IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finana/v81y2022ics1057521922001016.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mutual fund performance persistence: Factor models and portfolio size

Author

Listed:
  • Cuthbertson, Keith
  • Nitzsche, Dirk
  • O'Sullivan, Niall

Abstract

We re-examine US mutual fund performance persistence. We investigate persistence (i) using both “academic” factor models and “practitioner” index models, (ii) using decile-size recursive portfolios and also portfolios formed from smaller numbers of funds, (iii) using nonparametric bootstrap p-values as well as conventional t-tests and (iv) using both net-of-fee fund returns (net alphas) and gross alphas. Our key result is that positive net alpha performance persistence can be found using small portfolios of funds together with a holding period of 6 months or less, for both practitioner index models and academic factor models.

Suggested Citation

  • Cuthbertson, Keith & Nitzsche, Dirk & O'Sullivan, Niall, 2022. "Mutual fund performance persistence: Factor models and portfolio size," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finana:v:81:y:2022:i:c:s1057521922001016
    DOI: 10.1016/j.irfa.2022.102133
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521922001016
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.irfa.2022.102133?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 2017. "International tests of a five-factor asset pricing model," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(3), pages 441-463.
    2. Marcin Kacperczyk & Amit Seru, 2007. "Fund Manager Use of Public Information: New Evidence on Managerial Skills," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(2), pages 485-528, April.
    3. Ľuboš Pástor & Robert F. Stambaugh & Lucian A. Taylor, 2017. "Do Funds Make More When They Trade More?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(4), pages 1483-1528, August.
    4. Lu Zheng, 1999. "Is Money Smart? A Study of Mutual Fund Investors' Fund Selection Ability," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(3), pages 901-933, June.
    5. Laurent Barras & Olivier Scaillet & Russ Wermers, 2010. "False Discoveries in Mutual Fund Performance: Measuring Luck in Estimated Alphas," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(1), pages 179-216, February.
    6. Travis Sapp & Ashish Tiwari, 2004. "Does Stock Return Momentum Explain the "Smart Money" Effect?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 59(6), pages 2605-2622, December.
    7. Akbas, Ferhat & Armstrong, Will J. & Sorescu, Sorin & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2015. "Smart money, dumb money, and capital market anomalies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(2), pages 355-382.
    8. Angelidis, Timotheos & Giamouridis, Daniel & Tessaromatis, Nikolaos, 2013. "Revisiting mutual fund performance evaluation," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 1759-1776.
    9. Randolph B. Cohen & Joshua D. Coval & Ľuboš Pástor, 2005. "Judging Fund Managers by the Company They Keep," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(3), pages 1057-1096, June.
    10. K. J. Martijn Cremers & Antti Petajisto, 2009. "How Active Is Your Fund Manager? A New Measure That Predicts Performance," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(9), pages 3329-3365, September.
    11. Pastor, Lubos & Stambaugh, Robert F., 2002. "Mutual fund performance and seemingly unrelated assets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 315-349, March.
    12. James J. Choi & Kevin Zhao, 2020. "Did Mutual Fund Return Persistence Persist?," NBER Working Papers 26707, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Martijn Cremers & Antti Petajisto, 2006. "How Active is Your Fund Manager? A New Measure That Predicts Performance," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2370, Yale School of Management, revised 01 May 2009.
    14. Blake, Christopher R. & Morey, Matthew R., 2000. "Morningstar Ratings and Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 35(3), pages 451-483, September.
    15. Marcin Kacperczyk & Clemens Sialm & Lu Zheng, 2008. "Unobserved Actions of Mutual Funds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(6), pages 2379-2416, November.
    16. Cremers, Martijn & Pareek, Ankur, 2016. "Patient capital outperformance: The investment skill of high active share managers who trade infrequently," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(2), pages 288-306.
    17. Aneel Keswani & David Stolin, 2008. "Which Money Is Smart? Mutual Fund Buys and Sells of Individual and Institutional Investors," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(1), pages 85-118, February.
    18. Pástor, Ľuboš & Stambaugh, Robert F. & Taylor, Lucian A., 2015. "Scale and skill in active management," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 23-45.
    19. Chen, Yong & Cliff, Michael & Zhao, Haibei, 2017. "Hedge Funds: The Good, the Bad, and the Lucky," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(3), pages 1081-1109, June.
    20. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 2015. "A five-factor asset pricing model," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 1-22.
    21. Robert Kosowski & Allan Timmermann & Russ Wermers & Hal White, 2006. "Can Mutual Fund “Stars” Really Pick Stocks? New Evidence from a Bootstrap Analysis," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(6), pages 2551-2595, December.
