The investment of mutual funds which investors are often required evaluating the investment strategies according to their own subjective preferences in terms of numerical values from various criteria. This situation can be regarded as a fuzzy multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. The purpose of this study attempts to propose an alternative approach, fuzzy multiple criteria decision ...

This study presents a novel way to interpret the effects of investor attention on mutual fund flow and performance, by using Google Trends. Google Trends is an internet service that shows the aggregated search volumes on specific keywords. Based on its nature as being representative of investors’ search frequency, Google Trends acts as a direct measure for investor attention. The paper then see...

This paper studies the investment behavior and performance of contrarian mutual funds, as well as the performance of stocks widely held and traded by such funds over the 1994 to 2006 period. We define a “contrarian fund” as a fund that trades in a direction opposite to mutual fund “herds” much more frequently than the average fund. We find that contrarian funds tend to persist in trading agains...

The consensus wisdom of active mutual fund managers, as reflected in their average overand underweighting decisions, contains valuable information about future stock returns. Analyzing a comprehensive sample of active U.S. equity funds 1984—2008, we find that stocks heavily overweighted by active funds outperform their underweighted counterparts by more than 7% per year, after adjustments for t...

Several studies measuring the flow of monies into and out of U.S. mutual funds note a convexity in the performance-flow relation and offer several explanations for the apparent investor insensitivity to poor performance. In this study investor response to past performance is measured in a different setting: the Australian wholesale funds market. The results confirm that, like the U.S. mutual fu...

I extend the Warther (1995) evidence to show that stock market returns are related to contemporaneous flows into mutual funds that invest in risky stocks and bonds, but are unrelated to flows into funds that invest in safer stocks and bonds. I examine whether common sources of predictability in returns and flows can explain this contemporaneous relation. I find that variables with predictive ab...

This study illustrates the use of data envelopment analysis to benchmark mutual funds on the basis of risk-adjusted performance, load, 12b-1 plan, and expense ratios. Using the DEA methodology, we calculate an efficiency score for 189 funds on a scale of 1 to 100 by maximizing twelve month total return and minimizing beta, standard deviation, load, 12b-1 charges, and expense ratios. This study ...

In this paper we examine an aspect ofprofessional investment management which has not been adequately documented and studied; the extent to which equity mutualfund managers actively adjust their portfolio’s equity risk evosure over time. Estimates of a portfolio’s quarter-end beta are developed using the actual stock ho~~gs oft~~~ol~ at the quarter-end. Changes in these beta estimates fivm one ...