The consensus view of the influential economist John Maynard Keynes is that he was a stellar investor. We provide an extensive quantitative appraisal of his performance over a quarter-century in both calendar and event time, and present detailed empirical analysis of his archived trading...

InvestorLit is a subscription service providing reviews of institutional investment literature. The reviews cover a wide range of investment topics and are published online. Bruce Grantier, founder of InvestorLit, is a member of the Brandes Institute Advisory Board. Members of the InvestorLit...

Passive investing, particularly in emerging markets, has become an increasingly popular means of quick, “diversified” exposure to a particular segment of the markets. Flows into passive emerging market products have been so strong that assets in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) designed to...

We examine whether institutional investors amplify or dampen mispricing induced by noise trading. Stock recommendations in the Wall Street Journal's Investment Dartboard Column (IDC) stimulate noise trading that generates mispricing. The mispricing decreases with institutional ownership, which...

Does investor heterogeneity affect the power of market discipline in mutual fund adviser misconduct? We show a significant difference in flow sensitivity to misconduct disclosures between institutional and retail investors. Market discipline is particularly weak among retail investors with...

We examine the role of strategic communication in public short selling campaigns by hedge funds. Such campaigns are associated with abnormal returns for targets of approximately -7% as well as changes in the behavior of stakeholders (e.g., other short sellers). The effects are driven by...

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...

Academics and practitioners have long anticipated a decline in the performance of institutional investors as their holdings reach the point where they are largely trading amongst themselves. We confirm that institutional investor performance has declined over time -- but it appears unrelated to...

We examine how weather conditions near a firm's major institutional investors affect stock market reactions to firms' earnings announcements. We find that unpleasant weather experienced by institutional investors leads to more delayed market responses to earnings news. Moreover, unpleasant...