Timely information flows within the organization lead to better fund performance, and even more so when information flows across funds...

Rationality suggests that advice-seeking investors receive benefits from financial advice that are comparable in value to the fees paid for such advice. However, empirical evidence documenting these benefits for U.S. investors has so far been lacking. We document that U.S. mutual fund investors...

We document that, on average, U.S. equity mutual funds prefer realizing capital losses rather than capital gains. A substantial fraction of the sample, however, exhibits the opposite tendency of realizing gains more readily than losses. The documented tendency for this subset appears to be due...

This is the first study of corporate-bond mutual fund performance that examines detailed security-level holdings and returns. The new database allows us to decompose the costs and benefits of active management. In contrast to prior research on equity funds that shows evidence of stock-selection...

We study the dispersion of month-end valuations placed on identical corporate bonds by different mutual funds. Such dispersion is related to bond-specific characteristics associated with liquidity and market volatility. TRACE may have contributed to the general decline in dispersion over our...

Using detailed options holdings, we examine how mutual funds' use of options affects performance and risk. Using options generates, on average, no performance advantages. In fact, funds that follow certain distinct strategies underperformed. The only salutary impact is lower portfolio risk for a...