IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbfina/v35y2011i10p2704-2718.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Selling winners, holding losers: Effect on fund flows and survival of disposition-prone mutual funds

Author

Listed:
  • Singal, Vijay
  • Xu, Zhaojin

Abstract

Recent studies suggest that presence of a disposition effect in a large subset of investors can create stock mispricings, which has serious implications for market efficiency. We examine whether US equity mutual funds are disposition-prone, how that effect influences performance, investor flows and fund survival, and whether the disposition orientation of mutual funds affects stock prices in a sustained manner. We find that about 30% of all funds exhibit some degree of disposition behavior and that such funds underperform funds that are not disposition-prone by 4-6% per year. Moreover, after controlling for performance, tax overhang and other factors that potentially affect flows, disposition-prone funds attract significantly smaller flows than other funds. The results suggest that mutual fund investors are smart enough to minimize investment in disposition-prone funds. Consequently, disposition-prone funds have significantly higher rates of failure than other funds, thereby reducing the impact of such trading behavior on security prices.

Suggested Citation

  • Singal, Vijay & Xu, Zhaojin, 2011. "Selling winners, holding losers: Effect on fund flows and survival of disposition-prone mutual funds," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(10), pages 2704-2718, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:35:y:2011:i:10:p:2704-2718
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378426611000999
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    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. Huij, Joop & Verbeek, Marno, 2007. "Cross-sectional learning and short-run persistence in mutual fund performance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 973-997, March.
    2. Dubofsky, David A., 2010. "Mutual fund portfolio trading and investor flow," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 802-812, April.
    3. Marcin Kacperczyk & Clemens Sialm & Lu Zheng, 2008. "Unobserved Actions of Mutual Funds," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(6), pages 2379-2416, November.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. Joshua D. Coval & Tyler Shumway, 2005. "Do Behavioral Biases Affect Prices?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(1), pages 1-34, February.
    8. 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.
    9. Massa, Massimo, 2003. "How do family strategies affect fund performance? When performance-maximization is not the only game in town," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 249-304, February.
    10. Chevalier, Judith & Ellison, Glenn, 1997. "Risk Taking by Mutual Funds as a Response to Incentives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(6), pages 1167-1200, December.
    11. De Long, J Bradford & Andrei Shleifer & Lawrence H. Summers & Robert J. Waldmann, 1990. "Noise Trader Risk in Financial Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 703-738, August.
    12. Erik R. Sirri & Peter Tufano, 1998. "Costly Search and Mutual Fund Flows," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(5), pages 1589-1622, October.
    13. Andrea Frazzini, 2006. "The Disposition Effect and Underreaction to News," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(4), pages 2017-2046, August.
    14. Shapira, Zur & Venezia, Itzhak, 2001. "Patterns of behavior of professionally managed and independent investors," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(8), pages 1573-1587, August.
    15. Nicolas P. B. Bollen, 2005. "Short-Term Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(2), pages 569-597.
    16. Li Jin & Anna Scherbina, 2011. "Inheriting Losers," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(3), pages 786-820.
    17. Grinblatt, Mark & Han, Bing, 2005. "Prospect theory, mental accounting, and momentum," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 311-339, November.
    18. Terrance Odean, 1998. "Are Investors Reluctant to Realize Their Losses?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(5), pages 1775-1798, October.
    19. Jennifer Huang & Kelsey D. Wei & Hong Yan, 2007. "Participation Costs and the Sensitivity of Fund Flows to Past Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(3), pages 1273-1311, June.
    20. 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.
    21. Barclay, Michael J. & Pearson, Neil D. & Weisbach, Michael S., 1998. "Open-end mutual funds and capital-gains taxes," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 3-43, July.
    22. Locke, Peter R. & Mann, Steven C., 2005. "Professional trader discipline and trade disposition," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 401-444, May.
    23. Kahneman, Daniel & Tversky, Amos, 1979. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(2), pages 263-291, March.
    24. Rakowski, David & Wang, Xiaoxin, 2009. "The dynamics of short-term mutual fund flows and returns: A time-series and cross-sectional investigation," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(11), pages 2102-2109, November.
    25. Bergstresser, Daniel & Poterba, James, 2002. "Do after-tax returns affect mutual fund inflows?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 381-414, March.
    26. Vikram Nanda, 2004. "Family Values and the Star Phenomenon: Strategies of Mutual Fund Families," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(3), pages 667-698.
    27. Shefrin, Hersh & Statman, Meir, 1985. "The Disposition to Sell Winners Too Early and Ride Losers Too Long: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(3), pages 777-790, July.
    28. Nicholas Barberis & Ming Huang & Tano Santos, 2001. "Prospect Theory and Asset Prices," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 116(1), pages 1-53.
    29. Elton, Edwin J. & Gruber, Martin J. & Blake, Christopher R. & Krasny, Yoel & Ozelge, Sadi O., 2010. "The effect of holdings data frequency on conclusions about mutual fund behavior," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 912-922, May.
    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. Herrmann, Ulf & Scholz, Hendrik, 2013. "Short-term persistence in hybrid mutual fund performance: The role of style-shifting abilities," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(7), pages 2314-2328.
    2. Chen, Hong-Yi & Chen, Hsuan-Chi & Lai, Christine W., 2021. "Internet search, fund flows, and fund performance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    3. Janssen, Dirk-Jan & Li, Jiangyan & Qiu, Jianying & Weitzel, Utz, 2020. "The disposition effect and underreaction to private information," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    4. Wang, Cheng & Han, Jing, 2023. "Prospect theory and mutual fund flows: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    5. Shinozawa, Yoshikatsu & Vivian, Andrew, 2015. "Determinants of money flows into investment trusts in Japan," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 138-161.
    6. Andreu, Laura & Ortiz, Cristina & Sarto, José Luis, 2020. "Disposition effect in fund managers. Fund and stock-specific factors and the upshot for investors," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 253-268.
    7. Hincapié-Salazar, Juliana & Agudelo, Diego A., 2020. "Is the disposition effect in bonds as strong as in stocks? Evidence from an emerging market," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 46(C).
    8. Wolfgang Bessler & David Blake & Peter Lückoff & Ian Tonks, 2018. "Fund Flows, Manager Changes, and Performance Persistence [Does motivation matter when assessing trade performance? An analysis of mutual funds]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 22(5), pages 1911-1947.

