This study revisits the widely used assumptions in long-term asset allocation: the normal distribution of long-horizon returns and the negligible impacts of estimation errors on the expected returns. This study uses the innovative simulation method of Fama and French (2018) for horizons of up to...

Individuals increasingly buy mutual funds via on-line platforms, whose ‘best buy' recommendations heavily influence flows. As intermediaries of mutual funds, platforms provide none of the unobservable interaction or intangible benefits of brokers, and so allow clean tests of the determinants,...

I introduce a general equilibrium model with active investors and indexers. Indexing causes market segmentation, and the degree of segmentation is a function of the relative wealth of indexers in the economy. Shocks to this relative wealth induce correlated shocks to discount rates of index...

The importance of asset allocation decisions in wealth management is well established. However, given its importance it is perhaps surprising that so little attention has been paid to the question of whether professional fund managers are skillful at timing market movement across asset classes...

In 1836, Société Générale created the world's first closed-end equity fund, Mutualité Industrielle. It promised to be a diversification tool targeted towards less-wealthy investors. We confirm that the trust's returns were indeed better than returns on synthetic portfolios such investors...

Why are there so few women in finance and even less managing funds? There is a major discrepancy between the number of female and male fund managers worldwide. The aim of this paper is to ascertain if gender is a contributing factor for fund managers performance. This is examined through...

This study presents a comprehensive assessment of managed fund performance models. Using UK ethical unit trusts data, we explore the added value of introducing extra variables such as size, book to market, momentum and a bond index and evaluate the performance using conditional information....

The literature provides broad evidence for the seasonality of stock market returns, but is very scarce regarding the potential seasonality of investment funds performance. Using a sample of 5349 Equity Europe or Equity Eurozone investment funds, this article contributes to fill this gap by...

Why are there so few women in finance and even fewer managing funds? There is a major discrepancy between the number of female and male fund managers worldwide. The aim of this paper is to ascertain if gender is a contributing factor to fund managers’ performance. This is examined through...

The fund size is highly persistent and correlated with risk factor loadings. Hence, it is unrealistic to assume constant diseconomies of scale over a long time. The traditional two-step method underestimates the uncertainty of diseconomies of scale. We propose a one-step procedure with a random...