This paper is the first to identify and classify virtually all investment instruments held by equity funds from their portfolio holdings. This enables us to analyze the effects of long and short exposures from different complex instruments including short sales, options and futures but also...

We find evidence for the beta anomaly in mutual fund performance. This anomaly is not accounted for in the standard four-factor framework, nor by the addition of a BAB factor to the benchmark model. We identify the active component of alpha (i.e., active alpha) not attributable to the passive...

We investigate the relationship between a mutual fund's variation in factor exposures and its future performance. Using a dynamic state space version of Carhart (1997)'s four factor model to capture factor variation, we find that funds with volatile factor exposures underperform funds with...

Why do investors entrust active mutual fund managers with large sums of money while receiving negative excess returns on average? Our explanation is that investors have a coarser information set than fund managers which leads them to systematically misinterpret managers' skill. When investors...

We investigate the relationship between a mutual fund’s variation in systematic risk factor exposures and its future performance. Using a dynamic state space version of Carhart (1997)’s four factor model to capture risk factor variation, we find that funds with volatile risk factor exposures...

Active fund managers are skilled and, on average, have used their skill to generate about $3.2 million per year. Large cross-sectional differences in skill persist for as long as ten years. Investors recognize this skill and reward it by investing more capital in funds managed by better...

Performance regressions lever expected benchmark returns linearly to the risk exposures of the fund. The interest rate (IR) risk premium, however, usually follows a decreasingly upward-sloping yield curve, characterizing the nonlinearity between expected return and IR risk exposure, e.g....

It is well-documented that mutual fund flows are positively related to funds' past performance. This paper focuses on the time-series variation of the performance-flow relationship. I find that investors are more sensitive to fund performance in some periods than other periods and that the...

Mutual fund companies routinely advertise the past returns of their strong-performing, actively-managed equity funds. These performance advertisements imply that the advertised high past returns are likely to continue. Indeed, investors flock to these funds despite high past returns being a poor...