This study presents a novel way to interpret the effects of investor attention on mutual fund flow and performance, by using Google Trends. Google Trends is an internet service that shows the aggregated search volumes on specific keywords. Based on its nature as being representative of investors’ search frequency, Google Trends acts as a direct measure for investor attention. The paper then see...

NIKUNJ KAPADIA is with the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts. T he recent proliferation of hedge funds has brought to the forefront the types of trading strategies that distinguish hedge funds from the more conservative mutual funds. Two major sets of trading strategies have been in the spotlight: market-neutral trades, and trades that rely on the spread between t...

In this study, we examine three issues related to the accrual and the net operating assets (NOA) anomalies. First, whether mutual funds trade on these anomalies. Second whether they are able to generate profits, net of transaction costs. Third, the reasons why such profits are not completely exploited. Prior studies provide evidence on the first issue by examining the trading behavior of instit...

Mutual Fund industry plays a pivotal role in optimal allocation and channelization of available idle resources in the economy. This role becomes much stronger in the developing economies like Pakistan where the prospective investors do not have much investment knowledge, information, and facilities to invest in the capital markets neither they have risk aptitude for direct investments in risky ...

Although established money managers operate in an environment which seems competitive, they also seem to be very profitable. The present value of the expected future profits from managing a collection of funds is equal to the value of the assets under management times the profit margin, assuming that the managed funds will remain in business forever, zero asset flow into and out of the funds, z...

The paper provides empirical evidence that strategic complementarities among investors generate fragility in financial markets. Analyzing mutual fund data, we find that, consistent with a theoretical model, funds with illiquid assets (where complementarities are stronger) exhibit stronger sensitivity of outflows to bad past performance than funds with liquid assets. We also find that this patte...

This paper investigates the performance of copycat funds, which are free-riding on disclosed asset holdings of actively managed mutual funds. On average, copycat funds are able to marginally outperform their target mutual funds, but the relative success of copycat funds has increased after 2004, when SEC regulation imposed all mutual funds to quarterly disclose their holdings. We document a sub...

By the end of 2018, the net asset value in total and the number of Sharia mutual funds in Indonesia is dominated by the Sharia equity fund. Therefore, this study sought to address the factors of internal and external factors affecting the Sharia equity funds’ performance in Indonesia in the period 2010-2018. The fund performance is measured with the Sharpe ratio. The determinants of fund perfor...

The mutual fund industry would like us to believe that fund expenses are justifiable by their extensive management expertise, security analysis and the consequent delivery of returns that exceed the market performance. Management know-how is costly and thus it drives up the expenditure of actively managed mutual funds and potentially lowers their net returns. Nevertheless the fund managers argu...