IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ijf/ijfiec/v15y2010i2p153-164.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is prior performance priced through closed-end fund discounts?

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Bleaney

    (School of Economics, University of Nottingham, UK)

  • R. Todd Smith

    (Department of Economics, University of Alberta, Canada)

Abstract

In open-end mutual funds (unit trusts), there is a strong positive cross-sectional relationship between net inflows to individual funds and past performance, as if investors attributed performance to managerial skill. Performance shows only very weak persistence, however, so at first sight investors do not appear to gain anything by responding to past performance information. This behaviour can be explained by the fact that past performance is effectively unpriced in the unit trust market, since management fees are unresponsive to demand. If investors believe that there is a non-zero probability that future performance will turn out to be positively correlated with past performance (i.e. that there is an element of managerial skill in performance), but a zero probability that this correlation will be negative, it is rational to prefer funds with better past performance when performance is not priced. In other words, it costs nothing to insure against the possibility of some managerial skill effect. If this explanation of the flow-performance relationship in unit trusts is correct, one would expect the relationship between investor demand and past fund performance to be much weaker if past performance were to be priced. We test this hypothesis in the market for closed-end funds (investment trusts). Because closed-end funds do not trade at net asset value, but at a price determined in the market, strong demand will raise the ratio of price to net asset value (known as the premium). Since it is well established that premiums are mean-reverting, future shareholder returns on funds currently on high premiums tend to be depressed by the reversion of the premium to the mean. In the closed-end fund market, as for open-end funds, there is little evidence of performance persistence, and therefore, to the extent that funds with good past performance are pushed to higher premiums, the expected return on them is less than on the average fund. This implicit pricing mechanism should mean that demand is a declining function of the premium, so that, even if demand is an increasing function of past performance for a given premium, any effect on the premium itself will be muted. We test this hypothesis for closed-end funds traded in the US and the UK. We find that there is a statistically significant effect of past performance on the premium in both countries. However, consistent with the hypothesis, it has limited economic significance, since it represents only a small component of premium variability. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Bleaney & R. Todd Smith, 2010. "Is prior performance priced through closed-end fund discounts?," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(2), pages 153-164.
    • Handle: RePEc:ijf:ijfiec:v:15:y:2010:i:2:p:153-164
    DOI: 10.1002/ijfe.387
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/ijfe.387
    File Function: Link to full text; subscription required
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/ijfe.387?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ippolito, Richard A, 1992. "Consumer Reaction to Measures of Poor Quality: Evidence from the Mutual Fund Industry," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(1), pages 45-70, April.
    2. Chay, J. B. & Trzcinka, Charles A., 1999. "Managerial performance and the cross-sectional pricing of closed-end funds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(3), pages 379-408, June.
    3. Chevalier, Judith & Ellison, Glenn, 1997. "Risk Taking by Mutual Funds as a Response to Incentives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(6), pages 1167-1200, December.
    4. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:5:p:1589-1622 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Lee, Charles M C & Shleifer, Andrei & Thaler, Richard H, 1991. "Investor Sentiment and the Closed-End Fund Puzzle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(1), pages 75-109, March.
    6. Malkiel, Burton G, 1977. "The Valuation of Closed-End Investment-Company Shares," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(3), pages 847-859, June.
    7. Klaas P. Baks & Andrew Metrick & Jessica Wachter, 2001. "Should Investors Avoid All Actively Managed Mutual Funds? A Study in Bayesian Performance Evaluation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(1), pages 45-85, February.
    8. Whitney K. Newey & Kenneth D. West, 1994. "Automatic Lag Selection in Covariance Matrix Estimation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(4), pages 631-653.
