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Don’t Take Their Word For It: The Misclassification of Bond Mutual Funds

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  • Huaizhi Chen
  • Lauren Cohen
  • Umit Gurun

Abstract

We provide evidence that bond fund managers misclassify their holdings, and that these misclassifications have a real and significant impact on investor capital flows. In particular, many funds report more investment grade assets than are actually held in their portfolios to important information intermediaries, making these funds appear significantly less risky. This results in pervasive misclassification across the universe of US fixed income mutual funds. The problem is widespread - resulting in up to 31.4% of funds being misclassified with safer profiles, when compared against their true, publicly reported holdings. “Misclassified funds” – i.e., those that hold risky bonds, but claim to hold safer bonds – appear to on-average outperform the low-risk funds in their peer groups. Within category groups, “Misclassified funds” moreover receive higher Morningstar Ratings (significantly more Morningstar Stars) and higher investor flows due to this perceived on-average outperformance. However, when we correctly classify them based on their actual risk, these funds are mediocre performers. These Misclassified funds also significantly underperform precisely when junk-bonds crash in returns. Misreporting is stronger following several quarters of large negative returns.

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  • Huaizhi Chen & Lauren Cohen & Umit Gurun, 2019. "Don’t Take Their Word For It: The Misclassification of Bond Mutual Funds," NBER Working Papers 26423, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26423
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    Cited by:

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    2. Fricke, Daniel, 2021. "Synthetic Leverage and Fund Risk-Taking," ESRB Working Paper Series 126, European Systemic Risk Board.
    3. Javier Ojea-Ferreiro, 2021. "Deconstructing Systemic Risk: A Reverse Stress Testing Approach," Springer Books, in: Marco Corazza & Manfred Gilli & Cira Perna & Claudio Pizzi & Marilena Sibillo (ed.), Mathematical and Statistical Methods for Actuarial Sciences and Finance, pages 369-375, Springer.
    4. Antonio Coppola & Matteo Maggiori & Brent Neiman & Jesse Schreger, 2021. "Redrawing the Map of Global Capital Flows: The Role of Cross-Border Financing and Tax Havens," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(3), pages 1499-1556.
    5. Nicolas P. B. Bollen & Mark C. Hutchinson & John O'Brien, 2021. "When it pays to follow the crowd: Strategy conformity and CTA performance," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(6), pages 875-894, June.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
    • G24 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Investment Banking; Venture Capital; Brokerage
    • G4 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance
    • K0 - Law and Economics - - General

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