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 paper studies how portfolios with a global investment scope are actually allocated internationally using a unique micro dataset on U.S. equity mutual funds. While mutual funds have great flexibility to invest globally, they invest in a surprisingly limited number of stocks, around 100. The...