We investigate the performance of a sample of German mutual equity funds over the period from 1994 to 2003. Our general finding is that mutual funds, on average, hardly produce excess returns relative to their benchmark that are large enough to cover their expenses. This conclusion is drawn from...

This paper aimed to investigate the impact of levels of selectivity on the performance of equity funds using a methodology applied for the first time ever in the Brazilian market. As an indicator of the activity level of a fund, we proposed the coefficient of determination (R2) of the regression...

This study introduces an innovative approach to measuring the “style-shifting activity” (SSA) of mutual funds using daily returns. Applying our new measure to a comprehensive sample of 2631 active US equity mutual funds, we show (i) that SSA predicts future performance, especially for...

One of the most crucial decisions for investors and plan sponsors is the selection of funds among the thousands of available alternatives. We stress that an investor first needs to specify a target alpha, i.e., the expected fund return in excess of a benchmark, and that the target alpha...

In this work, we apply cutting edge machine learning algorithms to one of the oldest challenges in finance: Predicting returns. For the sake of simplicity, we focus on predicting the direction (e.g. either up or down) of several liquid ETFs and do not attempt to predict the magnitude of price...