IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbfina/v35y2011i1p155-165.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Global equity fund performance, portfolio concentration, and the fundamental law of active management

Author

Listed:
  • Huij, Joop
  • Derwall, Jeroen

Abstract

This paper investigates the relation between portfolio concentration and the performance of global equity funds. Concentrated funds with higher levels of tracking error display better performance than their more broadly diversified counterparts. We show that the observed relation between portfolio concentration and performance is mostly driven by the breadth of the underlying fund strategies; not just by fund managers' willingness to take big bets. Our results indicate that when investors strive to select the best-performing funds, they should not only consider fund managers' tracking-error levels. More important is that they take into account the extent to which fund managers carefully allocate their risk budget across multiple investment strategies and have concentrated holdings in multiple market segments simultaneously.

Suggested Citation

  • Huij, Joop & Derwall, Jeroen, 2011. "Global equity fund performance, portfolio concentration, and the fundamental law of active management," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 155-165, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:35:y:2011:i:1:p:155-165
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378-4266(10)00298-0
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nijman, Theo & Swinkels, Laurens & Verbeek, Marno, 2004. "Do countries or industries explain momentum in Europe?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 461-481, September.
    2. Jensen, Michael C, 1969. "Risk, The Pricing of Capital Assets, and the Evaluation of Investment Portfolios," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(2), pages 167-247, April.
    3. K. J. Martijn Cremers & Antti Petajisto, 2009. "How Active Is Your Fund Manager? A New Measure That Predicts Performance," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(9), pages 3329-3365, September.
    4. Martijn Cremers & Antti Petajisto, 2006. "How Active is Your Fund Manager? A New Measure That Predicts Performance," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2370, Yale School of Management, revised 01 May 2009.
    5. Arisoy, Yakup Eser, 2010. "Volatility risk and the value premium: Evidence from the French stock market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 975-983, May.
    6. Gallo, John G. & Swanson, Peggy E., 1996. "Comparative measures of performance for U.S.-based international equity mutual funds," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(10), pages 1635-1650, December.
    7. Brown, Stephen J, et al, 1992. "Survivorship Bias in Performance Studies," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 5(4), pages 553-580.
    8. Li, Xiafei & Miffre, Joëlle & Brooks, Chris & O'Sullivan, Niall, 2008. "Momentum profits and time-varying unsystematic risk," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 541-558, April.
    9. Lakonishok, Josef & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1994. "Contrarian Investment, Extrapolation, and Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(5), pages 1541-1578, December.
    10. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:1:p:267-284 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Antoniou, Antonios & Lam, Herbert Y.T. & Paudyal, Krishna, 2007. "Profitability of momentum strategies in international markets: The role of business cycle variables and behavioural biases," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 955-972, March.
    12. Viale, Ariel M. & Kolari, James W. & Fraser, Donald R., 2009. "Common risk factors in bank stocks," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 464-472, March.
    13. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Titman, Sheridan, 1993. "Returns to Buying Winners and Selling Losers: Implications for Stock Market Efficiency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(1), pages 65-91, March.
    14. Heston, Steven L. & Rouwenhorst, K. Geert, 1994. "Does industrial structure explain the benefits of international diversification?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 3-27, August.
    15. Elton, Edwin J. & Gruber, Martin J. & Blake, Christopher R. & Krasny, Yoel & Ozelge, Sadi O., 2010. "The effect of holdings data frequency on conclusions about mutual fund behavior," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 912-922, May.
    16. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1992. "The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 427-465, June.
    17. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1997. "Industry costs of equity," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 153-193, February.
    18. Beckers, Stan & Grinold, Richard & Rudd, Andrew & Stefek, Dan, 1992. "The relative importance of common factors across the European equity markets," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 75-95, February.
    19. Jennifer Huang & Clemens Sialm & Hanjiang Zhang, 2011. "Risk Shifting and Mutual Fund Performance," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(8), pages 2575-2616.
