Behavioral Factors in Mutual Fund Flows

Individual investor mutual fund flows

This paper studies the relation between individuals’ mutual fund flows and fund characteristics, establishing three key results. First, consistent with tax motivations, individual investors are reluctant to sell mutual funds that have appreciated in value and are willing to sell losing funds. Second, individuals pay attention to investment costs as redemption decisions are sensitive to both exp...

Which Factors Matter to Investors? Evidence from Mutual Fund Flows

When assessing a fund manager’s skill, sophisticated investors will consider all factors (priced and unpriced) that explain cross-sectional variation in fund performance. We investigate which factors investors attend to by analyzing mutual fund flows as a function of recent returns. Investors attend most to market risk (beta), but treat returns attributable to size, value, momentum, and industr...

Mutual Fund Expense Disclosures: A Behavioral Perspective

Mutual fund competition in the presence of dynamic flows

This paper analyzes competition between mutual funds in a multiple funds version of the model of Hugonnier and Kaniel (2010). We characterize the set of equilibria for this portfolio management game and show that there exists a unique Pareto optimal equilibrium. The main result of this paper shows that the funds cannot differentiate themselves through portfolio choice in the sense that they sho...

Mutual Fund Portfolio Choice in the Presence of Dynamic Flows∗

We analyze the implications of the widely used fixed fraction of funds fees on a mutual fund manager’s portfolio decisions. In our model, a log utility investor is allowed to dynamically allocate capital between an actively managed mutual fund and a locally riskless bond. The optimal fund portfolio is shown to be the one that maximizes the market value of the fees received, and is independent o...