Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T08:10:50.342Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

New Evidence on Mutual Fund Performance: A Comparison of Alternative Bootstrap Methods

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2017

Abstract

We compare two bootstrap methods for assessing mutual fund performance. The first produces narrow confidence intervals due to pooling over time, whereas the second produces wider confidence intervals because it preserves the cross correlation of fund returns. We then show that the average U.K. equity mutual fund manager is unable to deliver outperformance net of fees under either bootstrap. Gross of fees, 95% of fund managers on the basis of the first bootstrap and all fund managers on the basis of the second bootstrap fail to outperform the luck distribution of gross returns.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Michael G. Foster School of Business, University of Washington 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

The data set used in this paper was constructed while Tonks was an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Business Fellow at the United Kingdom’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) in 2009 (RES-186-27-0014), and Tonks is obliged to the FSA’s Economics of Regulation Unit for hosting this visit. We are grateful for comments and discussion from Peter Andrews, Alok Bhargava, Stephen Brown (the editor), Qun Harris, Allan Timmermann, and Russell Wermers (the referee).

We direct your attention also to our Internet Appendix (available at www.jfqa.org) that provides robustness tests of our findings.

References

Blake, D.; Rossi, A.; Timmermann, A.; Tonks, I.; and Wermers, R.. “Decentralized Investment Management: Evidence from the Pension Fund Industry.” Journal of Finance, 68 (2013), 11331178.Google Scholar
Blake, D., and Timmermann, A.. “Mutual Fund Performance: Evidence from the UK.” European Finance Review, 2 (1998), 5777.Google Scholar
Brown, S., and Warner, J.. “Using Daily Stock Returns: The Case of Event Studies.” Journal of Financial Economics, 14 (1985), 131.Google Scholar
Carhart, M. M.On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance.” Journal of Finance, 52 (1997), 5782.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carhart, M. M.; Carpenter, J. N.; Lynch, A. W.; and Musto, D. K.. “Mutual Fund Survivorship.” Review of Financial Studies, 15 (2002), 14391463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carpenter, J. N., and Lynch, A. W.. “Survivorship Bias and Attrition Effects in Measures of Performance Persistence.” Journal of Financial Economics, 54 (1999), 337374.Google Scholar
Cuthbertson, K.; Nitzche, D.; and O’Sullivan, N.. “UK Mutual Fund Performance: Skill or Luck?Journal of Empirical Finance, 15 (2008), 613634.Google Scholar
Efron, B., and Tibshirani, R. J.. An Introduction to the Bootstrap. New York, NY: Chapman and Hall (1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elton, E. J.; Gruber, M. J.; and Blake, C. R.. “Survivor Bias and Mutual Fund Performance.” Review of Financial Studies, 9 (1996), 10971120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fama, E. F., and French, K. R.. “Common Risk Factors in the Returns on Stocks and Bonds.” Journal of Financial Economics, 33 (1993), 356.Google Scholar
Fama, E. F., and French, K. R.. “Luck versus Skill in the Cross-Section of Mutual Fund Returns.” Journal of Finance, 65 (2010), 607636.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferson, W. E., and Schadt, R. W.. “Measuring Fund Strategy and Performance in Changing Economic Conditions.” Journal of Finance, 51 (1996), 425461.Google Scholar
Fitzenberger, B., and Kurtz, C.. “New Insights on Earnings Trends across Skill Groups and Industries in West Germany.” Empirical Economics, 28 (2003), S479S514.Google Scholar
Gregory, A.; Tharyan, R.; and Huang, A.. “Constructing and Testing Alternative Versions of the Fama–French and Carhart Models in the UK.” Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, 40 (2013), 172214.Google Scholar
Grinblatt, M., and Titman, S.. “A Study of Monthly Mutual Fund Returns and Performance Evaluation Techniques.” Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 29 (1994), 419444.Google Scholar
Jarque, C., and Bera, A.. “Efficient Tests for Normality, Homoscedasticity and Serial Independence of Regression Residuals.” Economics Letters, 6 (1980), 255259.Google Scholar
Jensen, M. C.The Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period 1945–1964.” Journal of Finance, 23 (1968), 389416.Google Scholar
Khorana, A.; Servaes, H.; and Tufano, P.. “Mutual Fund Fees around the World.” Review of Financial Studies, 22 (2009), 12791310.Google Scholar
Kosowski, R.; Timmermann, A.; Wermers, R.; and White, H.. “Can Mutual Fund ‘Stars’ Really Pick Stocks? New Evidence from a Bootstrap Analysis.” Journal of Finance, 59 (2006), 25512595.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lunde, A.; Timmermann, A.; and Blake, D.. “The Hazards of Mutual Fund Underperformance: A Cox Regression Analysis.” Journal of Empirical Finance, 6 (1999), 121152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malkiel, B. G.Returns from Investing in Equity Mutual Funds 1971 to 1991.” Journal of Finance, 50 (1995), 549572.Google Scholar
Merton, R. C., and Henriksson, R. D.. “On Market Timing and Investment Performance II: Statistical Procedures for Evaluating Forecasting Skills.” Journal of Business, 54 (1981), 513534.Google Scholar
Politis, D. N., and Romano, J. P.. “The Stationary Bootstrap.” Journal of the American Statistical Association, 89 (1994), 13031313.Google Scholar
Treynor, J., and Mazuy, K.. “Can Mutual Funds Outguess the Market?Harvard Business Review, 44 (1966), 131136.Google Scholar
Wermers, R.; Barras, L.; and Scaillet, O.. “False Discoveries in Mutual Fund Performance: Measuring Luck in Estimated Alphas.” Journal of Finance, 65 (2010), 179216.Google Scholar
White, H.A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity.” Econometrica, 48 (1980), 817838.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Blake supplementary material

Blake supplementary material 1

Download Blake supplementary material(File)
File 882.2 KB