Fund of Funds Selection of Mutual Funds Superior Knowledge versus Family and Management Goals

Abstract

Managers of Fund of Funds have access to information not available to the general public in evaluating funds from their own family. However, they may have family or self‐serving motives that can hurt shareholder performance. By examining a history of individual transactions of Funds of Funds, we show that managers of Fund of Funds despite access to nonpublic information select individual funds that underperform random selection. Much of this underperformance is shown to be explained by managers satisfying a specific set of family and management goals. Fund of Funds that invest exclusively outside their fund family do not face these family and management goals and they outperform funds of funds then invest inside the family.