To many people, the terror of falling share prices is often significant, often more so than the pleasure of gains. Accordingly, investors often want to minimize downside volatility as a part of their portfolio planning. Investors already have several tools to measure downside volatility,...

Mutual fund is an investment company or trust that pools the resources from thousands of its unit holders, who share common investment goal, and then diversifies its investments into different types of securities in order to realize potential returns with reasonable safety.The objective of the...

This is a survey article. In it we review the modern literature on the characteristics and performance of mutual funds. Key articles on open end stock and bond funds, closed end funds and exchange traded funds are reviewed. Topics range from measuring and predicting performance to explaining...

This article finds strong evidence for the presence of the disposition effect among US mutual fund managers. The analysis can establish a link between the disposition effect and mutual fund characteristics as well as changes in the macroeconomic environment. Managers with a lower disposition...

An idealized model of the investment process redefines the respective roles of security analysts and portfolio managers, quantifies such concepts as activity and aggressiveness, and explains how the individual analyst's efforts at forecasting returns translate into improved portfolio performance

The average alpha of mutual funds is an indication of whether it pays off to invest in actively managed funds. In this study we show that a substantial part of the variation in the average alpha can be explained by exogenous factors. The most important factors are the average expense ratio, the...

This paper examines the style-based feedback trading behavior of mutual fund managers. We provide an empirical version of the model for style-switching behavior of Barberis and Shleifer (2003). We find style-based feedback trading for 77% of the funds, half of which is positive- (negative-)...

Performance evaluation of mutual funds using factor pricing models is usually distorted by the existence of a volatility anomaly and correlated residuals. By augmenting the Fama-French five-factor model with an active peer benchmark, we eliminate the measurement errors caused by these...

Alternative Mutual Funds (AMFs) follow strategies similar to those of hedge funds and seek returns uncorrelated with the market. We analyze the performance of AMFs for the period January, 1998 through December, 2011 using the Carhart four-factor model and the Fung-Hsieh seven-factor model. Our...

We analyze the flow of money between mutual fund categories, finding strong evidence of seasonality in investor risk aversion. Aggregate investor flow data reveal investor preference for safe mutual funds in autumn and risky funds in spring. During September alone, outflows from equity funds...