    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. Ainulashikin Marzuki & Andrew C. Worthington, 2011. "Comparative fund flows for Malaysian Islamic and conventional domestic managed equity funds," Discussion Papers in Finance finance:201118, Griffith University, Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics.
    2. Jakusch, Sven Thorsten & Meyer, Steffen & Hackethal, Andreas, 2019. "Taming models of prospect theory in the wild? Estimation of Vlcek and Hens (2011)," SAFE Working Paper Series 146, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2019.
    3. Cici, Gjergji, 2011. "The relation of the disposition effect to mutual fund trades and performance," CFR Working Papers 11-05, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    4. Rakowski, David & Yamani, Ehab, 2021. "Endogeneity in the mutual fund flow–performance relationship: An instrumental variables solution," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 247-271.
    5. Jakusch, Sven Thorsten, 2017. "On the applicability of maximum likelihood methods: From experimental to financial data," SAFE Working Paper Series 148, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2017.
    6. Shinozawa, Yoshikatsu & Vivian, Andrew, 2015. "Determinants of money flows into investment trusts in Japan," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 138-161.
    7. 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.
    8. Li, Yan & Yang, Liyan, 2013. "Prospect theory, the disposition effect, and asset prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(3), pages 715-739.
    9. Martin Gold, 2010. "Fiduciary Finance," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13813.
    10. Nanda, Vikram K. & Wang, Z. Jay & Zheng, Lu, 2009. "The ABCs of mutual funds: On the introduction of multiple share classes," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 329-361, July.
    11. 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.
    12. Vassilis A. Efthymiou & George N. Leledakis, 2014. "The price impact of the disposition effect on the ex-dividend day of NYSE and AMEX common stocks," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(4), pages 711-724, April.
    13. Clemens Sialm & Laura T. Starks & Hanjiang Zhang, 2015. "Defined Contribution Pension Plans: Sticky or Discerning Money?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(2), pages 805-838, April.
    14. 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.
    15. Li An & Huijun Wang & Jian Wang & Jianfeng Yu, 2020. "Lottery-Related Anomalies: The Role of Reference-Dependent Preferences," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(1), pages 473-501, January.
    16. Berkowitz, Jason P. & Schorno, Patrick J. & Shapiro, Dmitry A., 2017. "Characteristics of mutual funds with extreme performance," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 50-60.
    17. Clemens Sialm & T. Mandy Tham, 2016. "Spillover Effects in Mutual Fund Companies," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(5), pages 1472-1486, May.
    18. Bhootra, Ajay & Hur, Jungshik, 2012. "On the relationship between concentration of prospect theory/mental accounting investors, cointegration, and momentum," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 1266-1275.
    19. Guiso, Luigi & Sodini, Paolo, 2013. "Household Finance: An Emerging Field," 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 1397-1532, Elsevier.
    20. Kliger, Doron & Kudryavtsev, Andrey, 2008. "Reference point formation by market investors," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(9), pages 1782-1794, September.

    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:jbfina:v:35:y:2011:i:10:p:2704-2718. 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/jbf .

    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.