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Thesis (M.M. (Finance & Investment))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Graduate School of Business Administration, 2013. / Unit trust investment looks cosy and attractive from the surface, but a detailed understanding of unit trust and its performance can be daunting. Having discussed the evolution of mutual funds in the US and other industrial and financially sound countries; it is concerning that not much has been done in terms of research works on the South Africa unit trust industry’s performance. Several studies have been aimed at investigating the investment in mutual funds relative to mutual fund returns, but an extensive study on the performance of active unit trusts against their bench-marking index is still lacking. This study contributes to the debate by conducting a detailed study of the performances of mutual funds in the last two decades and also what the global investment fund witnessed over this period, with particular interest in the South African market. Another contribution of this study was to provide reasons for the slow growth of investment funds in South Africa; this study attempts to ascribe reasons as to why this has been so. This study used three different performance measures (namely: the nominal returns, Sharpe Ratios and CAPM Alphas) to test the possibility of superior performance by the market or the funds. In order to carry out this detailed analysis of the performance of unit trusts, these performance tests were applied individually to the net returns obtained from a sample of 64 South African domestic general equity unit trusts, covering the 20-year period from January 1st 1992 to December 31st 2011. This 20-year period was further divided into 7 different periods of four 5-year periods, two 10-year periods and the whole 20-year period. This was done to avoid survivorship bias. In all of the periods, strong evidence of superior performance by the domestic general equity unit trust over the market could not be found. Furthermore, several reasons were deduced form the study as to investment funds continue to experience slow growth. Some of the reasons include the following: cost of index fund, investor’s sentiments, and commissions amongst others. Finally, having said all these, outperformance, perhaps may not be the main objective of unit trusts. The findings of this study may not have provided strong evidence of outperformance, it however reveal that there is a need for unit trusts to evaluate the costs and benefits involved in their trading activities in order to provide investors with maximum possible returns for the level of risk they take.

Exchange traded funds (ETFs) are a relatively recent financial innovation receiving much attention from investors and media due to its low administrative costs. Literature related to ETF performance presents no sizeable records as a result of its brief history.This study contributes to the literature on ETF performance by comparing ETFs to their respective tracking indices as well as to comparable passive unit trusts (PUTs) and active unit trusts (AUTs) after administrative costs. Data used involved ETFs that are derived from securities listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) that track FTSE/JSE indices. PUTs and AUTs were selected on the basis that they use the same FTSE/JSE indices, as the ETFs, as a benchmark.The results indicate that ETFs have a slightly lower tracking error than PUTs due to lower administrative costs. On average, ETFs and PUTs present statistically insignificant net return differences and it can be inferred that they have very similar return records. Furthermore, ETFs and AUTs, on average, also present statistically insignificant net return differences and it can be inferred that they have very similar return records. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Purpose The high yield debt market has evolved into a $1 trillion market over the last 25 years. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the riskadjusted performance of individual mutual funds that investors use to invest in this asset class. Design/methodology/approach Conditional excess returns are calculated for individual high yield bond mutual funds. Performance persistence over time is measured and size, asset growth, asset duration, the expense ratio, turnover, and manager tenure are used to determine if differences across funds can be explained. Findings Overall, high yield bond funds significantly underperform the CSFB high yield index by 1.6 percent on an annualized basis which is 0.5 percent more than the average expense ratio. Individually, funds do exhibit performance persistence and top ranked funds in one period outperform bottom ranked funds over the proceeding period by an average of 2.7 percent annually. However, except for the expense ratio, commonly used explanatory variables do not appear useful for explaining riskadjusted excess return differences across funds leaving 86 percent of the variation unexplained. Research limitations/implications This paper examines only noload mutual funds that have at least ten years of return data. Historical data for the explanatory variables used to explain alpha differences are limited which constrains any longterm definitive conclusions. Practical implications For investors wishing to invest in this asset class, it appears that past performance does indicate future success, and investors should concentrate on the top performing funds with the lowest expense ratios. Originality/value This paper usefully reaffirms previous evidence on the persistence of high yield bond mutual funds, but casts doubt on the viability of using standard variables other than the expense ratio to explain riskadjusted returns across funds.

