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4-2.2. Mutual Fund Disclosure

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Investments II: Lessons and Applications for Investors

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

4.8 (406 ratings) | 9.4K Students Enrolled

Course 4 of 7 in the Financial Management Specialization

In this course, you will start by reviewing the fundamentals of investments, including the trading off of return and risk when forming a portfolio, asset pricing models such as the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and the 3-Factor Model, and the efficient market hypothesis. You will be introduced to the two components of stock returns – dividends and capital gains – and will learn how each are taxed and the incentives provided to investors from a realization-based capital gains tax. You will examine the investment decisions (and behavioral biases) of participants in defined-contribution (DC) pension plans like 401(k) plans in the U.S. and will learn about the evidence regarding the performance of individual investors in their stock portfolios. The course concludes by discussing the evidence regarding the performance of actively-managed mutual funds. You will learn about the fees charged to investors by mutual funds and the evidence regarding the relation between fees charged and fund performance. Segments of the portfolios of mutual funds that may be more likely to outperform and examples of strategies designed to “earn alpha” will also be introduced. Learners are welcome to take this course even if they have not completed "Investments I: Fundamentals of Performance Evaluation," as the first module contain a review of investment fundamentals and regression analysis to get everyone up to speed. Also, the course contains several innovative features, including creative out-of-the-studio introductions followed by quick-hitting "Module in 60" countdowns that highlight what will be covered in each module, four "Faculty Focus" interview episodes with leading professors in finance, and a summary of each module done with the help of animations! This course is part of the iMBA offered by the University of Illinois, a flexible, fully-accredited online MBA at an incredibly competitive price. For more information, please see the Resource page in this course and onlinemba.illinois.edu.

Skills You'll Learn

Stock, Financial Markets, Investment Strategy, Investment

Reviews

4.8 (406 ratings)

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KL

Dec 07, 2017

Professor Weisbenner is amazing! Insanely smart, yet delvers complex concepts in such a manner you would never realize it. This is a must take class for investments!

DH

Mar 12, 2018

Professor Weisbenner is phenomenal! The course material is accessible, very well presented, highly informative, and can be applied for the rest of your life.

From the lesson

Module 4: Performance of Mutual Funds and Search for Alpha

In Module 4, we will learn about the evidence regarding the performance of actively-managed mutual funds. We will also discuss a few examples of portfolio strategies designed to “earn alpha” (i.e., yield positive risk-adjusted returns).

4-2.1. Introduction to Search for Alpha5:36

4-2.2. Mutual Fund Disclosure6:49

4-2.3. Mutual Funds and Local Investments21:34

4-2.4. Information Networks and Performance21:27

4-2.5. Closet Indexing and Performance Persistence20:35

4-2.6. Valuing Complicated Firms and Exploiting Inattention27:16

4-2.7. Faculty Focus with Professor Joshua Pollet (interview)24:48

4-2.8. Potential Modern Sources of Information19:15

4-2.9. Faculty Focus with Professor Jiekun Huang (interview)19:15

Taught By

Scott Weisbenner
William G. Karnes Professor of Finance

Transcript

[MUSIC] So in the mutual fund domain, is there any good information behind the mutual fund managers stock picks? So there's strong evidence that actively managed equity mutual funds on average, underperform their benchmark after fees. That kind of seems to be clear across, study after study. And they did not seem to outperform their benchmark, before fees. This could be consistent with, for example, market efficiency. That you shouldn't be able to predict future stock price movements, except those that are associated with a kind of risk, so maybe that's not a surprising result. We had a similar result for individual investors,that they didn't seem to out perform their benchmark before trading calls. They had an alpha zero. That seems to be the case when you look at kind of the aggregate in the mutual fund industry as well. But this does not imply that there aren't some parts of the mutual fund holdings that perform well on average. Obviously, it's not the whole portfolio, else that would show up in that 2010 Fama-French result that we talked about earlier in the module. But maybe there's some subsets of the mutual fund holdings that actually do well on average. The key question is, can we identify odd, priory, or ahead of time, what part of mutual fund manager's portfolio are more likely to be based on good information than the typical holding. That's the key question, we can maybe do some analysis of this, because mutual funds do have to disclose their holdings on a quarterly basis, every three months, to the SEC. So for example, I'm reporting my holdings as of December 31st, as of March 31st, as of June 30th, as of September 30th, and these reports are required to be filed with the SEC within 60 days of the end of the quarter. So if the end of the quarter is December 31st, I'm filing this report as a mutual fund with the SEC by the end of February, 60 days after the end of the quarter. Thus, a little more than two months after the end of the prior quarter, the public is aware of what the mutual fund was holding at the end of the prior quarter. So the mutual fund holdings as of December 31st, 2015, should be available for the public to see around the end of February or the beginning of March of 2016. So let's think about that. Le Penseur's thinking, that's always a hit that time for you to put on your thinking cap as well. Based on empirical research presented earlier in Module 4, is a strategy that mimics all of the holdings reported by mutual funds in their quarterly report likely to yield positive ALPHA to these copy-cat investors. So your idea is, as soon as the mutual funds disclose their holdings, I just copy them 100%, so I invest the same portfolio weights in all the stocks that mutual funds are investing in, what's likely to be my alpha from that strategy? So think about that then I'll give you my tip. So what did you come up with? Based on the research we presented earlier in the module, the answer is no, there shouldn't be any ALPHA. We know that mutual fund managers aren't outperforming their benchmark in aggregate, so if we just mimic all their holdings, our alpha should be basically close to zero from that. But we don't have to necessarily mimic all their holdings. Maybe there's some holdings we think are more likely to be based on good information than others. So here's an example of a mutual fund holdings report. That we as a researcher and investor could go in and look, download from the SEC EDGAR website. So here, what's the period of the report? It's December 31st of 2015. The filing date when this was filed, was February 26th of 2016. Remember you have to file within sixty days of the end of the period that you're reporting your holdings, and this is a quarterly holdings for the Fidelity Magellan Fund. So let's look at what these holdings, and you can see General Motors, Tesla, going down the list, wow I'm starting to get hungry here like Domino's Pizza, Papa John's, Starbucks, like stop the video now, we need like a break okay, I think I can make it through. We're almost done, but it is getting time for lunch here. So we have all these holdings for Fidelity Magellan Fund. Do we think, once we see all these holdings as of December 31st and we get access to them maybe the end of February, early March, any of these holdings that make sense for us to mimic and then others we should simply ignore. So let's actually think about this. Pause, think, and answer time. Suppose you've downloaded all of these end-of-quarter reports, not just for Fidelity Magellan fund, but for all actively-managed funds. What holdings would you especially wish to copy going forward? So in other words, which holdings are most likely to reflect good information, on the part of the mutual fund manager. You probably just don't want to copy the whole report, but maybe there are certain holdings that you think, that likely reflects good information. Let me follow that holding. So think about that and I'll give you some kind of ideas I have regarding these questions. So what did you come up with? Are you ready to start searching for alpha? I'll go over some academic research that looks at two possible areas where we might find that elusive alpha. Local investments made by mutual fund managers. So our mutual fund manager in Boston, do they have any insight behind kind of investments in Boston companies? And a mutual fund manager in Houston, do they have more information in their Houston stock picks? And then, also, let's look for holdings that are likely to represent a network, an information network connection, or a relationship perhaps, between the mutual fund manager and the executives of the firm, that the mutual fund manager has invested in. So let's kind of do our search for ALPHA right now. [SOUND]

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