IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/abacus/v38y2002i2p200-214.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is Index Performance Achievable? An Analysis of Australian Equity Index Funds

Author

Listed:
  • Alex Frino
  • David R. Gallagher

Abstract

This article examines the performance of index equity funds in Australia. Despite the significant growth in index funds since 1976, when the first index mutual fund was launched in the U.S., research on their performance is sparse in the U.S. and non‐existent in Australia. This study documents the existence of significant tracking error for Australian index funds. For example, the magnitude of the difference between index fund returns and index returns averages between 7.4 and 22.3 basis points per month across index funds operating for more than five years. However, there is little evidence of bias in tracking error implying that these funds neither systematically outperform nor underperform their benchmark on a before cost basis. Further analysis provides evidence that the magnitude of tracking error is related to fund cash flows, market volatility, transaction costs and index replication strategies used by the manager.

Suggested Citation

  • Alex Frino & David R. Gallagher, 2002. "Is Index Performance Achievable? An Analysis of Australian Equity Index Funds," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 38(2), pages 200-214, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:abacus:v:38:y:2002:i:2:p:200-214
    DOI: 10.1111/1467-6281.00105
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6281.00105
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1467-6281.00105?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Parkinson, Michael, 1980. "The Extreme Value Method for Estimating the Variance of the Rate of Return," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(1), pages 61-65, January.
    2. Michael C. Jensen, 1968. "The Performance Of Mutual Funds In The Period 1945–1964," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 23(2), pages 389-416, May.
    3. Keim, Donald B., 1999. "An analysis of mutual fund design: the case of investing in small-cap stocks," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 173-194, February.
    4. Horan, Stephen M, 1998. "A Comparison of Indexing and Beta among Pension and Nonpension Assets," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 21(3), pages 255-275, Fall.
    5. Wiggins, James B, 1991. "Empirical Tests of the Bias and Efficiency of the Extreme-Value Variance Estimator for Common Stocks," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(3), pages 417-432, July.
    6. Grinblatt, Mark & Titman, Sheridan D, 1989. "Mutual Fund Performance: An Analysis of Quarterly Portfolio Holdings," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 62(3), pages 393-416, July.
    7. Elton, Edwin J, et al, 1993. "Efficiency with Costly Information: A Reinterpretation of Evidence from Managed Portfolios," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(1), pages 1-22.
    8. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    9. Stephen M. Horan, 1998. "A Comparison Of Indexing And Beta Among Pension And Nonpension Assets," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 21(3), pages 255-275, September.
    10. Sawicki, Julia & Ong, Fred, 2000. "Evaluating managed fund performance using conditional measures: Australian evidence," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 8(3-4), pages 505-528, July.
    11. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    12. Chan, Louis K. C. & Lakonishok, Josef, 1993. "Institutional trades and intraday stock price behavior," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 173-199, April.
    13. Ron Bird & Helen Chin & Michael McCrae, 1983. "The Performance of Australian Superannuation Funds," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 8(1), pages 49-69, June.
    14. Malkiel, Burton G, 1995. "Returns from Investing in Equity Mutual Funds 1971 to 1991," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(2), pages 549-572, June.
    15. Hallahan, Terrence A. & Faff, Robert W., 1999. "An examination of Australian equity trusts for selectivity and market timing performance," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 9(3-4), pages 387-402, November.
    16. Elton, Edwin J & Gruber, Martin J & Blake, Christopher R, 1996. "The Persistence of Risk-Adjusted Mutual Fund Performance," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 69(2), pages 133-157, April.
    17. Jang, Hasung & Venkatesh, P C, 1991. "Consistency between Predicted and Actual Bid-Ask Quote-Revisions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(1), pages 433-446, March.
    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. Gregor Dorfleitner & Anna Gerl & Johannes Gerer, 2018. "The pricing efficiency of exchange-traded commodities," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 255-284, January.
    2. Amir Rezaee, 2006. "La mesure de performance de la gestion indicielle française," Working Papers halshs-00008393, HAL.
    3. Fernando Rubio, 2005. "Eficiencia De Mercado, Administracion De Carteras De Fondos Y Behavioural Finance," Finance 0503028, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 23 Jul 2005.
    4. Hallahan, Terrence & Faff, Robert, 2009. "Tournament behavior in Australian superannuation funds: A non-parametric analysis," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 307-322.
    5. L. Alamelu & Nisha Goyal, 2023. "Investment Performance and Tracking Efficiency of Indian Equity Exchange Traded Funds," Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, Springer;Japanese Association of Financial Economics and Engineering, vol. 30(1), pages 165-188, March.
    6. Peter Dunn & Scott Francis & Jason Hall, 2009. "Leveraged superannuation," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 49(3), pages 505-529, September.
    7. Jaspal Singh & Prabhdeep Kaur, 2016. "Tracking Efficiency of Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)," Paradigm, , vol. 20(2), pages 176-190, December.
    8. Gerasimos G Rompotis, 2012. "Does the law of one price apply to dually listed ETFs belonging to the same family? Evidence from iShares," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 13(6), pages 401-420, December.

