We provide a rationale for window dressing where investors respond to conflicting signals of managerial ability inferred from a fund's performance and its disclosed portfolio holdings. We contend that window dressers take a risky bet on their performance during a reporting delay period, which...

I show that the disclosure of mutual funds’ holdings significantly affects investors’ investment decisions. As most mutual fund websites, advertisements, and fund-trading platforms only disclose a fund’s 10 largest holdings (top-10), this study finds that investors disproportionately focus...

We argue that active fund managers can pick stocks only when the market presents such opportunities. We propose measures of stock selection opportunity and show evidence that a significant portion of mutual funds time stock selection, i.e., trading more when stock selection opportunities are...

We examine the determinants and consequences of mutual fund managers simultaneously managing multiple funds. Well-performing managers multitask by taking over poorly performing funds or launching new funds. Subsequent to multitasking, funds run by managers prior to multitasking (i.e., incumbent...

We examine the determinants and consequences of the multitasking phenomenon in the mutual fund industry where fund managers simultaneously manage multiple funds. We show that wellperforming managers multitask either by taking over poorly performing funds within fund companies (i.e., acquired...

Since Markowitz (1958) and Sharpe (1966), the increasing number of criteria and performance indicators made mutual funds analysis more complex and sometimes risky. In this study we propose to identify the most relevant indicators to classify mutual funds based on their statistical properties....

This paper combines the use of portfolio holdings data and Principal Component Analysis to create synthetic fund indexes. Synthetic funds are funds portfolios which aim to duplicate a fund market in order to represent alternative benchmarks to compare the performance of investment funds. Our...