One of the major advantages of Equity mutual funds is that they allow retail investors to attain a diversified portfolio, which could not be easily obtained buying individual stocks. Our results indicate that mutual funds are not totally diversified; they hold a significant part of idiosyncratic...

We investigate the new reality of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). We show that many ETFs are active investments in form (designed to generate alpha) or function (serve as building blocks of active portfolios). The median ETF has an Activeness Index of 93.1%. Active-in-form ETFs have positive...

This paper examines the causes and consequences of hedge fund investments in exchange traded funds (ETFs) using U.S. data from 1998 to 2018. The data indicate that transient hedge funds and quasi-indexer hedge funds are substantially more likely to invest in ETFs. Unexpected hedge fund inflows...

We examine the relation between indexing and active management in the mutual fund industry worldwide. Explicit indexing and closet indexing by active funds are associated with countries' regulatory and financial market environments. We find that actively managed funds are more active and charge...

The article aims at pointing out the differences in market reactions regarding the announcement of an investment of selected Sovereign Wealth Funds in companies listed on the London Stock Exchange. The research sample consists of 796 market transactions made by four selected Sovereign Wealth...

We examine the relation between indexing and active management in the mutual fund industry worldwide. Explicit indexing and closet indexing by active funds are associated with countries' regulatory and financial market environments. We find that actively managed funds are more active and charge...

The growth of the hedge fund industry and the proliferation of retail alternative funds in combination with the fundamental reshaping of the regulatory landscape for the hedge fund industry suggest that mutual funds are becoming more like hedge funds as a matter of investment strategy while...

A closet indexer is more likely to meet a value-weighted investment benchmark by value-weighting the portfolio. Following this intuition, we introduce a simple measure of active management, the absolute difference between the value weights and the actual weights held by a fund, averaged across...

We examine whether professional money managers overreact to large climatic disasters. We find that managers within a major disaster region underweight disaster zone stocks to a much greater degree than distant managers and that this aversion to disaster zone stocks is related to a salience bias...

The use of technical analysis by financial market professionals is not well understood. This paper thus analyzes survey evidence from 692 fund managers in five countries, the vast majority of whom rely on technical analysis. At a forecasting horizon of weeks, technical analysis is the most...