IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finana/v90y2023ics105752192300340x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is anti-herding always a smart choice? Evidence from mutual funds

Author

Listed:
  • Lee, John Byong-Tek
  • Ma, Jun
  • Margaritis, Dimitris
  • Yang, Wanyi

Abstract

Recent empirical studies document a negative relation between herding behaviour and the skill of mutual fund managers. We explore this relationship further by focusing on fund managers' contrarian buy and sell behaviour against the market. Our study reveals an asymmetry in the performance of mutual funds with contrarian buy behaviour and contrarian sell behaviour. The contrarian-buy behaviour reflects skill by positively predicting the cross-section of next period's mutual fund returns, while the contrarian-sell behaviour reflects a lack of skill associated with a negative prediction. These findings are robust to various risk-adjusted performance measures. Contrarian-buy funds outperform momentum-buy funds by 3% per year, while contrarian-sell funds underperform momentum-sell peers by about 4%. These findings are robust across different sizes and styles of mutual funds. Further analysis indicates that the asymmetric effect is reversed during recessions and disappears when market sentiment is high. We also study how mutual fund characteristics relate to contrarian buy and sell practices. We find that mutual funds with larger size, higher flow, lower tracking error, and no manager ownership are more likely to buy against the crowd but sell with the crowd.

Suggested Citation

  • Lee, John Byong-Tek & Ma, Jun & Margaritis, Dimitris & Yang, Wanyi, 2023. "Is anti-herding always a smart choice? Evidence from mutual funds," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finana:v:90:y:2023:i:c:s105752192300340x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.irfa.2023.102824
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105752192300340X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.irfa.2023.102824?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. Antoniou, Constantinos & Doukas, John A. & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2013. "Cognitive Dissonance, Sentiment, and Momentum," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(1), pages 245-275, February.
    2. Andrew Koch, 2017. "Herd Behavior and Mutual Fund Performance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(11), pages 3849-3873, November.
    3. Roger Otten & Dennis Bams, 2002. "European Mutual Fund Performance," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 8(1), pages 75-101, March.
    4. Chen, Hsiu-Lang & Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Wermers, Russ, 2000. "The Value of Active Mutual Fund Management: An Examination of the Stockholdings and Trades of Fund Managers," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 35(3), pages 343-368, September.
    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 1655-1703, August.
    6. 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.
    7. Cici, Gjergji, 2012. "The Prevalence of the Disposition Effect in Mutual Funds’ Trades," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(4), pages 795-820, August.
    8. 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.
    9. Keim, Donald B. & Madhavan, Ananth, 1995. "Anatomy of the trading process Empirical evidence on the behavior of institutional traders," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 371-398, March.
    10. 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.
    11. Malcolm Baker & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2006. "Investor Sentiment and the Cross‐Section of Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(4), pages 1645-1680, August.
    12. 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.
    13. Brown, Stephen J & Goetzmann, William N, 1995. "Performance Persistence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(2), pages 679-698, June.
    14. Wagner, Moritz & Lee, John Byong-Tek & Margaritis, Dimitris, 2022. "Mutual fund flows and seasonalities in stock returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    15. Golec, Joseph H., 1996. "The effects of mutual fund managers' characteristics on their portfolio performance, risk and fees," Financial Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 133-147.
    16. 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.
    17. Judith Chevalier & Glenn Ellison, 1999. "Are Some Mutual Fund Managers Better Than Others? Cross‐Sectional Patterns in Behavior and Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(3), pages 875-899, June.
    18. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    19. Linlin Ma & Yuehua Tang, 2019. "Portfolio Manager Ownership and Mutual Fund Risk Taking," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(12), pages 5518-5534, December.
    20. Pastor, Lubos & Stambaugh, Robert F., 2003. "Liquidity Risk and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(3), pages 642-685, June.
    21. 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.
    22. Jonathan B. Berk & Richard C. Green, 2004. "Mutual Fund Flows and Performance in Rational Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(6), pages 1269-1295, December.
    23. 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.
    24. Kelsey D. Wei & Russ Wermers & Tong Yao, 2015. "Uncommon Value: The Characteristics and Investment Performance of Contrarian Funds," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(10), pages 2394-2414, October.
    25. 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.
    26. Chan, Louis K C & Lakonishok, Josef, 1995. "The Behavior of Stock Prices around Institutional Trades," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(4), pages 1147-1174, September.
