Among the decisions most mutual fund portfolio managers make is the number of stocks to hold. We posit that there is an optimal number of stocks for each mutual fund, reflecting the trade-off between diversification benefits versus transactions and monitoring costs. We find a significant...

For investor and institutional class index mutual funds that track the S&P 500 Index, there are just 25 funds with statistically low expense ratios (management fee findings are found above). However, there are only five index funds - all investor class - with statistically very high and...

For investor and institutional class index mutual funds that track the S&P 500 Index, there are just 25 funds with statistically low expense ratios (management fee findings are found above). However, there are only five index funds — all investor class — with statistically very high and...

We analyze the expense ratio and attributes affecting the performance of 136 retail S&P 500 Index funds. These funds are among the simplest of financial vehicles. Nonetheless, the expense ratios and performance of these benchmark trackers differ significantly.Our univariate analysis shows that...

It is not enough to say that particular mutual funds have very excessive and most excessive expense ratios. In addition, these high cost funds are associated with negative portfolio characteristics that include more risky and less diversified portfolios, higher trading costs, and lower earnings....

It is not enough to say that particular mutual funds have very excessive and most excessive expense ratios. In addition, these high cost funds are associated with negative portfolio characteristics that include more risky and less diversified portfolios, higher trading costs and lower earnings....

We investigate the relation between the performance and characteristics of 1,779 domestic, actively managed retail equity mutual funds with diverse expense ratios. We show that using expense ratio standard deviation classes is an effective method for characterizing fund expenses for investors....

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...