Using a unique data set that contains the complete ownership structure of the German stock market, we study the momentum and contrarian trading of different investor groups. Foreign investors and financial institutions, and especially mutual funds, are momentum traders, whereas private...

Short sellers are perceived as informed, sophisticated investors. Yet little is known about their actual performance and trading strategies. Using a novel, hand-collected data set of daily position disclosures in Europe, we identify the entry, change, and exit dates of large short-sale positions...

This paper studies the impact of mandatory portfolio disclosure of mutual funds on the liquidity of disclosed stocks and on fund performance. We consider a theoretical model of informed trading with different mandatory disclosure frequencies. Using a regulation change in May 2004 that increased...

We study the dynamics of fund manager ownership for a sample of U.S. equity mutual funds from 2005 to 2011. We find that ownership changes positively predict changes in future risk-adjusted fund performance. A one-standarddeviation increase in ownership predicts a 1.6 percent increase in alpha...

I provide evidence that fund managers who overweight firms with the most differentiated products ('monopolies') exhibit a superior risk-adjusted performance. This is consistent with information advantages due to a better understanding of qualitative information on a firm's competitive...

Taking a firm's competitive position into account benefits investors who are better at evaluating this qualitative information. I find that fund managers who overweight companies with market power outperform their peers. Placebo exercises and an exogenous shock to product market competition...

This study provides evidence for a positive association between mutual fund holdings’implied cost of capital (ICC) and future performance. Consistent with large transactioncosts of ICC-based investments impeding their exploitation and employing a ICC-basedstrategy reflecting skill,...

We investigate the relationship between a mutual fund's variation in factor exposures and its future performance. Using a dynamic state space version of Carhart (1997)'s four factor model to capture factor variation, we find that funds with volatile factor exposures underperform funds with...

Processing qualitative information about a firm's product market competition matters for fund performance. I find that fund managers with a better understanding of a firm's market power exhibit a superior risk-adjusted performance. Managers who overweight companies with the fewest competitors...

Processing qualitative information about a firm's product market competition matters for professional investors. Consistent with a superior understanding of a firm's market power, fund managers who overweight companies with the fewest competitors (monopolies) outperform their peers. An exogenous...