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The study assess the selection ability and market timing skills of mutual fund and unit trust managers in Ghana.

The study uses an improved survivorship bias-free dataset of yearly after-fee returns of all mutual funds and unit trusts operating in Ghana from January 2011 to December 2019, cumulating in nine years of quantitative fund data. The authors assess Mutual funds and Unit trusts that ever existed, “alive” or “dead,” over the sample period in the study. The authors construct factor loadings to enable the application of multifactor models in the analysis. The authors apply the unconditional versions of the Jensen alpha, Fama-French three-factor, and Carhart four-factor models to determine the selection ability and market timing skills of 32 mutual funds and 17 unit trusts. The authors deploy HAC-consistent robust standard errors to the OLS estimations to subdue the effect of heterogeneity and autocorrelation.

The results indicate that, on average, mutual funds and unit trust managers possess market timing skills but no selection ability. When the results are decomposed into fund types, fixed-income and balanced mutual fund managers possess selection ability and market timing skills.

To the authors' best knowledge, this study is the earliest to examine the selection ability and market timing skills of both mutual fund and unit trust managers in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It is also the earliest to construct factor loadings for the Ghana stock market.

The vast global unit trust/mutual fund industry was worth more than $16 trillion by the end of June 2005. Over time, investors’ interests seem to have shifted from individual shares to share funds. The unit trust industry in South Africa is no exception. Over the 40‐year period from its inception in 1965 to 2005, the industry has grown from only one fund to 567 different funds, worth more than R345 billion. This study highlights some of the most important changes that have occurred in the South African unit trust industry over the last 40 years. These shifts are compared to changes that the USA mutual fund industry has experienced in the 60 years of its existence. An attempt is then made to answer the question whether South African investors are better off with these changes or not.

One of the implications of Islamic investment principles is the availability of Islamic financial instruments in the financial market. The main aim of this research is to observe the differences in terms of performance between Islamic and conventional mutual fund in the context of Malaysian capital market.

To achieve the major objectives of this paper standard methods wereused for evaluating the mutual funds performance, for example, Sharpe index and adjusted Sharpe index, Jensen Alpha, Timing and selectivity ability. The scope of the paper is to measure the relative quantitative performance of funds which was managed based on two different approaches.

The basic finding of the paper is that Islamic funds performed better than the conventional funds during bearish economic trends while, conventional funds showed better performance than Islamic funds during bullish economic conditions. In addition to that finding, both conventional and Islamic funds were unable to achieve at least 50 per cent market diversification levels, though conventional funds are found to have a marginally better diversification level than the Islamic funds. The results also suggest that fund managers are unable to correctly identify good bargain stocks and to forecast the price movements of the general market.

The main limitation is that the samples of conventional and Islamic mutual funds were from one developing market. The findings could be better validated if the sample included the mutual funds from other developed and developing economies, where both Islamic and conventional funds are available.

The findings suggest that having Islamic mutual funds in an investment portfolio helps to hedge the downside risk in an adverse economic situation.

So far there is no published evidence on the relative performance of Islamic and conventional mutual funds in Malaysia as well as other developing countries. Therefore, this paper adds new knowledge to the mutual funds literature.

The primary objective of the paper is to examine the short and long run price linkages between Malaysian unit trust funds and the stock market index as proxied by the Kuala Lumpur composite index (KLCI) over the period 1996‐2000.

Cointegration analyses are used to identify the long run relationship between unit trust funds and the stock market index while Granger causality tests are used to measure the short run price linkages.

Cointegration results show that the long run pricing performance of the unit trust funds differs significantly from that of the KLCI. Interestingly, the findings also reveal that two index funds are found not to be cointegrated with the stock market index. In the short run, one‐way Granger causality test shows that changes in the KLCI Granger causes changes in the unit trust funds. This suggests that fund managers are responding to the past changes in the stock market index over the short run.

The findings of non‐cointegration between passively managed funds and the KLCI are restricted to only two index funds in the sample among other actively managed funds. Since there were not enough index funds available over the study period, future research should include more index funds in the analysis.

In the short run, investors may gather information on the changes in their portfolio composition by observing the movement in the KLCI.

The paper represents the first evidence on the pricing relationships between unit trust funds and the local stock market index and the findings are important to investors in terms of their investment strategies.