    22. Cuthbertson, Keith & Nitzsche, Dirk & O'Sullivan, Niall, 2008. "UK mutual fund performance: Skill or luck?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 613-634, September.
    23. Kenchington, David & Wan, Chi & Yüksel, H. Zafer, 2019. "Gross profitability and mutual fund performance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 31-49.
    24. Bai, John (Jianqiu) & Ma, Linlin & Mullally, Kevin A. & Solomon, David H., 2019. "What a difference a (birth) month makes: The relative age effect and fund manager performance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 200-221.
    25. Fama, Eugene F & MacBeth, James D, 1973. "Risk, Return, and Equilibrium: Empirical Tests," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 607-636, May-June.
    26. Hao Jiang & Michela Verardo, 2018. "Does Herding Behavior Reveal Skill? An Analysis of Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(5), pages 2229-2269, October.
    27. Jones, Christopher S. & Shanken, Jay, 2005. "Mutual fund performance with learning across funds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(3), pages 507-552, December.
    28. Jiang, Hao & Verardo, Michela, 2018. "Does herding behavior reveal skill? An analysis of mutual fund performance," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86372, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    29. Eugene F. Fama & Kenneth R. French, 2010. "Luck versus Skill in the Cross‐Section of Mutual Fund Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(5), pages 1915-1947, October.
    30. Blake, David & Caulfield, Tristan & Ioannidis, Christos & Tonks, Ian, 2017. "New Evidence on Mutual Fund Performance: AÂ Comparison of Alternative Bootstrap Methods," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(3), pages 1279-1299, June.
    31. Cremers, Martijn & Petajisto, Antti & Zitzewitz, Eric, 2013. "Should Benchmark Indices Have Alpha? Revisiting Performance Evaluation," Critical Finance Review, now publishers, vol. 2(1), pages 1-48, July.
    32. Mateus, Irina B. & Mateus, Cesario & Todorovic, Natasa, 2016. "UK equity mutual fund alphas make a comeback," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 98-110.
    33. Cici, Gjergji & Dahm, Laura K. & Kempf, Alexander, 2018. "Trading efficiency of fund families: Impact on fund performance and investment behavior," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 1-14.
    34. David Blake & Allan Timmermann, 1998. "Mutual Fund Performance: Evidence from the UK," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 2(1), pages 57-77.
    35. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    36. Niels Lundtorp Olsen & Alessia Pini & Simone Vantini, 2021. "False discovery rate for functional data," TEST: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 30(3), pages 784-809, September.
    37. Marcin Kacperczyk & Clemens Sialm & Lu Zheng, 2005. "On the Industry Concentration of Actively Managed Equity Mutual Funds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(4), pages 1983-2011, August.
    38. Cai, Biqing & Cheng, Tingting & Yan, Cheng, 2018. "Time-varying skills (versus luck) in U.S. active mutual funds and hedge funds," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 81-106.
    39. Harrison Hong & Jeffrey D. Kubik & Jeremy C. Stein, 2005. "Thy Neighbor's Portfolio: Word‐of‐Mouth Effects in the Holdings and Trades of Money Managers," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(6), pages 2801-2824, December.
    40. Ferson, Wayne E & Schadt, Rudi W, 1996. "Measuring Fund Strategy and Performance in Changing Economic Conditions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(2), pages 425-461, June.
    41. Ayadi, Mohamed A. & Kryzanowski, Lawrence, 2011. "Fixed-income fund performance: Role of luck and ability in tail membership," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 379-392, June.
    42. Angie Andrikogiannopoulou & Filippos Papakonstantinou, 2019. "Reassessing False Discoveries in Mutual Fund Performance: Skill, Luck, or Lack of Power?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 74(5), pages 2667-2688, October.
    43. Christopherson, Jon A & Ferson, Wayne E & Glassman, Debra A, 1998. "Conditioning Manager Alphas on Economic Information: Another Look at the Persistence of Performance," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 11(1), pages 111-142.
    44. Campbell R Harvey & Yan Liu, 2018. "Detecting Repeatable Performance," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(7), pages 2499-2552.
    45. Jordan, Bradford D. & Riley, Timothy B., 2015. "Volatility and mutual fund manager skill," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(2), pages 289-298.
    46. Adams, John C. & Nishikawa, Takeshi & Rao, Ramesh P., 2018. "Mutual fund performance, management teams, and boards," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 358-368.
    47. Robert Novy-Marx, 2014. "Understanding Defensive Equity," NBER Working Papers 20591, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    48. Harvey, Campbell R. & Liu, Yan, 2019. "Cross-sectional alpha dispersion and performance evaluation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(2), pages 273-296.
    49. Zhu, Min, 2018. "Informative fund size, managerial skill, and investor rationality," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 114-134.
