Do Portuguese mutual funds display forecasting skills?

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 597-631
Author(s):  
Nuno Manuel Veloso Neto ◽  
Júlio Fernando Seara Sequeira da Mota Lobão ◽  
Elisabete Simões Vieira

Purpose This study aims to evaluate the performance of the Portuguese fund managers by examining the selectivity and market timing skills of 51 Portuguese mutual funds from June 2002 to March 2012. Design/methodology/approach The authors assess empirically the performance of a sample of funds by applying the unconditional and conditional models of Treynor and Mazuy (1966) and Henriksson and Merton (1981). Findings The results suggest that, overall, the Portuguese mutual funds do not possess selectivity or timing skills. However, regardless of the model used, the domestic equity funds exhibit a statistically significant market timing ability. Furthermore, the domestic and North American equity funds display positive selectivity during bull markets and timing skills during bear markets. Additionally, there is some evidence that older funds are better stock pickers than younger funds. Research limitations/implications To address some of the limitations of this study, the authors suggest for further research correcting the Treynor and Mazuy (1966) model for the convexity cost of replicating Merton’s (1981) option approach. Additionally, for further research, we suggest using a bigger sample, higher frequency data, as such data may lead to higher frequency of timing ability as proposed by Bollen and Busse (2001). To overcome some of the limitations of traditional models, future research may consider using Jiang’s (2003) nonparametric test, as it is not affected by manager’s risk aversion, or Ferson and Khang (2002) conditional performance evaluation using portfolios holdings. Originality/value The authors contribute to the current literature by extending the period of study to 10 years in comparison to previous studies; extending the sample of funds to 51; addressing, for the first time in this context, the importance of public information on funds’ performance, through the comparison of unconditional and conditional models of Treynor and Mazuy’s (1966) and Henriksson and Merton’s (1981); and, for the first time in the Portuguese context, analysing the relationship between funds’ size, age and market cycles and selectivity and market timing skills.

2008 ◽  
Vol 11 (04) ◽  
pp. 617-649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Kuok-kun Chu ◽  
Michael McKenzie

This paper presents the first comprehensive study of the performance and market timing ability of the equity funds that comprise the Hong Kong Mandatory Provident Funds (MPF) scheme. In general, our results suggest that US equity funds consistently underperform relative to the market, while the other fund groups consistently outperform the market. The stock-selection ability of MPF constituent equity funds in times of changing economic condition is also investigated. The evidence is consistent with previous studies, which suggest that the conditional models decrease the individual fund traditional alpha measure. The market timing models of Treynor–Mazuy and Henriksson–Merton provide evidence of superior market timing ability.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 466-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salman Ahmed Shaikh ◽  
Mohd Adib Ismail ◽  
Abdul Ghafar Ismail ◽  
Shahida Shahimi ◽  
Muhammad Hakimi Mohd. Shafiai

Purpose This study aims to comparatively analyze the performance of Islamic and conventional income and equity funds using various performance evaluation methods. Design/methodology/approach The authors comparatively analyze the performance of mutual funds using measures, such as tracking error, Sharpe ratio (1966), Treynor ratio (1965), M-square measure by Modigliani and Modigliani (1997) and information ratio. The authors also use market timing and selection measures, such as Treynor and Mazuy model (1966), Henriksson and Merton (1981) model and Fama’s decomposition approach (1973). Findings The authors find that Islamic equity funds are as much competitive as conventional equity funds. All Islamic equity funds have positive Sharpe ratio, Treynor ratio and net selectivity measure. Islamic equity funds are slightly less risky in general. Islamic equity and income funds generally have positive Jensen's Alpha and a positive market timing ability. However, the authors find that Islamic income funds generally underperform the market due to less Shari’ah-compliant investment class assets in the market. Practical implications It will help the industry players to assess their strategic positioning with regard to the commercial competitiveness of Islamic investments. Originality/value The authors take considerably large sample of 60 funds in Pakistan as compared to previous studies and also cover recent period (2006-16). For income funds, the authors construct an original benchmark index based on price and dividend data and use that in performance assessment.


