Investing in real estate funds presents relatively high stability of yields and that's why it is very interesting option for risk diversification in investment portfolio. The real estate funds offer the option how to invest with a less value of own capital. The diploma thesis should present information about the progress of real estate funds in the Czech Republic and of course show the development in other advanced countries.

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.

Cette thèse vise à analyser les aspects juridiques du rôle joué par les acteurs ayant une stratégie actionariale de court-terme (hedge funds,...) dans le cadre des offres publiques d'acquisition. Outre l'identification de ces acteurs et la description des méthodes employées, il s'agit aussi de s'interroger sur les moyens à disposition de la société cible pour se défendre et de se demander si des évolutions législatives ne seraient pas nécessaires. / The purpose of the Phd is to analyze questions raised by short-termism in takevoer bids. As a matter of fact, some shareholders only have short-terme strategies (such as Hedge funds,...) and takeover bids provide some fantastic arbitration opportunities. First, one should clearly identify these actors. Products which might be used in such situation will also have to be studied. Second, one should analyze which defence could provide the target. Third, a study of the opportunity or repealing or amending french legislation on these issues will be done.

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.

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

Ce travail de thèse s'intéresse à la contribution des investisseurs sophistiqués de type hedge funds à la dynamique des marchés financiers. Considérant qu'ils sont les acteurs fondamentaux de la révélation des prix et de la liquidité des marchés, tant du point de vue du modèle standard que des critiques comportementalistes, on propose une évaluation des interdépendances dynamiques entre stratégies de gestion alternative et marchés financiers. Les trois premiers chapitres proposent, aumoyen d'approches économétriques originales, la mise en perspective des stratégies de hedge funds avec la dynamique des marchés à travers l'étude des rendements, de la volatilité et des co-volatilités. S'appuyant sur un large panel de résultats, l'étude révèle les nombreuses causalités croisées entre fonds et marchés, offrant à la finance comportementale des éléments de preuves empiriques des interactions qu'elle envisage au regard des excès de volatilité ou de la contagion financière. Riche de ces enseignements, le dernier chapitre propose enfin un retour aux modèles théoriques d'équilibres de marché pour proposer un portrait contrasté de la spéculation rationnelle dans sa relation à l'efficience des marchés. / This PH.D thesis focuses on the contribution of sophisticated investors, i.e. hedge funds, in the dynamics of financial markets. Considering that they are key players in the price discovery and market liquidity, regarding the standard model or the behavioral critics, it provides an assessment of dynamic interdependencies between alternative management strategies and financial markets.The first three chapters put into perspective, through original econometric approaches, hedge funds strategies with market dynamics through the study of returns , volatility and co-volatilities. Based on a wide range of results, the study reveals the many causalities between funds and markets offering to the behavioral finance elements of empirical evidence of the interactions described interms of excess volatility or financial contagion. Rich in these teachings, the last chapter finally proposes a return to theoretical models of market equilibria in order to provide a mixed picture of rational speculation in its relation to market efficency.

På senare år har intresset för hållbarhet ökat i samhället. Allt fler vill bidra till samhället på ett positivt sätt genom att exempelvis källsortera, åka mindre bil eller minska på köttkonsumtionen. I och med det ökade intresset för hållbarhet, har även intresset för hållbara investeringsalternativ ökat. Studiens syfte är att undersöka sambandet mellan graden av hållbarhet och prestation hos fonder på den svenska fondmarknaden. Detta är en kvantitativ studie där totalt 32 svenskregistrerade fonder undersöks. Fonderna valdes ut från Morningstars onlineregister och jämfördes utifrån de fem hållbarhetsbetygen, där betyg 1 anses vara minst hållbart och betyg 5 är mest hållbart. Perioden som analyserades var 2015-01-01 till 2019-12-31. För att få fram ett resultat som kan besvara studiens frågeställningar användes faktisk avkastning, CAPM, Sharpekvot, Jensens alfa och Treynorkvot. Studien visar inte på några signifikanta resultat i att fonder presterar sämre desto hållbarare de är. Detta leder till slutsatsen att det inte går att bevisa att hållbara fonder presterar bättre eller sämre än konventionella fonder. / In later years, the interest for sustainability has increased in society. More and more people want to contribute to society in a positive way by for example, sorting at source, driving less with cars or reducing meat consumption. With the increased interest in sustainability, the interest in sustainable investment alternatives has also increased. The purpose of the study is to investigate the relationship between the degree of sustainability and performance of funds in the Swedish fund market. This is a quantitative study in which a total of 32 Swedish-registrered funds are examined. The funds were selected from Morningstar’s online register and compared on the basis of the five sustainability ratings, where grade 1 is considered as the least sustainable and grade 5 is the most sustainable. The period that was analyzed was 2015-01-01 to 2019-12-31. In order to get a result that can answer the questions of this study, actual return, CAPM, Sharpe ratio, Jensen’s alpha and Treynor ratio are used. The study does not show any significant results regarding the degree of sustainability and the performance. The conclusion regarding whether sustainable funds perform better or worse than conventional funds cannot be established.

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 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?

<p>This dissertation comprises two essays on over-the-counter (OTC) markets, covering both the primary and secondary markets for municipal bonds.</p> <p>In the first chapter, I explore a novel channel through which exchange-traded funds (ETFs) improve pre-trade price transparency and thereby retail investors' bargaining power in OTC markets. ETFs are required to daily disclose their full holdings, often along with their constituents’ end-of-day prices, which are good timely references for investors to negotiate with broker-dealers, particularly when the securities have not traded recently. I find that ETF-held bonds have significantly lower retail markups than those of bonds not held by ETFs. This effect cannot be explained by selection or ETFs' own trading activity but is driven by the daily disclosures by ETFs holding the bonds. During 2010--2021, retail investors saved over $200 million when trading ETF-held bonds. There is also a spillover effect to the primary market---when municipalities have outstanding ETF-held bonds, their new issues have lower yields and smaller price dispersion.</p> <p>In the second chapter, I both theoretically and empirically document a non-monotonic relation between local municipal bond mutual funds, or informed investors, and underpricing in the municipal bond market. Empirically speaking, offering yields are higher in states that have open-end municipal bond funds, and with larger aggregate fund size. However, holding local fund size constant, yields decrease in the number of funds. Such relations hold when local funds' primary market participation is instrumented with the similarities in characteristics of new issues and existing bonds in their portfolios. I further confirm my empirical findings with a security underpricing model that incorporates the imperfect signals available to informed investors. Despite facing higher borrowing costs, issuers benefit from local funds' certification resulting in both institutional and retail investors' higher demand in the primary market.</p>