The analysis of Italian flexible funds performance offers a set of indicators rather critical of the ability of fund managers to meet these expectations. In particular, the ability to generate higher performance compared to riskless assets, to reduce risks and to anticipate the bull and bear...

This paper investigates whether the UK's referendum decision to leave the European Union ("Brexit") had a positive impact on portfolio risk diversification. We estimate weekly dynamic conditional correlations between 1973 and 2018, and then optimal sectoral portfolio allocations over the same...

In this paper we show that simple buy-and-hold strategies over-perform market-timing strategies effectively used by Italian investors in equity mutual funds. We estimate returns from market-timing strategies using aggregate data on net flows for a large sample of equity mutual funds, available...

We analyze the use of derivatives in Italian equity mutual funds from December 2002 to May 2007. We find that the average asset allocation in derivatives increased considerably during this time frame, roughly coinciding with the harmonization of Italian regulation of mutual funds to European...