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Fake Alpha

Author

Listed:
  • Marcel Müller
  • Tobias Rosenberger
  • Marliese Uhrig-Homburg

Abstract

Why do investors entrust active mutual fund managers with large sums of money while receiving negative excess returns on average? Our explanation is that investors have a coarser information set than fund managers which leads them to systematically misinterpret managers' skill. When investors are unable to correctly quantify risk because they have no knowledge of factor investing on beyond-market-risk factors, Fake Alpha strategies based on factor investing look like skill from the investors' perspective. As running such strategies is relatively cheap for the managers, the investors' coarser information set misleads them to invest beyond the point of zero excess returns in equilibrium. We confirm our theory by analyzing the sample of US equity active managed mutual funds and find significant evidence of decreasing returns to scale at the fund level as well as negative excess returns to investors in equilibrium states.

Suggested Citation

  • Marcel Müller & Tobias Rosenberger & Marliese Uhrig-Homburg, 2017. "Fake Alpha," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2017-001, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2017-001
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    mutual funds; active management; managerial skill; alpha;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G20 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - General

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