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Because the government changed laws and opened the market progressively in recent years, the financial market in Taiwan becomes more and more liberal and international; every investor has to face a more complicated investitive environment. They can choice many investitive objects and tools, but how to choice the best one is a big problem for them and the risk in the financial market becomes much higher. Mutual fund is a popular investment tools in recent year. One of the mutual fund¡¦s benefits is the diversity of investment and effectively disperses risk.. In August 2006, the government in Taiwan opens up the market of mutual fund; the investors can buy offshore mutual funds in many channels, so they can choice many kinds of mutual funds, about 1,400 in April 2008. Also, every investor that can beat the level of risk is so different, it maybe make them confused and really want to know which one is much better and do asset allocation very well. Therefore, how to design a good portfolio for different perceived risk levels of investors is a worthful topic in the academia and the really world. This research uses the genetic algorithm to construct mutual fund portfolios based on perceived risk levels, use fund return, standard deviation, Alpha, Beta, Sharpe, IR and Sortino indicators to select funds of a portfolio and calculate portfolio return and standard deviation, then do asset allocation. This research change funds in every portfolio every month using Sliding Windows method from Jan 1, 2001 to Dec 12, 2007, totally 84 times. The result of this research is every portfolio average return wins benchmark index average return. The standard deviation of every portfolio also wins benchmark index standard deviation. It shows this research can beat benchmark index effectively and also can decrease the risk of portfolio return, then we can get a good fund portfolio for different perceived risk levels of investors

I investigate mutual fund flows at the individual fund and at the fund family level. At the individual, I use SEC filings to decompose fund flows into inflows and outflows. This decomposition of net flows into its component parts provides a way to examine differences in how search costs and investor learning affect investors who are entering a fund (or adding to their investments) versus those investors who are leaving a fund (or decreasing their investments). I then examine the effect of the existence of an advertisement for the fund on these investors. At the mutual fund family level, I examine how the characteristics and performance of mutual fund families affect the flows to the family as a whole. I then examine the effects of advertising expenditures on flows to the fund family. / text

Yee Cheng Loon’s dissertation abstract Model uncertainty exists in the mutual fund literature. Researchers employ a variety of models to estimate risk-adjusted return, suggesting a lack of consensus as to which model is correct. Model uncertainty makes it difficult to draw clear inference about mutual fund performance persistence. We explicitly account for model uncertainty by using Bayesian model averaging techniques to estimate a fund’s risk-adjusted return. Our approach produces the Bayesian model averaged (BMA) alpha, which is a weighted combination of alphas from individual models. Using BMA alphas, we find evidence of performance persistence in a large sample of US equity, bond and balanced mutual funds. Funds with high BMA alphas subsequently generate higher risk-adjusted returns than funds with low BMA alphas, and the magnitude of outperformance is economically and statistically significant. We also find that mutual fund investors respond to the information content of BMA alphas. High BMA alpha funds receive subsequent cash inflows while low BMA alpha funds experience subsequent cash outflows.

Kosowski, Timmermann, Wermers, and White (2006) find that certain growth-oriented fund managers have substantial skill but do not stipulate the particular skills that they possess. I use novel style timing models to examine in detail the timing skills of 3,181 US equity mutual funds classified as having a growth investment objective by Standard & Poor’s, over the period from 1993 to 2006. To control for idiosyncratic variation in mutual fund returns, the bootstrap method of Kosowski et al. is used to analyze the significance of alpha and timing coefficient estimates. To exclude the possibility that the observed timing ability is due to good luck, synthetic funds are examined as in Busse (1999). The results indicate that growth-oriented fund managers who earn abnormal returns demonstrate substantial growth timing skill, i.e. successful timing activity across the value/growth continuum. This observed growth timing ability accounts for at least 45% of abnormal returns and is persistent; the top 10% of funds which demonstrate growth timing ability in the past three years also demonstrate the best growth timing ability in the following year. Successful growth timing is confined to those managers who invest primarily in growth stocks. However, there is little evidence of successful market timing (i.e. forecasting future market states and weighting equity exposure accordingly), size timing (i.e. adjusting exposure between small and large capitalization stocks) or momentum timing (i.e. switching between momentum investing and contrarian investing strategies). The models employed clearly distinguish between growth timing and market timing skills, thereby avoiding a common misidentification problem.

