I investigate the relation between exchange-traded fund (ETF) flows and their underlying securities' returns using a unique fund-level database covering U.S. equity ETFs, adjusted for the flow reporting bias. I document price pressure and price reversal patterns in ETF flow-return relation in...

This study shows that exchange-traded fund (ETF) misvaluation — based on return differentials between ETFs and their net asset values (NAV) — comove excessively across ETFs. Excess comovements are positive (negative) and significant across ETFs in similar (distant) investment styles. Further...

We provide novel evidence supporting the notion that arbitrageurs can contribute to return comovement via ETF arbitrage. Using a large sample of U.S. equity ETF holdings, we document the link between measures of ETF activity and return comovement at both the fund and the stock levels, after...

A large and rapidly growing literature examines the impact of misvaluation on firm policies by using mutual fund outflow-induced price pressure to isolate non-fundamental price variation. I demonstrate that the standard approach to computing outflow-induced price pressure produces a measure that...

Classifying mandatory 13F stockholding filings by manager type reveals that hedge fund strategies are mostly contrarian, while mutual fund strategies are largely trend following. The only institutional performers---the 2/3 of hedge fund managers that are contrarian---earn alpha of 2.4% per year....

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...

Using the universe of Business Development Companies (BDCs), a unique publicly traded segment of U.S. Private Equity (PE), for the period 1998-2017 we provide the first in depth examination of their performance and risk adjusted characteristics. More importantly, we show that the readily...

This paper identifies managerial ability by looking at extreme liquidity events. Forced trades by distressed funds – those that are experiencing severe money outflows – generate temporary downward price pressure on securities held in common by these funds and therefore create trading...

This paper empirically studies whether mutual fund holdings in the underlying stock markets predict returns on equity options written on individual stocks. I find that fund holding concentrations in underlying stocks negatively predict the cross-section of corresponding option returns. The...

We examine the impact of mandatory portfolio disclosure by mutual funds on stock liquidity and fund performance. We develop a model of informed trading with disclosure and test its predictions using the SEC regulation in May 2004 requiring more frequent disclosure. Stocks with higher fund...