Seeking Alpha: Which Asset Pricing Models Matter to Investors? Empirical Evidence from European Mutual Fund Flows

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School of Business | Bachelor's thesis
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Date

2018

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Rahoitus

Language

en

Pages

30

Series

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between fund flows and various performance measures using two differing approaches. I find that investors prefer the simple market-adjusted returns and the Capital Asset Pricing Model when the assessment period is short but shift towards using more advanced models when longer assessment horizons are considered. On aggregate, appears that investors prefer to use 3-year assessment horizon when evaluating fund performance. While all of the examined performance measures contribute positively and significantly to the fund flows, they explain, at the most, only two thirds of the fund flows. Thus, substantial amount of flows remains unexplained. Furthermore, when I investigate the period before and after the financial-crisis, appears that investors have recently adopted the use of a more complicated performance measures, i.e. use of the multifactor models. In contrast, I find no supporting evidence on a hypothesis that more sophisticated investors would prefer more advanced performance measures.

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Thesis advisor

Spickers, Theresa

Keywords

mutual fund, fund flow, asset pricing model, performance, Alpha

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