<p>This dissertation includes two parts. The first part examines the preventive effect of hedge fund activism against corporate policy deviations. Using stock liquidity and mutual fund fire sales as instruments, I find that when the likelihood of hedge fund activism increases, firms respond by paying shareholder more and CEOs less, holding less cash and leveraging more, and increasing investment into research and development while cutting capital expenditures. These results imply that hedge fund activism has a stronger and broader impact on corporate policy than previously documented. The second part critically examines capital flow-induced mutual fund trades as an exogenous proxy for changes in stock price. I find that liquidity-strapped mutual funds sell widely across all portfolio holdings but the extreme capital outflows could be driven by the performance of portfolio holdings in the first place.</p> / Dissertation

The work focuses on issues of mutual funds. How is managed cash flow, how the selection of instruments in the portfolio and how managers manage the risk associated with investment. In the practical part is matched by asset management and risk management for equity and bond mutual fund.

Modern portfolio theory commenced the ensuing debate regarding the benefits of active versus passive management in regards to mutual funds. The two opposing mutual fund management styles claim that they produce superior risk-adjusted performance. The dissertation explores the research question: During the full 1995 to 2008 market cycle, which investment management style, active or passive, produced the better risk-adjusted performance? The significance of this historic stock market period relates to the fact it contains the two greatest bull markets (1995-1999 & 2003-2007) followed by subsequent bear markets (2000-2002 & 2008). The study tested nine hypotheses, derived from the above research question, for the 5 different time periods (1995-1999, 2000-2002, 2003-2007, 2008, and 1995-2008). Based on previous research, one would expect the passive management styles to out-perform the active styles during expansion whereas the performance would reverse during market contraction. The Sharpe composite portfolio performance measure, that combines risk and return into a single value, was used to measure, analyze, and rank risk-adjusted performance. The study, comprised of 45 statistical tests, found that on a risk-adjusted basis that the active indices (proxies for active management) Sharpe ratios were significantly greater than those of the passive indices (proxies for passive management) Sharpe ratios for; 1) the midcap blend category for the periods 1995 to 2008 and 1995 to 1999; 2) the small blend category for the periods 1995 to 2008 and 1995 to 1999, and 3) the small value category for the periods 1995 to 2008, 1995 to 1999, and 2000 to 2002. Therefore, the active indices Sharpe ratio significantly exceeded the passive indices Sharpe ratio for 16% of the statistical tests conducted while the active indices Sharpe ratio did not significantly exceed the passive indices Sharpe ratio for 84% of the statistical tests conducted. The findings suggested that in the long run passive management produced better performance results than active management.

Copy cat investment strategies exist in the US, where copy cat funds profitably replicate the investing behaviour of larger more renowned funds, leveraging off research completed by the initial fund, without incurring the same level of expenses. Funds, or unit trusts as they are known in South Africa, are mandated to disclose portfolio holdings quarterly, with the intention of enabling investors to track whether funds are meeting their stated objectives, through more frequent access to portfolio holdings. More frequent disclosure has lead to significant controversy internationally, with some researchers providing evidence that more frequent disclosure has lead to copy cat investing strategies. In contrast to the research completed in the US, copy cat funds in South Africa are able to generate similar returns, before costs, but once costs are included t-tests provided evidence that the copy cat fund was not able to generate significantly higher returns than the actual fund, particularly in the long run. These tests hold true when considering the whole general equity market, but interestingly do not hold statistically valid for every fund when considering them in isolation. Certain funds within the general equity classification offer potential for copy cat investing and have successfully proven outperformance in the last decade. Copy cat investors would need to seek out these funds based on the predicted outperformance of each fund, by considering the historical behaviour and then lastly by considering their own, already questionable, risk appetite. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

The Master thesis "Analysis of selected investment funds in the Czech republic" deals with collective investments with focus on mutual funds. The first part is dedicated to definition of the term collective investments, its history and general characteristics of mutual funds. The middle part is dedicated at firts to the czech market of collective investment and the analysis of this market. The last part focuses on comparison of the performance of selected funds and its characteristics.