IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ysm/wpaper/ysm353.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Estimating the Dynamics of Mutual Fund Alphas and Betas

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew Spiegel
  • Harry Mamaysky
  • Hong Zhang

Abstract

Consider an economy in which the underlying security returns follow a linear factor model with constant coeffcients. While portfolios that invest in these securities willin general, have a linear factor structure, it will be one with time-varying coeffcients. However, under certain assumptions regarding the portfolio's investment strategy, it is possible to estimate these time-varying alphas and betas. Importantly, this can be done without direct knowledge of either the portfolio manager's exact investment strategy or of the alphas and betas of the individual securities in which the portfolio invests. This paper develops and estimates a Kalman ?lter statistical model to track time-varying fund alphas and betas. Several tests indicate that relative to a rolling OLS model the Kalman ?lter model produces more accurate fund factor loadings both in and out of sample. This appears to be in large part due to the attempts of fund managers to time the market by varying their fund's risk exposure from period to period. Another advantage of the Kalman ?lter model is that the dynamic parameter estimates can be used to classify funds by their trading strategies and to determine the s

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew Spiegel & Harry Mamaysky & Hong Zhang, 2005. "Estimating the Dynamics of Mutual Fund Alphas and Betas," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm353, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Apr 2005.
    • Handle: RePEc:ysm:wpaper:ysm353
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.som.yale.edu/icfpub/publications/2593.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Klaas P. Baks & Andrew Metrick & Jessica Wachter, 2001. "Should Investors Avoid All Actively Managed Mutual Funds? A Study in Bayesian Performance Evaluation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(1), pages 45-85, February.
    2. Russ Wermers, 2000. "Mutual Fund Performance: An Empirical Decomposition into Stock-Picking Talent, Style, Transactions Costs, and Expenses," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1655-1703, August.
    3. Grinblatt, Mark & Titman, Sheridan, 1994. "A Study of Monthly Mutual Fund Returns and Performance Evaluation Techniques," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 29(3), pages 419-444, September.
    4. Eric Ghysels, 1998. "On Stable Factor Structures in the Pricing of Risk: Do Time-Varying Betas Help or Hurt?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(2), pages 549-573, April.
    5. Russ Wermers, 2000. "Mutual Fund Performance: An Empirical Decomposition into Stock‐Picking Talent, Style, Transactions Costs, and Expenses," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1655-1695, August.
    6. D Blake & B N Lehmann & A Timmermann, 2002. "Performance clustering and incentives in the UK pension fund industry," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 3(2), pages 173-194, September.
    7. Lehmann, Bruce N & Modest, David M, 1987. "Mutual Fund Performance Evaluation: A Comparison of Benchmarks and Benchmark Comparisons," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(2), pages 233-265, June.
    8. Dybvig, Philip H & Ross, Stephen A, 1985. "The Analytics of Performance Measurement Using a Security Market Line," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(2), pages 401-416, June.
    9. Grinblatt, Mark & Titman, Sheridan, 1992. "The Persistence of Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(5), pages 1977-1984, December.
    10. Ferson, Wayne E & Harvey, Campbell R, 1991. "The Variation of Economic Risk Premiums," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(2), pages 385-415, April.
    11. Blake, David & Lehmann, Bruce N & Timmermann, Allan, 1999. "Asset Allocation Dynamics and Pension Fund Performance," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 72(4), pages 429-461, October.
    12. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    13. Daniel, Kent, et al, 1997. "Measuring Mutual Fund Performance with Characteristic-Based Benchmarks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(3), pages 1035-1058, July.
    14. Brown, Stephen J. & Goetzmann, William N., 1997. "Mutual fund styles," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 373-399, March.
    15. Admati, Anat R & Ross, Stephen A, 1985. "Measuring Investment Performance in a Rational Expectations Equilibrium Model," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(1), pages 1-26, January.
    16. Wayne Ferson & Kenneth Khang, 2002. "Conditional Performance Measurement Using Portfolio Weights: Evidence for Pension Funds," NBER Working Papers 8790, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. 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.