    9. Russ Wermers, 2000. "Mutual Fund Performance: An Empirical Decomposition into Stock‐Picking Talent, Style, Transactions Costs, and Expenses," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1655-1695, August.
    10. repec:bla:jfinan:v:55:y:2000:i:4:p:1655-1703 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Thompson, Rex, 1978. "The information content of discounts and premiums on closed-end fund shares," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2-3), pages 151-186.
    12. Jeffrey Pontiff, 1996. "Costly Arbitrage: Evidence from Closed-End Funds," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(4), pages 1135-1151.
    13. Pontiff, Jeffrey, 1995. "Closed-end fund premia and returns Implications for financial market equilibrium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 341-370, March.
    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. Korkie, Bob & Nakamura, Mansao & Turtle, Harry J., 2001. "A contingent claim analysis of closed-end fund premia," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 365-394.
    2. Jay Wang, Z. & Nanda, Vikram, 2011. "Payout policies and closed-end fund discounts: Signaling, agency costs, and the role of institutional investors," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 589-619, October.
    3. Johnson, Shane A. & Lin, Ji-Chai & Roy Song, Kyojik, 2006. "Dividend policy, signaling, and discounts on closed-end funds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(3), pages 539-562, September.
    4. Bradley, Michael & Brav, Alon & Goldstein, Itay & Jiang, Wei, 2010. "Activist arbitrage: A study of open-ending attempts of closed-end funds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 1-19, January.
    5. Durmaz, Nazif & Kim, Hyeongwoo & Lee, Hyejin & Sun, Yanfei, 2023. "Trend Breaks and the Persistence of Closed-End Mutual Fund Discounts," MPRA Paper 117789, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Pereira Reichhardt, Joaquín & Iqbal, Tabassum, 2014. "Investment Decisions: Are we fully-Rational?," MPRA Paper 57686, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. William M. Gentry & Charles M. Jones & Christopher J. Mayer, 2004. "Do Stock Prices Really Reflect Fundamental Values? The Case of REITs," NBER Working Papers 10850, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Jonathan Berk & Richard Stanton, 2004. "A Rational Model of the Closed-End Fund Discount," NBER Working Papers 10412, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Grullon, Gustavo & Albert Wang, F., 2001. "Closed-End Fund Discounts with Informed Ownership Differential," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 171-205, April.
    10. Lahr, Henry & Kaserer, Christoph, 2009. "Net asset value discounts in listed private equity funds," CEFS Working Paper Series 2009-12, Technische Universität München (TUM), Center for Entrepreneurial and Financial Studies (CEFS).
    11. Pontiff, Jeffrey, 2006. "Costly arbitrage and the myth of idiosyncratic risk," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1-2), pages 35-52, October.
    12. Souther, Matthew E., 2016. "The effects of takeover defenses: Evidence from closed-end funds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(2), pages 420-440.
    13. 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.
    14. Ben Branch & Aixin Ma & Jill Sawyer, 2010. "Around‐the‐Clock Performance of Closed‐End Funds," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 39(3), pages 1177-1196, September.
    15. Philipp Kellerhals, B. & Schobel, Rainer, 2002. "The dynamic behavior of closed-end funds and its implication for pricing, forecasting, and trading," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(8), pages 1615-1643, August.
    16. Lenkey, Stephen L., 2015. "The closed-end fund puzzle: Management fees and private information," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 112-129.
    17. Ferson, Wayne E., 2013. "Investment Performance: A Review and Synthesis," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 969-1010, Elsevier.
    18. Ana-Maria Fuertes & Dylan Thomas, 2004. "Market-wide shocks and anomalous price behaviour: evidence from closed-end funds," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2004 56, Money Macro and Finance Research Group.
    19. Goriaev, A.P. & Nijman, T.E. & Werker, B.J.M., 2002. "The Dynamics of the Impact of Past Performance on Mutual Fund Flows," Discussion Paper 2002-2, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    20. Dan W. French & S. McKay Price, 2018. "Depreciation-Related Capital Gains, Differential Tax Rates, and the Market Value of Real Estate Investment Trusts," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 43-63, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ijf:ijfiec:v:15:y:2010:i:2:p:153-164. 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: Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing or Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/1076-9307/ .

    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.