Can Mutual Fund Managers Pick Stocks? Evidence from Their Trades Prior to Earnings Announcements

29 Pages Posted: 3 Mar 2005 Last revised: 13 Dec 2011

See all articles by Malcolm P. Baker

Malcolm P. Baker

Harvard Business School; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Lubomir P. Litov

University of Oklahoma - Michael F. Price College of Business; University of Pennsylvania - Wharton Financial Institutions Center

Jessica A. Wachter

University of Pennsylvania - Finance Department; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Securities and Exchange Commission

Jeffrey Wurgler

NYU Stern School of Business; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Multiple version iconThere are 4 versions of this paper

Date Written: November 13, 2007

Abstract

We consider measures of stock-picking skill of mutual fund managers based on the earnings announcement returns of the stocks that they hold and trade. Relative to standard approaches, this approach focuses on an especially informative subset of the returns data, potentially increasing power to detect skilled trading, and also sheds light on the sources of skilled trading. We find that the average fund's recent buys significantly outperform its recent sells around subsequent earnings announcements. We find that mutual fund trades also forecast EPS surprises. The point estimates suggest that skilled trading around earnings announcements, deriving from an ability to forecast economic fundamentals, represents a disproportionate fraction of the total abnormal returns to skilled trading by mutual funds estimated in prior work.

Keywords: Mutual fund, performance evaluation

JEL Classification: G2, G12, G14

Suggested Citation

Baker, Malcolm P. and Litov, Lubomir P. and Wachter, Jessica A. and Wurgler, Jeffrey A., Can Mutual Fund Managers Pick Stocks? Evidence from Their Trades Prior to Earnings Announcements (November 13, 2007). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=570381 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.570381

Malcolm P. Baker

Harvard Business School ( email )

Boston, MA 02163
United States
617-495-6566 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.people.hbs.edu/mbaker

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
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Lubomir P. Litov

University of Oklahoma - Michael F. Price College of Business ( email )

307 West Brooks
Norman, OK 73019-4004
United States

University of Pennsylvania - Wharton Financial Institutions Center

2306 Steinberg Hall-Dietrich Hall
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Jessica A. Wachter

University of Pennsylvania - Finance Department ( email )

The Wharton School
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United States
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National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

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Securities and Exchange Commission ( email )

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Jeffrey A. Wurgler (Contact Author)

NYU Stern School of Business ( email )

Stern School of Business
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New York, NY 10012-1126
United States
212-998-0367 (Phone)
212-995-4233 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.stern.nyu.edu/~jwurgler/

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

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