We link a seemingly biased trading behavior to equilibrium asset prices. U.S. equity mutual fund managers tend to sell both their big winners and big losers. This selling pressure pushes down current prices and leads to higher future returns; aggregating across funds, we nd that securities for...

Institutional investors delegate 85% of their alternative investments to external managers and funds-of-funds. Institutions using financial intermediaries have higher costs and underperform institutions investing internally in real assets, private equity, and hedge funds. Large investors rely...

In this paper, we investigate how mutual funds react to the distress of another fund in the same fund family. We test three alternative hypotheses: (1) funds help the distressed fund, (2) funds front-run the distressed fund improving their relative performance in the fund family and, (3) the...

We develop an analytical solution to the dynamic multi-period portfolio choice problem of an investor with risky liabilities and time varying investment opportunities. We use the model to compare the asset allocation of investors who take liabilities into account, assuming time varying returns...

We analyze the investment menus offered within 401(k) pension plans to the employees of the largest finance and non-finance firms. Within the sample of finance firms, we distinguish between finance firms that hire an external independent trustee and finance firms that serve also as a trustee of...

Alpha, or outperformance of a benchmark, can be generated in many ways within a portfolio. It can be created by picking the top hedge fund managers, or by capturing the illiquidity premium via alternative assets. Venture capital is a major source of alpha for long-term investors. Alpha can also...

There has been considerable research into dynamic global tactical asset allocation (GTAA) strategies driven by simple measures of Valuation and Momentum applied to a baseline balanced portfolio of equities and fixed income (see Blitz and van Vliet 2008, Wang and Kochard 2011, Gnedenko and Yelnik...

Leveraged ETFs provide a convenient mechanism to dynamically change portfolio exposure and can be successfully used to construct robust portfolios that perform well during equity market drops. We start with a classical 60 percent Bonds/ 40 percent Stocks portfolio with monthly rebalancing that...

We find that a large portion of U.S. equity mutual funds almost second-order stochastically dominates the market portfolio. Consistent with the canonical definition of second-order stochastic dominance, both fund investors and managers reveal their preference for funds with a higher degree of...