    20. Foort HAMELINK, & Hélène HARASTY & Pierre HILLION, 2001. "Country, Sector or Style: What Matters Most When Constructing Global Equity Portfolios? An Empirical Investigation from 1990-2001," FAME Research Paper Series rp35, International Center for Financial Asset Management and Engineering.
    21. Asem, Ebenezer, 2009. "Dividends and price momentum," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 486-494, March.
    22. Marcin Kacperczyk & Clemens Sialm & Lu Zheng, 2005. "On the Industry Concentration of Actively Managed Equity Mutual Funds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(4), pages 1983-2011, August.
    23. Griffin, John M. & Andrew Karolyi, G., 1998. "Another look at the role of the industrial structure of markets for international diversification strategies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 351-373, December.
    24. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    25. Cumby, Robert E & Glen, Jack D, 1990. "Evaluating the Performance of International Mutual Funds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(2), pages 497-521, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Giuseppe Galloppo & Mauro Aliano, 2018. "Fund Manager Performance in Emerging Market: Factor Specialisation and Financial Crisis Impact," Journal of Emerging Market Finance, Institute for Financial Management and Research, vol. 17(1), pages 130-158, April.
    2. Breloer, Bernhard & Scholz, Hendrik & Wilkens, Marco, 2014. "Performance of international and global equity mutual funds: Do country momentum and sector momentum matter?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 58-77.
    3. Suresh Nallareddy & Maria Ogneva, 2017. "Accrual quality, skill, and the cross-section of mutual fund returns," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 503-542, June.
    4. Sebastian Lobe & Christian Walkshäusl, 2016. "Vice versus virtue investing around the world," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 303-344, March.
    5. Herrmann, Ulf & Rohleder, Martin & Scholz, Hendrik, 2016. "Does style-shifting activity predict performance? Evidence from equity mutual funds," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 112-130.
    6. Matallín-Sáez, Juan Carlos & Soler-Domínguez, Amparo & Tortosa-Ausina, Emili, 2016. "On the robustness of persistence in mutual fund performance," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 192-231.
    7. Loban, Lidia & Sarto, José Luis & Vicente, Luis, 2021. "Determinants of non-compliant equity funds with EU portfolio concentration limits," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    8. Ergys Islamaj & Maziar Kazemi, 2014. "Returns to Active Management: The Case of Hedge Funds," International Finance Discussion Papers 1112, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    9. Wu, Yuliang & Mazouz, Khelifa, 2016. "Long-term industry reversals," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 236-250.
    10. Kim, Donghan & Kim, Hyun-Dong & Joe, Denis Yongmin & Oh, Ji Yeol Jimmy, 2021. "Institutional investor heterogeneity and market price dynamics: Evidence from investment horizon and portfolio concentration," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    11. Gregory Connor & Lisa R. Goldberg & Robert A. Korajczyk, 2010. "Portfolio Risk Analysis," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9224.
    12. Brown, Stephen J. & Sotes-Paladino, Juan & Wang, Jiaguo(George) & Yao, Yaqiong, 2017. "Starting on the wrong foot: Seasonality in mutual fund performance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 133-150.
    13. Boguth, Oliver & Simutin, Mikhail, 2018. "Leverage constraints and asset prices: Insights from mutual fund risk taking," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(2), pages 325-341.
    14. Rania Makni & Olfa Benouda & Ezzedine Delhoumi, 2016. "International evidence on Islamic equity fund characteristics and performance persistence," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(1), pages 75-82, November.
    15. Makni, Rania & Benouda, Olfa & Delhoumi, Ezzedine, 2016. "International evidence on Islamic equity fund characteristics and performance persistence," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 75-82.
    16. Agnesens, Julius, 2013. "A statistically robust decomposition of mutual fund performance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(10), pages 3867-3877.
    17. Jing Xie, 2024. "Stock-Picking by Mutual Funds: Evidence from Trading in Family-Controlled Firms," Working Papers 202411, University of Macau, Faculty of Business Administration.
    18. Linnenluecke, Martina K. & Chen, Xiaoyan & Ling, Xin & Smith, Tom & Zhu, Yushu, 2017. "Research in finance: A review of influential publications and a research agenda," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 188-199.
    19. Sabine Artmann & Philipp Finter & Alexander Kempf & Stefan Koch & Erik Theissen, 2012. "The Cross-Section of German Stock Returns: New Data and New Evidence," Schmalenbach Business Review (sbr), LMU Munich School of Management, vol. 64(1), pages 20-43, January.
    20. Li, Zhiyong & Rao, Xiao, 2023. "Exploring the zoo of predictors for mutual fund performance in China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:35:y:2011:i:1:p:155-165. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbf .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.