Investor-Stock Decoupling in Mutual Funds
58 Pages Posted: 6 Sep 2016
There are 4 versions of this paper
Investor-Stock Decoupling in Mutual Funds
Investor-Stock Decoupling in Mutual Funds
Investor-Stock Decoupling in Mutual Funds
Date Written: August 2016
Abstract
We investigate whether mutual funds whose investors and stocks are decoupled (i.e., investor location does not coincide with that of the stock holdings) benefit from a natural hedge as they have fewer outflows during market downturns and fewer inflows during upturns. Using a sample of equity mutual funds from 26 countries, we find that funds with higher investor-stock decoupling exhibit higher performance and this is more pronounced during the 2007-2008 financial crisis. We also find that decoupling allows fund managers to take less risk, be more active, and tilt their portfolios toward smaller and less liquid stocks.
Keywords: Fund flows, Limits to Arbitrage, Mutual funds, Performance, Risk Taking
JEL Classification: G20, G23
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation