This thesis explains how ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) works and contains a comparative analysis of selected mutual funds (distributed in Czech Republic) net returns with comparable ETF funds investing into same equity category -- USA, World, European and emerging markets equities. The objective of the thesis is to find out if ETF funds can offer better net returns to the investor than common mutual funds.

Orientador: Bruno Martarello De Conti / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Economia / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-27T08:55:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Bastos_HenriqueGoncalves_M.pdf: 1980248 bytes, checksum: b41309facbe175243df3839a0b18cec1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015 / Resumo: O objetivo desta dissertação é avaliar se os fundos fechados de previdência complementar atuam ou têm potencial para atuar na alocação de ativos em instrumentos de funding no Brasil. Em simultâneo, explora-se algumas das razões apontadas na literatura para explicar porque o país não dispõe de um sistema privado e autônomo capaz de financiar investimentos no longo prazo. Para investigar o assunto, são apresentados os principais elementos teóricos de uma economia monetária de produção que auxiliam na compreensão do tema, sobretudo o circuito finance-funding, proposto por Keynes, em contraposição à teoria convencional dos fundos emprestáveis, que coloca a poupança como elemento previamente necessário à realização do investimento. São consideradas também as questões pertinentes ao capitalismo globalizado sob dominância financeira, que identifica a importância dos investidores institucionais na determinação dos grandes movimentos de capitais, da exacerbação da preferência pela liquidez e do comportamento de curto prazo nos mercados secundários. Considerando a hipótese de que o financiamento ao investimento de longo prazo no Brasil não depende do fluxo prévio de poupança, mas da estratégia de alocação da riqueza dos agentes econômicos que atuam no mercado financeiro nacional, foram avaliados os fundos fechados de previdência complementar (fundos de pensão) para analisar sua pertinência / Abstract: This work aims to assess whether private pension funds acts or have the potential to act in asset allocation to funding instruments in Brazil. It also explores some of the reasons presented in the literature to explain why the country does not have a private and autonomous system able to finance long-term investments. To investigate this matter, the main theoretical elements of a monetary economy of production are employed to aid in the understanding of the subject, especially the finance funding circuit, as proposed by Keynes, in contrast to the loanable funds conventional theory, which puts the prior savings argument as a crucial need to investment. The issues related to global capitalism under financial dominance, which identifies the importance of institutional investors in determining the large movements of capital, the exacerbation of the liquidity preference and the short-term behavior in secondary markets, are also considered. Pension funds market was observed to test the relevance of the assumption that financing of long-term investment in Brazil does not depend on the flow of prior savings, but on the wealth allocation strategy of economic agents operating in the domestic financial market / Mestrado / Teoria Economica / Mestre em Ciências Econômicas

The diploma thesis deals with the investment of small investors in collective investment funds and the recommendation of a suitable investment fund for a given investor. The theoretical part is devoted to general investment concepts with a focus on collective investment funds and evaluation of their return, risk and liquidity. The practical part is devoted to the selection, analysis and comparison of funds. The design part contains investment recommendations of a specific fund meeting the investment requirements of a specific investor.

This paper analyzes sustainable investments of Swedish mutual funds. Morningstar’s CarbonRisk Score (CRS) - funds exposure to a future of low-carbon economy - is analysed in termsof returns, management fees and flows. The CRS measure was introduced March 2018 with ahistorical series from March 2017, without the market being aware. Analysing CRS before theintroduction is therefore greenwashing-bias free. An empirical approach with regressions findthat there is a payoff between return and alignment with a low-carbon economy future, CRS.A 1% increased abnormal return causes a 0.13 standard deviations higher CRS. Regressionsalso find no relationship between management fee and CRS. A correlation between flow andCRS is found but no causality. The shown payoff between return and CRS implies that fundswhich are well-performing are less sustainable. Fund managers maximising their returnthereby lead to unsustainable investments. To handle this, a policy of tax relief or subsidyshould be implemented for investing sustainable. The tax relief or subsidy should beproportional to the increased return renounced when investing sustainable.

Background: Since 1998 Sweden has individual accounts as a part of both public and occupational schemes (Sundén 2006). Yearly, 2,5% of the pensionable income is set aside to the premium pension (The Swedish Pension Agency 2021) Individuals are able to choose how the premiums should be paid in the system and in what way the money should be invested, either by choosing from the fund market or by refraining from making an active choice and instead let the Swedish pension agency management their money in the passive alternative called AP7 Såfa. The passive alternative AP7 Såfa is a portfolio which adapts to the age of the investor and is built to fit a long-term pension investment.  Purpose: This study will focus on evaluating if the passive alternative AP7 Såfa has an excess risk-adjusted return compared to given portfolios in the premium pension selection system, or if the investor would benefit from managing the portfolio more actively. The study will also search for benefits using the Treynor-Black model to check the optimal allocation between this actively managed portfolio versus the passive alternative AP7 Såfa.  Conclusion: This thesis has shown that there might be superior strategies rather than the index fund to find risk-adjusted excess return in the premium pension system. However, those strategies require professional analysts in order to forecast securities. For households choosing between active management themselves or the passive index fund AP7 Såfa, the most beneficial investment is to be passive and to not actively manage the portfolio. The optimum strategy is found to be the Treynor-Black model with a combined portfolio of the index fund and the active portfolio.

We calculate the alpha of a survivorship bias-free sample of Swedish-registered actively managed emerging market equity mutual funds (with at least 10 years of return data), using long-short and long-only versions of several asset pricing models: the CAPM, the Fama-French three-factor model, the Carhart four-factor model, the Fama-French five-factor model and a six-factor model that adds the momentum factor to a modified Fama-French five-factor model. We find that our sample of mutual funds has statistically significant negative alpha (on a 5% level) using the CAPM, the Fama-French three-factor model and the long-only Fama-French three-factor model and non-statistically significant negative alpha for all other asset pricing models. It is reasonable to assume that our sample overestimates the performance of the universe of Swedish-registered actively managed emerging market equity mutual funds, so it is reasonable to assume that the universe of Swedish-registered actively managed emerging market equity mutual funds likely has negative alpha. We also find that our sample of mutual funds has statistically significant factor loadings on the market factor (positive load), the SMB factor (negative load) and the CMA factor (negative load). Our asset pricing models explain 97% to 98% of the mutual fund returns. The distributions of alphas and SMB factor loadings are fairly normally distributed, but the other factor loadings are not normally distributed.

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We estimate the proportions of skilled, unskilled, and zero-alpha funds preva- lent in the mutual Funds population easily accessible by Czech Investors. We estimate alphas from a regression against a concise set of Exchange Traded Funds and control for luck using False Discovery rate. We design a straight- forward ETF selection algorithm and find that if investors adhere to simple diversification rules, they can outperform a large proportion of mutual funds. We further document a negative relationship between the performance of mu- tual funds and its Total Expense ratio, suggesting that portfolio managers are on average unable to compensate their costs with better performance. JEL Classification C12, C20, G12, G23 Keywords Mutual Funds, Exchange Traded Funds, Perfor- mance evaluation Title Do mutual funds offered in Czech Republic add value to investors?

Blockchain is a new type of shared ledger for distributing and keeping consensus on what constitutes a true state of a system. The implications of the technology, i.e. enabling almost trustless transactions between market participants, is a revolutionary idea, especially to financial markets. The Swedish fund market, being a fragmented and in some cases inefficient system of intermediating actors, is a potential use case for the new technology of blockchain. This report reviews and presents the technology underlying the new blockchain phenomenon, and its potential application to the Swedish fund market with a specific focus on the possible new trust dynamics in such a market. Blockchain could, by removing some of the inter-participant risks, disintermediate the communication between market actors in the Swedish fund market, possibly enabling a cost reduction related to fund unit administration and order handling. / Blockkedje-teknologi är en ny typ av distribuerad databas som med hjälp av kryptologi tillåter ett system av självständiga och icke-tillitande aktörer att gemensamt dela en databas. Implikationerna för teknologin, tillåtandet av näratillitslösa transaktioner mellan marknadsdeltagare, är revolutionära, speciellt finansmarknaderna. Den svenska fondmarknaden, som karaktäriseras av fragmenterade och i vissa fall ineffektiva system, är ett potentiellt appliceringsområde för den nya teknologin. Den här rapporten går över och presenterar den underliggande tecknologin för blockkedjor, och dess potentiella applikation på den svenska fondmarknaden, med ett specifikt fokus på hur appliceringen skulle förändra tillits-förhållandena på marknaden. Det konstateras att blockkedjor skulle b.la. kunna avveckla vissa mellanliggande aktörer på marknaden, och därmed möjliggöra kostnadsbesparingar kopplade till fondadminstration och orderhantering.

