This article explores the relationships of mutual fund advertising and investor skill in making fund choices. Fund advertising dominates the choices of unsophisticated investors. Advertising appeals to investor emotions by resonating with current beliefs, not by providing information that...

What the study findings say is that there are identified input/output and profile variables that are significantly different between the Morningstar 500's (1999) large-cap mutual funds that are DEA performance efficient and inefficient. The Sharpe Index represents the DEA output variable. That...

This study provides in-depth coverage of important findings surrounding the question of why investors continue to buy underperforming actively managed mutual funds. This issue is complicated by the finding active managers have skill that allows them to add fund value, but which is not shared...

Since the 2003 mutual funds scandal, it has become quite clear that thoughtful, long-term individual investors should focus on identifying and investing in stewardship funds. The purpose of this study is to provide readily available approaches for individual investors to use in the...

The literature has been unable to provide a definitive model of the sources and nature of mutual fund scale economies and diseconomies. This study provides findings on the sources and nature of fund economies and diseconomies with respect to expenses, size, performance, trading, and numerous...

This study provides mutual fund shareholders with a normative listing of transparent and traditionally opaque fees and expenses designed for most all funds. The most likely next step, if any, would be for a few "stewardship funds" to adopt the normative listing of transparent and traditionally...

This article provides in-depth discussion of important issues related to mutual fund distribution. The first two topics are fund distribution channel characteristics and Rule 12b-1 fees and distribution. Distribution channel characteristics discuss direct channel, advice channel, retirement...

The purpose of this study is to discuss research that identifies heterogeneous mutual fund and investor attributes and relations that explain dispersion in fund fees. One might think there is a short list of attributes and relations, such as high versus low expense ratios, that tells the full...

Baker and Wurgler [2007] take a “top down” approach to behavioral finance and the stock market. Investor sentiment is taken to be exogenous and the focus is on its empirical effects. Sentiment is measurable and its waves have clearly discernible, important, and regular effects on firms and...