    27. Sven Bouman & Ben Jacobsen, 2002. "The Halloween Indicator, "Sell in May and Go Away": Another Puzzle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1618-1635, December.
    28. Dong Lou, 2012. "A Flow-Based Explanation for Return Predictability," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(12), pages 3457-3489.
    29. Hudson, Yawen & Yan, Meilan & Zhang, Dalu, 2020. "Herd behaviour & investor sentiment: Evidence from UK mutual funds," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    30. Marcin Kacperczyk & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh & Laura Veldkamp, 2014. "Time-Varying Fund Manager Skill," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(4), pages 1455-1484, August.
    31. 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.
    32. 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.
    33. Joseph Chen & Harrison Hong & Ming Huang & Jeffrey D. Kubik, 2004. "Does Fund Size Erode Mutual Fund Performance? The Role of Liquidity and Organization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1276-1302, December.
    34. Linlin Ma & Yuehua Tang & Juan‐Pedro Gómez, 2019. "Portfolio Manager Compensation in the U.S. Mutual Fund Industry," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 74(2), pages 587-638, April.
    35. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 2015. "A five-factor asset pricing model," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 1-22.
    36. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    37. 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.
    38. Patel, Saurin & Sarkissian, Sergei, 2017. "To Group or Not to Group? Evidence from Mutual Fund Databases," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(5), pages 1989-2021, October.
    39. Kamstra, Mark J. & Kramer, Lisa A. & Levi, Maurice D. & Wermers, Russ, 2017. "Seasonal Asset Allocation: Evidence from Mutual Fund Flows," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(1), pages 71-109, February.
    40. Zhang, Cherry Y. & Jacobsen, Ben, 2021. "The Halloween indicator, “Sell in May and Go Away”: Everywhere and all the time," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    41. 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.
    42. 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.
    43. 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.
    44. 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.
    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. 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.
    2. Dahm, Laura K. & Sorhage, Christoph, 2015. "Milk or wine: Mutual funds' (dis)economies of life," CFR Working Papers 15-05, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    3. Jiang, Hao & Verardo, Michela, 2013. "Does herding behavior reveal skill? An analysis of mutual fund performance," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119034, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Jiang, George J. & Zaynutdinova, Gulnara R. & Zhang, Huacheng, 2021. "Stock-selection timing," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    5. Agnesens, Julius, 2013. "A statistically robust decomposition of mutual fund performance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(10), pages 3867-3877.
    6. 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.
    7. Cai, Yu & Lau, Sie Ting, 2015. "Informed trading around earnings and mutual fund alphas," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 168-180.
    8. Lan, Chunhua & Moneta, Fabio & Wermers, Russ, 2018. "Holding Horizon: A New Measure of Active Investment Management," CFR Working Papers 15-06, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR), revised 2018.
    9. Andrew Clare & Mariana Clare, 2019. "An examination of ex ante fund performance: identifying indicators of future performance," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 20(3), pages 175-195, May.
    10. Hao Jiang & Michela Verardo, "undated". "Does herding behavior reveal skill? An analysis of mutual fund performance," FMG Discussion Papers dp720, Financial Markets Group.
    11. Li, Zhiyong & Rao, Xiao, 2023. "Exploring the zoo of predictors for mutual fund performance in China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    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. Chen, Fan & Qian, Meifen & Sun, Ping-Wen & Yu, Bin, 2018. "In search for managerial skills beyond common performance measures," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 224-239.
    14. 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.
    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. Otero-González, Luis & Durán-Santomil, Pablo, 2021. "Is quantitative and qualitative information relevant for choosing mutual funds?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 476-488.
    17. Doron Avramov & Si Cheng & Allaudeen Hameed, 2020. "Mutual Funds and Mispriced Stocks," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(6), pages 2372-2395, June.
    18. 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.
    19. DeMiguel, Victor & Gil-Bazo, Javier & Nogales, Francisco J. & Santos, André A.P., 2023. "Machine learning and fund characteristics help to select mutual funds with positive alpha," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(3).
    20. Bessler, Wolfgang & Blake, David & Lückoff, Peter & Tonks, Ian, 2010. "Why does mutual fund performance not persist? The impact and interaction of fund flows and manager changes," MPRA Paper 34185, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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:90:y:2023:i:c:s105752192300340x. 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.