    18. Ferson, Wayne E & Korajczyk, Robert A, 1995. "Do Arbitrage Pricing Models Explain the Predictability of Stock Returns?," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 68(3), pages 309-349, July.
    19. 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.
    20. Dybvig, Philip H & Ross, Stephen A, 1985. "Differential Information and Performance Measurement Using a Security Market Line," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(2), pages 383-399, June.
    21. Edwin J. Elton & Martin J. Gruber & Christopher R. Blake, 2001. "A First Look at the Accuracy of the CRSP Mutual Fund Database and a Comparison of the CRSP and Morningstar Mutual Fund Databases," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(6), pages 2415-2430, December.
    22. Hendricks, Darryll & Patel, Jayendu & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1993. "Hot Hands in Mutual Funds: Short-Run Persistence of Relative Performance, 1974-1988," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(1), pages 93-130, March.
    23. Admati, Anat R, 1985. "A Noisy Rational Expectations Equilibrium for Multi-asset Securities Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(3), pages 629-657, May.
    24. Ferson, Wayne E & Harvey, Campbell R, 1993. "The Risk and Predictability of International Equity Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(3), pages 527-566.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Harry Mamaysky & Matthew Spiegel & Hong Zhang, 2008. "Estimating the Dynamics of Mutual Fund Alphas and Betas," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(1), pages 233-264, January.
    2. Lehmann, Bruce & Timmermann, Allan, 2007. "Performance measurement and evaluation," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 24505, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Dong‐Hyun Ahn & H. Henry Cao & Stéphane Chrétien, 2009. "Portfolio Performance Measurement: a No Arbitrage Bounds Approach," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 15(2), pages 298-339, March.
    4. Matthew Spiegel & Harry Mamaysky & Hong Zhang, 2005. "Improved Forecasting of Mutual Fund Alphas and Betas," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2361, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Mar 2006.
    5. Harry Mamaysky & Matthew Spiegel & Hong Zhang, 2007. "Improved Forecasting of Mutual Fund Alphas and Betas," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 11(3), pages 359-400.
    6. 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.
    7. Elton, Edwin J. & Gruber, Martin J., 2013. "Mutual Funds," 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 1011-1061, Elsevier.
    8. Huang, Rong & Pilbeam, Keith & Pouliot, William, 2021. "Do actively managed US mutual funds produce positive alpha?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 182(C), pages 472-492.
    9. Bessler, Wolfgang & Drobetz, Wolfgang & Zimmermann, Heinz, 2007. "Conditional Performance Evaluation for German Mutual Equity Funds," Working papers 2007/22, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    10. 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.
    11. Ayadi, Mohamed A. & Kryzanowski, Lawrence, 2005. "Portfolio performance measurement using APM-free kernel models," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 623-659, March.
    12. Jiang, George J. & Zaynutdinova, Gulnara R. & Zhang, Huacheng, 2021. "Stock-selection timing," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    13. Francesco Lisi, 2011. "Dicing with the market: randomized procedures for evaluation of mutual funds," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(2), pages 163-172.
    14. Alda, Mercedes & Andreu, Laura & Sarto, José Luis, 2017. "Learning about individual managers’ performance in UK pension funds: The importance of specialization," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 654-667.
    15. Avramov, Doron & Wermers, Russ, 2006. "Investing in mutual funds when returns are predictable," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 339-377, August.
    16. Pastor, Lubos & Stambaugh, Robert F., 2002. "Investing in equity mutual funds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 351-380, March.
    17. Luis Vicente & Luis Ferruz, 2005. "Performance persistence in Spanish equity funds," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(18), pages 1305-1313.
    18. 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.
    19. Heber Farnsworth & Wayne E. Ferson & David Jackson & Steven Todd, 2002. "Performance Evaluation with Stochastic Discount Factors," NBER Working Papers 8791, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Ferson, Wayne & Mo, Haitao, 2016. "Performance measurement with selectivity, market and volatility timing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 93-110.

    More about this item

    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:ysm:wpaper:ysm353. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/smyalus.html .

    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.