The background to this study is the failure of mutual fund independent directors to fulfill their obligations as ldquo;shareholder watchdogs,rdquo; as defined in the Investment Company Act of 1940. Normative transparency of information is fund adviser disclosure proactively ldquo;requestedrdquo;...

We investigate the performance and attributes of 136 retail mutual funds tracking the Samp;P 500 Index across diverse expense ratio classes. Our performance measures are the Sharpe ratio, Jensen's alpha, and annualized total returns. Attributes analyzed for their relation to expense ratios...

Given their simplicity and presumed commodity-like nature, institutional Samp;P 500 Index mutual funds should be subject to active price competition, resulting in only nominal size-adjusted differences in expenses. We find a wide disparity among fund expense ratios and their corresponding...

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...

The stated and objective empirical findings in this study (and others) are generally consistent. There is no evidence that mutual fund shareholders benefit from Rule 12b-1 plans, which provide a serious conflict of interest.The promise that 12b-1 fees would be used to increase mutual fund assets...

Baker and Wurgler [2007] take a “top down” approach to behavioral finance and 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 discernable, important, and regular effects on firms and the...

The study reviews important interactions between mutual funds and individual investors in choosing equity mutual funds. An important question is why both sophisticated and unsophisticated investors continue to invest in actively managed funds that generally underperform. Actively managed funds...

With respect to its small-cap funds, the Morningstar category rating is preferred to the Morningstar star rating with respect to the preponderance of its associations with both the Jensen Alpha and Sharpe Index. But, neither captures the entirety of the Sharpe Index and, especially, the Jensen...