We study the relation between mutual fund trades and mass media coverage of stocks. We find that funds exhibit persistent differences in their propensity to buy media-covered stocks. Moreover, this propensity is negatively related to their future performance. Funds in the highest propensity...

We provide the first in-depth examination of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) within actively managed mutual fund (AMMF) portfolios to better understand why AMMFs make substantial investments in passive ETFs. We examine the association between holding ETF positions and AMMF performance, as well as...

We uncover a negative relation between herding behavior and skill in the mutual fund industry. Our new, dynamic measure of fund-level herding captures the tendency of fund managers to follow the trades of the institutional crowd. We find that herding funds underperform their antiherding peers by...

When assessing a fund manager's skill, sophisticated investors will consider all factors (priced and unpriced) that explain cross-sectional variation in fund performance. We investigate which factors investors attend to by analyzing mutual fund flows as a function of recent returns decomposed...

Why do investors entrust active mutual fund managers with large sums of money while receiving negative excess returns on average? Our explanation is that investors have a coarser information set than fund managers which leads them to systematically misinterpret managers' skill. When investors...

We assess the abilities and the role of buy-side analysts within mutual fund families by analyzing mutual funds managed by buy-side analysts from fourteen fund families. Buy-side analysts exhibit investment abilities by realizing positive style- and risk-adjusted returns. Analysts' skills have a...

In this paper we investigate whether herding by actively managed equity funds affects their performances and flows over the 1980-2013 period. We show that during the herding quarter, on average, funds that trade with the herd benefit from this behavior. Although this does not directly translate...

We provide a solid framework in analyzing of what drives mutual fund performance in Chinese mutual fund industry, and show that fund performance is determined not only by efforts of fund manager, but also by fund investor behavior. Our empirical evidence shows that the total purchase and...

I show that the shape of flow–performance relationship among open-end funds varies with investor sentiment. This link is stronger when the market tone is optimistic. Cross-sectional comparison reveals that the convexity of the relationship is more pronounced among funds of the type that...

We document that mutual fund investors take risk independent of fund managers. The independent risk taking is manifested through channeling more fund flows to certain fixed income mutual funds that invest more on risky assets. Further, this kind of risk-taking by investors is not observed in...