Short term persistence in mutual fund market timing and stock selection abilities

Using daily return data from 448 actively managed mutual funds over a recent 9- year period, we look for persistence, over two consecutive quarters, in the ability of funds to select individual stocks and time the market. That is, we decompose overall fund performance into excess returns resulting from stock selection and timing abilities and we separately test for persistence in each ability. We ¯nd persistence in the ability to time the market only among well performing funds and in the ability to select stocks only among the very best and worst performers. The existing literature patterns appear only when funds are ranked by their overall performance, which includes stock selection, market timing and fees. With respect to overall performance, there is persistence among most poorly performing and only the top well performing funds. Furthermore, the pro¯tability of a winner-picking strategy depends on the rebalancing frequency and potentially the size of the investment. Small investors cannot pro¯t, whereas large investors can take advantage of the class A share fee structure and realize positive abnormal returns by annually rebalancing their portfolios

Testing the PIN variable

This paper puts the PIN variable (Probability of INformation-based trading) to test. We ¯nd that for a large set of stocks, the PIN vari- able is lower (albeit insigni¯cantly) in the periods before earnings an- nouncements dates than in the periods after earnings announcements dates. This is inconsistent with the idea of PIN capturing the proba- bility of informed trading

Patriotic name bias and stock returns

Companies whose names contain the words “America(n)” or “USA” earn positive abnormal returns of about 6% per annum during the Second World War, the War in Korea and the War on Terror. These abnormal returns are not realized immediately upon the outbreak of each of the wars but are accumulated gradually during wartime. Given that no such effect is observed for the Vietnam War, we hypothesize that major, victorious wars arouse investors’ patriotic feelings and cause them to gradually and perhaps subconsciously gravitate toward stocks whose name has a patriotic flavor

Liberalism and home equity bias

Countries whose citizens have liberal ideals are less biased toward domestic equity. Data from 30 countries suggests that economic as well as social liberalism is associated with proportionally higher foreign equity holdings. A one standard deviation increase in the level of economic (social) liberalism relative to time-series and cross-sectional averages, is associated with a 5% (2%) relative decrease of home equity bias. These results hold after controlling for standard rational and behavioral explanations of the home equity bias as well as country and time fixed effects

Funding constraints and liquidity in two-tiered OTC markets

Using primary dealer transactional data from the government bond (gilt) market in the United Kingdom, we identify a new channel through which dealer funding constraints may impair liquidity in two-tiered OTC markets. The key finding is that funding constraints also inhibit dealers' ability to accommodate each others' trade requests in the inter-dealer segment, which limits their collective ability to manage inventories and share risk. As a result, funding constraints end up compromising liquidity above and beyond any direct effects caused by dealers' inability to accommodate client trade requests due to their individual balance sheet constraints

Price discovery and the cross-section of high-frequency trading

We quantify the price discovery contribution of high-frequency traders (HFTs) in the United Kingdom equity market and examine how it varies in their cross-section. For this, we group individual HFTs according to their liquidity taking/making activity. HFTs contribute about 14% of all trade-induced information, with aggressive HFTs accounting for two-thirds of this contribution. This suggests that HFTs who pursue strategies that require use of aggressive trades are the most informed, as opposed to passive HFTs who more likely act as market makers. However, information shares decline with the amount of aggressive volume, suggesting that HFTs' news trading strategies are not scalable. JEL classification: G1

Testing the PIN variable

This paper puts the PIN variable (Probability of INformation-based trading) to test. We ¯nd that for a large set of stocks, the PIN vari- able is lower (albeit insigni¯cantly) in the periods before earnings an- nouncements dates than in the periods after earnings announcements dates. This is inconsistent with the idea of PIN capturing the proba- bility of informed trading

Liberalism and home equity bias

Countries whose citizens have liberal ideals are less biased toward domestic equity. Data from 30 countries suggests that economic as well as social liberalism is associated with proportionally higher foreign equity holdings. A one standard deviation increase in the level of economic (social) liberalism relative to time-series and cross-sectional averages, is associated with a 5% (2%) relative decrease of home equity bias. These results hold after controlling for standard rational and behavioral explanations of the home equity bias as well as country and time fixed effects

Short term persistence in mutual fund market timing and stock selection abilities

Using daily return data from 448 actively managed mutual funds over a recent 9- year period, we look for persistence, over two consecutive quarters, in the ability of funds to select individual stocks and time the market. That is, we decompose overall fund performance into excess returns resulting from stock selection and timing abilities and we separately test for persistence in each ability. We ¯nd persistence in the ability to time the market only among well performing funds and in the ability to select stocks only among the very best and worst performers. The existing literature patterns appear only when funds are ranked by their overall performance, which includes stock selection, market timing and fees. With respect to overall performance, there is persistence among most poorly performing and only the top well performing funds. Furthermore, the pro¯tability of a winner-picking strategy depends on the rebalancing frequency and potentially the size of the investment. Small investors cannot pro¯t, whereas large investors can take advantage of the class A share fee structure and realize positive abnormal returns by annually rebalancing their portfolios