The unit trust industry is one of the fastest growing areas in the financial sector. This dramatic growth has raised concern about the level of investors’ knowledge, or lack thereof, relating to the factors associated with investment decisions. This study investigates the factors and dynamics behind cash flows into and from General Equity unit trusts from September 1996 to September 2001, and the extent to which market factors and unit trust characteristics explain the variation in cash flows. The analysis shows a significant positive relationship between cash flows and contemporaneous returns of the General Equity unit trusts and the equity market, while being negatively related to one‐month lagged returns and cash flows. Several of the determinants, including interest rates, fee structures, risk and fund size, are found to be insignificant at a 5% level. The results indicate that investors exhibit an element of profit maximisation, driven by performances and irrationality, in that they give less consideration to fee structures, risk and fund size.

This paper seeks to focus on examining unit trust performance in Malaysia over the period 1991‐2001.

The broad based study covers full economic cycles using 7 different performance measures: raw return, market adjusted return, Jensen's alpha, adjusted Jensen's alpha, Sharpe Index, adjusted Sharpe Index, and Treynor Index.

The results show that on average the performance of Malaysian unit trust falls below market portfolio and risk free returns. However, the variance of unit trust monthly returns is less than the market. Performance by type of funds indicates that bond funds show relatively superior performance, over and above the market and equity unit trusts. This is due to the high interest rate kept during the crisis period. Findings also suggest that there is no persistency in performance as there is no significant inter‐temporal correlation between past and current performance.

The issue of inferior performance needs further investigations to adjust for great importance placed on maintaining consistent dividend distribution. In addition, ill‐managed funds must be separately analysed to see if limited budget, less qualified managers, use of limited information and less sophisticated software could explain the poor performance.

A very useful source of information for potential investors and portfolio management companies looking for opportunities to invest.

The paper contributes to the present body of knowledge by offering broad based performance evidence from an emerging market with strong government back up for unit trusts investment.

The Canadian mutual fund setting is unique in that two governance mechanisms – corporate and trust – coexist. This study empirically examines the impact of each mechanism on fund fees and performance. We find that corporate class funds charge higher fees but deliver superior fee-adjusted returns than trust funds. We then analyze the impact of various board characteristics on fees and performance for corporate class funds. We find that a board with smaller size, CEO duality, and a higher percentage of independent directors is more likely to charge lower fees. In addition, smaller boards are strongly associated with higher fee-adjusted performance. Our study supports agency theory over stewardship theory and provides valuable guidelines for Canadian investors and regulatory agencies.

During the last decade, following the development of Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) in the USA, associated risk and risk‐adjusted measures have been developed to assess the risk and performance of portfolios and ‘mutual funds’ (unit trusts). This work has been further continued in the USA in the form of regular risk services relating to individual securities; for example, the Merrill Lynch ‘Beta Book’, which during the last year has also included beta measures for the more widely held mutual funds, and the Barr Rosenburg Associates ‘Fundamental Risk Measurement Service’. Additionally in the USA, a number of organisations have developed special risk‐measurement services relating to mutual funds alone.

Although the focus of this issue is on investment in British industry and hence we are particularly concerned with debt and shares, the transactions and holdings in these cannot be separated from the range of other financial claims, including property, that are available to investors. In consequence this article focuses on an overview of the financial system including in Section 2 a presentation of the flow of funds matrix of the financial claims that make up the system. We also examine more closely the role of the financial institutions that are part of the system by utilising the sources and uses statements for three sectors, non‐bank financial institutions, personal sector and industrial and commercial companies. Then we provide, in Section 3, a discussion of the various financial claims investors can hold. In Section 4 we give a portrayal of the portfolio disposition of each of the major types of financial institution involved in the market for company securities specifically insurance companies (life and general), pension funds, unit and investment trusts, and in Section 4 a market study is performed for ordinary shares, debentures and preference shares for holdings, net acquisitions and purchases/sales. A review of some of the empirical evidence on the financial institutions is presented in Section 5 and Section 6 is by way of a conclusion. The data series extend in the main from 1966 to 1981, though at the time of writing, some 1981 data are still unavailable. In addition, the point needs to be made that the samples have been constantly revised so that care needs to be exercised in the use of the data.

A unit trust is a vehicle by which a large number of investors can pool their varying amounts of money into one trust fund. In return they are issued with “units” in proportion to the fraction of the fund that they own. The fund is then invested, by the managers, on the Stock Exchange. Investors buy units from the managers at what is known as the offer price and can sell them back to the managers at what is known as the bid price. These purchases and sales can be made through direct contact with the managers or via an agent such as a bank, stockbroker, accountant or solicitor.