    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. Fernando Rubio, 2005. "Eficiencia De Mercado, Administracion De Carteras De Fondos Y Behavioural Finance," Finance 0503028, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 23 Jul 2005.
    2. Pinnuck, Matt, 2003. "An Examination of the Performance of the Trades and Stock Holdings of Fund Managers: Further Evidence," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(4), pages 811-828, December.
    3. Victor Soucik & David E. Allen, 2006. "Benchmarking Australian fixed interest fund performance: finding the optimal factors," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 46(5), pages 865-898, December.
    4. Capocci, Daniel & Hubner, Georges, 2004. "Analysis of hedge fund performance," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 55-89, January.
    5. Wagner, Niklas & Winter, Elisabeth, 2013. "A new family of equity style indices and mutual fund performance: Do liquidity and idiosyncratic risk matter?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 69-85.
    6. Cong Chen & Carole Comerton-Forde & David R. Gallagher & Terry S. Walter, 2010. "Investment manager skill in small-cap equities," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 35(1), pages 23-49, April.
    7. Chris Bilson & Angela Frino & Richard Heaney, 2005. "Australian retail fund performance persistence," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 45(1), pages 25-42, March.
    8. Fadillah Mansor & M. Ishaq Bhatti & Shafiqur Rahman & Hung Quang Do, 2020. "The Investment Performance of Ethical Equity Funds in Malaysia," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-14, September.
    9. Zabiulla, 2012. "Macro Forecasting Abilities of Mutual Fund Managers in the Indian Capital Market," Indian Journal of Commerce and Management Studies, Educational Research Multimedia & Publications,India, vol. 3(2), pages 06-11, May.
    10. Gallagher, David R. & Jarnecic, Elvis, 2004. "International equity funds, performance, and investor flows: Australian evidence," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 81-95, February.
    11. Anjum, Sohail & Qayyum, Unbreen & Qureshi, Madeeha Gohar, 2019. "Aggregate performance evaluation of US Equity Mutual Funds - Explaining the performance of Growth Funds vs. Value Funds," MPRA Paper 100043, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. 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.
    13. 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.
    14. Rob Bauer & Rogér Otten & Alireza Tourani Rad, 2006. "New Zealand mutual funds: measuring performance and persistence in performance," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 46(3), pages 347-363, September.
    15. 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.
    16. Basu, Anup K. & Huang-Jones, Jason, 2015. "The performance of diversified emerging market equity funds," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 116-131.
    17. 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.
    18. Luis Vicente & Luis Ferruz, 2005. "Performance persistence in Spanish equity funds," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(18), pages 1305-1313.
    19. 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.
    20. David R. Gallagher, 2007. "The role of index funds in retirement asset allocation," Chapters, in: Hazel Bateman (ed.), Retirement Provision in Scary Markets, chapter 4, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    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:bla:abacus:v:38:y:2002:i:2:p:200-214. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0001-3072 .

    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.