2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 662-681
Author(s):  
Qiang Bu

Purpose This study aims to examine whether mutual funds can earn daily alpha and time daily market return. Design/methodology/approach Based on the Treynor and Mazuy (1966) model and the Henriksson and Merton (1981) model, the author tests the daily market-timing ability of actual mutual funds and bootstrapped mutual funds. Findings The author finds that daily alpha and daily market-timing ability can come from pure luck. In addition, the relation between fund alpha and market-timing ability is at best minimal. Originality/value Using bootstrapped funds as the benchmark, this study shows that daily fund market is overall efficient.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zia-ur-Rehman Rao ◽  
Muhammad Zubair Tauni ◽  
Amjad Iqbal ◽  
Muhammad Umar

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to find whether Chinese equity funds outperform the market and do Chinese fund managers possess positive market timing ability. This study also aims to investigate whether well-performing (worst) funds of last year continue to perform well (worst) in the following year. Design/methodology/approach Capital Asset Pricing Model and Carhart four-factor model are used for performance analysis, whereas for analyzing market timing ability, the Treynor and Mazuy (1966) and Henriksson and Merton (1981) models are applied. To investigate persistence in the performance of Chinese equity funds, all equity funds are divided, on the basis of performance in the past 12 months, into three equally weighted groups (high, middle and low) and then observed for next 12 months. After that, groups are again rebalanced according to their performance. This study uses a panel regression model for analysis. Findings Chinese equity funds are successful in providing higher than market returns, and fund managers possess positive market timing ability. The authors find that Chinese equity funds do not show persistence in performance as witnessed in developed markets. Well-performing funds (worst funds) of last year do not continue to provide higher (lower) return in the following year. Moreover, the authors detect positive relationship of fund size, age and expense ratio with the fund’s performance. Overall results suggest that emerging market equity funds show better performance than that of developed markets. Practical implications Investors are better off if they invest in equity funds instead of index funds, as results illustrate that equity funds outperformed the market. Further, the strategy of buying well-performing funds of last year and selling poorly performing funds of last year does not look very attractive in China. This study helps investors to understand the Chinese managed funds industry, and such an understanding is also helpful for fund managers and asset management companies who use performance information in marketing strategies. Originality/value This is the first study to investigate the performance persistence in Chinese equity funds and also contributes to the literature about the performance and market timing ability of equity funds. The study takes the sample of 520 equity funds for the period from 2004 to 2014, which includes a period of financial crisis of 2008.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-68
Author(s):  
Sanaullah Sanaullah ◽  
Amna Noor ◽  
Salleh Khan ◽  
Muhammad Shahbaz Khan

This study aims to determine the stock selection ability and market timing ability of mutual fund managers, focusing on conventional funds and Islamic funds in Pakistan.  Although there has been significant growth in the number and assets of mutual funds in recent years, few studies measure the performance of mutual funds managers. The scarcity of existing literature motivates this study. In this study, two models are used to measure the stock selection and market timing on a sample of conventional mutual funds and Islamic mutual funds over 2010 and 2019 using annual returns. Overall, the results indicate that the performance study of conventional mutual funds and Islamic mutual funds indicates that manager performance is not superior in all three portfolios, i.e., conventional funds, Islamic funds, and overall funds in over sample period. This also indicates that both Conventional and Islamic fund managers do not outperform the market (KSE 100 index). Thus, there is a lack of market timing ability. Using Tranoy and mazuy and Jansen models found a lack of stock selection and market timing ability of mutual fund managers in Pakistani mutual funds. In this study, I have applied only two models to examine both the timing and selection ability of conventional and Islamic Pakistani equity funds. For future possibilities, the study suggests adopting several methods and approaches like the TMFF3 model and HM-FF3 model, making the study more comprehensive and accurate than this research.


2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Syed Kalim Hyder Bukhari ◽  
Mohammed Azam

Islamic mutual funds and socially responsible mutual funds are two similar asset classes that incorporate negative screens in their portfolio selection process to filter out stocks that fail to meet certain ethical, social, environmental, and/or religious standards. This study uses a single-factor capital asset pricing model and an adjusted sample consisting of 224 Islamic funds and 573 socially responsible funds to examine their excess risk-adjusted returns, market volatility, and systematic risk. It also gauges the market-timing abilities of the fund managers concerned in relation to both Islamic/socially responsible and conventional market indices. While there are some differences in the risk factors of Islamic funds and socially responsible funds, both are associated with lower risks and have the same market-timing ability.


