IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-03884990.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why do investors buy shares of actively managed equity mutual funds? Considering the Correct Reference Portfolio from an Uninformed Investor's Perspective 1, 2

Author

Listed:
  • Radu Burlacu

    (CERAG - Centre d'études et de recherches appliquées à la gestion - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes)

  • Patrice Fontaine

    (EUROFIDAI - Institut Européen de données financières - ESSEC Business School - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Sonia Jimenez-Garcès

    (CERAG - Centre d'études et de recherches appliquées à la gestion - UPMF - Université Pierre Mendès France - Grenoble 2 - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

We use the Grossman & Stiglitz (1980) framework to build a reference portfolio for uninformed investors and employ this portfolio to assess the performance of actively managed equity mutual funds. We propose an empirical methodology to construct this reference portfolio using the information on prices and supply. We show that mutual funds provide, on average, an insignificant alpha of 23 basis points per year when considering this portfolio as a reference. With the stock market index as a proxy for the market portfolio, the average fund alpha is negative and highly significant, −128 basis points per year. The results are robust when considering various subsets of funds based on their characteristics and their degree of selectivity. In line with rational expectations equilibrium models considering asymmetrically informed investors and partially revealing equilibrium prices, our study supports that active management adds value for uniformed investors.

Suggested Citation

  • Radu Burlacu & Patrice Fontaine & Sonia Jimenez-Garcès, 2023. "Why do investors buy shares of actively managed equity mutual funds? Considering the Correct Reference Portfolio from an Uninformed Investor's Perspective 1, 2," Post-Print hal-03884990, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03884990
    DOI: 10.3917/fina.pr.016
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03884990
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-03884990/document
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.3917/fina.pr.016?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
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    JEL Classification: G11 G12 G14 information asymmetry reference portfolio performance actively managed equity mutual funds rational expectations equilibrium models; JEL Classification: G11; G12; G14 information asymmetry; reference portfolio; performance; actively managed equity mutual funds; rational expectations equilibrium models;
    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
    • 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

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hal:journl:hal-03884990. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.