Machine learning and fund characteristics help to select mutual funds with positive alpha

Machine-learning methods exploit fund characteristics to select tradable long-only portfolios of mutual funds that earn significant out-of-sample annual alphas of 2.4% net of all costs. The methods unveil interactions in the relation between fund characteristics and future performance. For instance,...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: DeMiguel, Victor; Gil-Bazo, Javier; Nogales, Francisco J.; Santos, André A.P.
Tipo de documento: Artigo
Estado:Published version
Data de publicação:2023
País:España
Recursos:Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Repositório:Repositorio Digital de la UPF
OAI Identifier:oai:repositori.upf.edu:10230/69473
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/10230/69473
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2023.103737
Nível de acesso:Acesso aberto
Palavra-chave:Active asset management
Mutual-fund performance
Mutual-fund misallocation
Machine learning
Tradable strategies
Nonlinearities and interactions
Descrição
Resumo:Machine-learning methods exploit fund characteristics to select tradable long-only portfolios of mutual funds that earn significant out-of-sample annual alphas of 2.4% net of all costs. The methods unveil interactions in the relation between fund characteristics and future performance. For instance, past performance is a particularly strong predictor of future performance for more active funds. Machine learning identifies managers whose skill is not sufficiently offset by diseconomies of scale, consistent with informational frictions preventing investors from identifying the outperforming funds. Our findings demonstrate that investors can benefit from active management, but only if they have access to sophisticated prediction methods.