2007 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soumya Guha Deb ◽  
Ashok Banerjee ◽  
B B Chakrabarti

Evaluation of performance of mutual funds and identification of successful fund managers are of great interest to both investors and academicians. Two possible methods that are presumed to be used by fund managers for generating superior performance are identified as: Market timing: Market timing skills imply assessing correctly the direction of the market, whether bull or bear, and positioning their portfolios accordingly. Stock selection: Stock selection skills involve micro forecasting, which generally forecasts price movements of individual stocks relative to stocks and identification of individual stocks that are under-or over-valued relative to equities in general. The two pioneering works in this field is by Treynor Mazuy( 1966) and Henriksson Merton ( 1981). They developed two different models for testing the market timing and stock selection abilities of the fund managers but found little evidence of timing by the fund managers in their samples. Most of the other works mentioned in the paper have used these two models (which we name as traditional/unconditional models) or slight variations of the same for testing market timing and stock selection abilities of the fund managers. Person and Scadt (1996) modified the classical performance measures (of timing and stock selection ability) to take account of well-known information variables like interest rate, market dividend yield, etc. They termed it as ‘conditional approach’ of measuring mutual fund performance and claimed that conditioning on public information controls for biases in traditional market timing and stock selection models. Traditional models have taken the view that ‘any information’ correlated with the future market returns is superior information; in other words, they are unconditional models. Person and Scadt's approach used basically the same simplifying assumptions as the traditional models but they assumed, in addition, semi-strong form of market efficiency. The idea was to distinguish between market timing based on public information from market timing information that is superior to the lagged publicly available information variables. Although the academic literature on stock selection and market timing ability of mutual fund managers is rich and spans several decades, not many studies exist on this issue using emerging market data. This paper attempts to find the stock selection and market timing abilities of the Indian mutual fund managers using unconditional as well as conditional approaches. With a sample of 96 Indian mutual fund schemes, a lack of market timing ability and presence of stock selection ability were observed among the Indian funds managers in both unconditional as well as conditional approaches. A pooled regression was carried out for various categories of funds as well as for the entire sample, which also showed a lack of market timing abilities and presence of stock selection abilities.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 542-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Venessa S. Tchamyou ◽  
Simplice A. Asongu ◽  
Jacinta C. Nwachukwu

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of information asymmetry (between the realized return and the expected return) on market timing in the mutual fund industry. Design/methodology/approach For the purpose, the authors use a panel of 1,488 active open-end mutual funds for the period 2004-2013. The authors use fund-specific time-dynamic betas. The information asymmetry is measured as the standard deviation of idiosyncratic risk. The data set is decomposed into five market fundamentals in order to emphasis the policy implications of the findings with respect to: equity, fixed income, allocation, alternative, and tax-preferred mutual funds. The empirical evidence is based on endogeneity-robust difference and system generalized method of moments. Findings The following findings are established. First, the information asymmetry broadly follows the same trend as volatility, with a higher sensitivity to market risk exposure. Second, fund managers tend to raise (cutback) their risk exposure in time of high (low) market liquidity. Third, there is evidence of convergence in equity funds. The authors may, therefore, infer that equity funds with lower market risk exposure are catching-up with their counterparts with higher exposure to fluctuation in market conditions. Originality/value The paper complements the sparse literature on market timing in the mutual fund industry with time-dynamic betas, information asymmetry and an endogeneity-robust empirical approach.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-135
Author(s):  
Pick-Soon Ling ◽  
Ruzita Abdul-Rahim

Background and Purpose: Studies focusing on mutual fund managerial abilities and investment style strategies are still scarce in the literature. Thus, this study aims to provide new evidence and insights into the managerial abilities and investment style performances of Malaysian fund managers.   Methodology: A total of 444 Malaysian equity mutual funds (EMFs) were evaluated using Carhart’s model incorporated with Treynor-Mazuy (T-M) and Henriksson-Merton (H-M) market timing models for the study period, from January 1995 to December 2017.   Findings: Fund managers displayed superior stock selection skills with 32 percent and 43 percent of funds for T-M and H-M respectively, with perverse market timing ability which accounted for 39 percent and 42 percent of funds for T-M and H-M respectively. Perverse timing ability had reduced the superior stock-picking skills of fund managers. This suggests that the EMFs performance could further improve if respective fund managers perform better in market timing ability. The finding also indicates that size effect (SMB) and value effect (HML) play significant roles in investment style strategies, while results of momentum factor (WML) propose that Malaysian fund managers have followed the contrarian strategy.   Contributions: This study contributes in several ways especially in the literature of portfolio management as the evidence is obtained from the largest mutual funds sample size and the longest study period. Moreover, this study also used the highest frequency data to study the effects of market timing which were overlooked in previous studies.   Keywords: Adjusted carhart, Malaysian market, market timing, mutual fund, stock selection.   Cite as: Ling, P-S., & Abdul-Rahim, R. (2021). Managerial abilities and factor investment style performances of Malaysian mutual funds.  Journal of Nusantara Studies, 6(1), 118-135. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol6iss1pp118-135


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