This dissertation consists of three studies related to corporate governance of equity mutual funds in a framework of relations between the three closely interrelated actors of mutual fund industry. The mutual fund advisers, the shareholders and the mutual fund board being the advocate of shareholders rights. The first study analyzes the advisory fee, using a survivorship bias free data set of 176 equity funds managed by 125 different advisers. The price of professional portfolio management provided by the mutual fund adviser depends not only on the fund characteristics but also on the fund objective, the adviser's portfolio related and management based decisions, and the portfolio performance. I find that the advisers may reduce their own costs through the use of derivatives or manipulate the actual fee contract by engaging in soft dollar agreements. Advisers actively manage the advisory fee contracts responding to the outcome of their management decisions. The advisory fee increases after voluntary fee reimbursement or if the adviser is not fully reimbursed for certain services. Risk taking behavior is the main motivation behind the structure of advisory contracts. Also, I show that non-surviving funds have higher advisory fees, suggesting competitive fee pricing may be necessary for survival. The second study focuses on the relation between general board characteristics, independent director characteristics and the advisory fee which is solely an outcome of the negotiations between the fund board and the adviser, thus a good proxy for the governance skills of the board. I also examine the impact of SEC's regulation change of 2000. Mutual fund scandals that took place after the regulation change of 2000 suggested that besides the fraction of independent seats, the individual characteristics of the members that occupy board seats are crucial for mutual fund board governance. I find that boards benchmark objective average fee but not necessarily for the best interest of shareholders. Shareholders are likely to benefit from the expertise of members with higher tenure and finance backgrounds. Although increase in board independence is likely to contribute to board governance, the effect of 2000 regulation change of board independence on its arguably target group is limited. Nominating committee improves the board governance. Although the results do not suggest that an independent chairman directly improves board governance, I find modest evidence that the impact of an independent chairman is likely to depend on the expertise of the member that would occupy the chairman seat. Third study analyzes a specific tool, soft dollar arrangements using a survivorship bias free data set of 432 equity funds managed by 129 different advisers. Soft dollar arrangements affect all three actors of mutual fund industry. They are widely used by the advisers, have to be monitored closely by the fund board and eventually affect the overall wealth of shareholders. Fund advisers determine the broker base, scope of brokerage services and whether to self produce or outsource brokerage services through soft dollar arrangements. In return, shareholders expect to benefit from better fund performance and reduction in advisory fee. I find that transaction execution not necessarily motivated by additional brokerage services is likely to be responsible for high turnover. Construction of brokerage base by the adviser is not arbitrary. Advisers ex ante construct the broker base in order to minimize the brokerage commissions and considering ex post soft dollar arrangements. Transaction execution related services lead to less brokerage commissions and soft dollar use while both increase if research is a consideration for broker participation. More concentrated broker base leads to lower brokerage fee and higher soft dollar use. Results indicate that advisers enforce competition within brokerage industry for lower cost of transaction execution. Shareholders benefit from increasing soft dollar use through performance improvement and reduction in advisory fee. Yet, the cost of soft dollar arrangements seems to exceed their benefit to shareholders. If the results indicate competition within brokerage industry for lower cost of transaction execution, the undisclosed premium paid for the additional services are likely to be responsible for this adverse effect.