This thesis analyses and compares the performance, performance persistence and fund flows for UK equity unit trusts/OEICs and UK equity unit-linked personal pensions over the sample period January 1980 to December 2007. Unit-linked personal pension funds are an illiquid investment from the investor’s perspective since any invested capital is inaccessible until retirement whereas for unit trusts/OEICs capital invested can be withdrawn at any time. Since decreasing returns to scale from fund flows are the equilibrating mechanism in Berk and Green (2004) that results in no persistence in performance the illiquid nature of unit-linked personal pension funds should ensure more evidence of performance persistence in comparison to unit trusts/OEICs. I find significant evidence using performance ranked portfolio strategies that underlying portfolios that are only composed of unit-linked personal pension funds have greater performance persistence than unit-linked personal pension funds that have underlying portfolios that also include at least a unit trust/OEIC. This evidence is consistent with Berk and Green (2004) since the illiquid nature of personal pension funds results in an attenuated performance fund flow relationship restricting the equilibrating mechanism. However, there are anomalies in the performance persistence results in relation to Berk and Green (2004) but it could be due to the differential between the number of non-surviving unit trusts/OEICs and non-surviving unit-linked personal pension funds. I also find that the performance fund flow relationship based on abnormal returns from a Carhart four factor model for both UK equity unit trusts/OEICs and UK unit-linked personal pensions is convex but the performance fund flow relationship is more attenuated for the unit-linked personal pension funds. For the worst performing unit trusts/OEICs there are outflows on average whereas for unit-linked personal pensions there are fund inflows on average. For performance persistence tests conditional on underlying portfolio fund flows unit trusts/OEICs that have the worst performance but the lowest net fund flows in the ranking period have significantly greater subsequent performance in comparison to the unit trusts/OEICs that have the worst performance but the highest net fund flows in the ranking period. This empirical evidence provides support for Berk and Green (2004) but for the unit-linked personal pension funds the evidence is less convincing. There is very little evidence that UK equity unit-trusts/OEICs or UK equity unit-linked personal pensions produce abnormal returns. These results are robust across the single index (CAPM) model, the Fama and French three factor model and the Carhart four factor model for both conditional and unconditional models. There is also no evidence that unit trusts/OEICs or unit-linked personal pension funds can time the market. There is a significantly negative timing effect across unconditional factor models which becomes insignificant for the conditional models. There is also no evidence that unit trusts/OEICs have significantly different performance than unit-linked personal pension funds.

Active weight, active expense ratio and active alpha are measures that can be calculated with relative ease for any fund using publicly available data. However, for active weight to be truly useful to an investor the relationship between these quantities and fund performance needed to be explored in greater detail. Furthermore, the costs of South African unit trust funds had not been studied using Miller’s techniques and needed further study. Finally, active weight had not been used to study the evolution of active management over time. Using quarterly South African unit trust fund data this study delivered on the following key findings: that funds with higher active weight provide excess returns to their investors; that funds with a higher active expense ratio do not necessarily provide greater returns; and that the active alpha for South African unit trusts is negatively correlated with fund performance. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Individuals who rely on mutual funds to accumulate wealth need advice on how best to select them (Ciccotello&Grant, 1996). The purpose of the study is to gain insight whether fund size and boutique or institutional fund structure of unit trusts affects returns. It expands the body of knowledge on investment performance factors and equips investors with a tool to make informed decisions when contemplating various fund manager offerings.Data was collected from the database of the Association for Savings and Investment (ASISA) for South African general equity unit trust returns and fund size information covering a period of 44 quarters from March 2001 to December 2011. Domestic general equity unit trusts were analysed during the period under review. A regression analysis was run to test for fund size as an indicator of investment performance. A parallel study was conducted to test whether boutique funds outperform institutional funds.The results indicate that fund size has no influence on fund performance. The findings also show that there is no significant difference between the performance of boutique style unit trust funds and institutional unit trust funds. These findings contradict the findings of previous research by (Fama, 1972); (Chen, Hong, Huang, &Kubik, 2004; Ciccotello&Grant, 1996; Droms&Walker, 1996) who found fund size, either positively or negatively have an influence on mutual fund returns while (Gallagher&Martin, 2005) and Schönfeld (2009) concluded that boutique funds offer better returns compared to institutional funds. Investors would be advised to carry out a fund by fund analysis to identify the optimal domestic unit trust investment fund when investing as opposed to an aggregated study. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

For as long as managed mutual funds have been in existence there has been a desire to accurately assess their relative performance against each other, and also their respective performance in relation to an appropriate stock market index. There has been a specific interest in whether the expensive, professionally managed mutual funds can justify their high cost with respect to low cost, simple index trackers by producing superior, post-cost performance, and this proposition is implicitly tested within this thesis. The aim of this thesis is to undertake an empirical assessment of the managerial performance of mutual funds utilising a three-stage DEA-SFA-DEA methodology which combines linear mathematical programming (DEA) and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA). Specifically, this thesis focuses on evaluating the managerial performance of UK domiciled open-ended investment companies (OEICs) and unit trusts (UTs) over a three year period from 1st January 2008 to 31st December 2010. Various DEA models are utilised including CCR, BCC and SBM DEA models with various orientations, and also versions of these DEA models which make use of the SORM procedure. These are used to carry out an initial evaluation of the managerial performance of the OEICs/UTs, before two of these DEA models are combined with SFA regression analysis in a three-stage DEA-SFA-DEA methodology to purge the influence of environmental factors and statistical noise, thus leading to a more robust evaluation of the true managerial performance of the OEICs/UTs under assessment. The results of this thesis extend support to the premise of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) that financial markets are information efficient , and thus it is not possible, given the information available when the investment is made, to consistently obtain returns in excess of the average market return on a risk-adjusted basis, and this thesis does so through the use of a novel approach.

This thesis object with functioning of present retirement system in the Czech republic and in selected countries. There are described differences of financing and differences of pillars on which are this systems built. Further are in this thesis answered reasons for reforming of this systems. The goal of this thesis is design expert system used to serve to financial advisers for suitable saving product selection according to client requests.