    50. Eugene F. Fama & Kenneth R. French, 2016. "Dissecting Anomalies with a Five-Factor Model," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(1), pages 69-103.
    51. Venkata Chinthalapati & Cesario Mateus & Natasa Todorovic, 2017. "Alphas in disguise: A new approach to uncovering them," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(3), pages 234-243, July.
    52. Sensoy, Berk A., 2009. "Performance evaluation and self-designated benchmark indexes in the mutual fund industry," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 25-39, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jin Yuan & Xianghui Yuan, 2023. "A Comprehensive Method for Ranking Mutual Fund Performance," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(2), pages 21582440231, May.
    2. Chen, Haozhi & Zhang, Yue, 2023. "Research on the effect of firm-specific investor sentiment on the idiosyncratic volatility anomaly: Evidence from the Chinese market," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    3. Hammouda, Amira & Saeed, Asif & Vidal, Marta & Vidal-García, Javier, 2023. "On the short-term persistence of mutual fund performance in Europe," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Keith Cuthbertson & Dirk Nitzsche & Niall O’Sullivan, 2023. "UK mutual funds: performance persistence and portfolio size," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 24(4), pages 284-298, July.
    2. Cuthbertson, Keith & Nitzsche, Dirk & O'Sullivan, Niall, 2016. "A review of behavioural and management effects in mutual fund performance," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 162-176.
    3. Timothy B. Riley, 2021. "Portfolios of actively managed mutual funds," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 205-230, May.
    4. Mateus, Irina B. & Mateus, Cesario & Todorovic, Natasa, 2019. "Review of new trends in the literature on factor models and mutual fund performance," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 344-354.
    5. Li, Zhiyong & Rao, Xiao, 2023. "Exploring the zoo of predictors for mutual fund performance in China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    6. Hunter, David & Kandel, Eugene & Kandel, Shmuel & Wermers, Russ, 2014. "Mutual fund performance evaluation with active peer benchmarks," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(1), pages 1-29.
    7. Victor DeMiguel & Javier Gil-Bazo & Francisco J. Nogales & André A. P. Santos, 2021. "Can Machine Learning Help to Select Portfolios of Mutual Funds?," Working Papers 1245, Barcelona School of Economics.
    8. Ferson, Wayne E., 2013. "Investment Performance: A Review and Synthesis," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 969-1010, Elsevier.
    9. Hung, Pi-Hsia & Lien, Donald & Kuo, Ming-Sin, 2020. "Window dressing in equity mutual funds," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 338-354.
    10. Matallín-Sáez, Juan Carlos & Soler-Domínguez, Amparo & Tortosa-Ausina, Emili, 2016. "On the robustness of persistence in mutual fund performance," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 192-231.
    11. Ľuboš Pástor & Robert F. Stambaugh & Lucian A. Taylor, 2017. "Do Funds Make More When They Trade More?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(4), pages 1483-1528, August.
    12. Wayne Ferson & Junbo L Wang, 2021. "A Panel Regression Approach to Holdings-Based Fund Performance Measures [Multiperiod performance persistence analysis of hedge funds]," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 11(4), pages 695-734.
    13. Pástor, Ľuboš & Stambaugh, Robert F. & Taylor, Lucian A., 2015. "Scale and skill in active management," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 23-45.
    14. Christiansen, Charlotte & Grønborg, Niels S. & Nielsen, Ole L., 2020. "Mutual fund selection for realistically short samples," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 218-240.
    15. Gupta-Mukherjee, Swasti, 2013. "When active fund managers deviate from their peers: Implications for fund performance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 1286-1305.
    16. Grønborg, Niels S. & Lunde, Asger & Timmermann, Allan & Wermers, Russ, 2021. "Picking funds with confidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(1), pages 1-28.
    17. Fulkerson, Jon A. & Riley, Timothy B., 2019. "Portfolio concentration and mutual fund performance," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 1-16.
    18. Bai, John Jianqiu & Tang, Yuehua & Wan, Chi & Yüksel, H. Zafer, 2022. "Fund manager skill in an era of globalization: Offshore concentration and fund performance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 18-40.
    19. Pi‐Hsia Hung & Donald Lien & Yun‐Ju Chien, 2020. "Portfolio concentration and fund manager performance," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(3), pages 423-451, July.
    20. Livingston, Miles & Yao, Ping & Zhou, Lei, 2019. "The volatility of mutual fund performance," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 1-1.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mutual fund performance persistence; Factor models; Portfolio size;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • C15 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Statistical Simulation Methods: General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:finana:v:81:y:2022:i:c:s1057521922001016. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620166 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.