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This study is based on the enforcement record from Canada’s natural mutual fund regulator. This record documented a small subset of mutual fund dealers who had been disciplined for their misconduct from 2007 to 2014. The purpose of this paper is to determine what factors contribute to mutual fund dealers’ time to first financial fraud offense. The longer the time to fraud, the healthier the mutual fund industry and the better a mutual fund dealer’s career.

Based on the belief that adversity reveals true character, the study approaches a mutual dealer’s career success from human capital, socio-demographic and organizational sponsorship points of view by measuring dealers’ success as their time from career beginning to first instance of financial fraud. Ordinary least square regression analysis was used to identify if those factors, including provision of supervisor reminders, gender, position and penalties, are related to career success within the Canadian mutual fund regulatory framework. The research is based on a small sample of mutual fund dealers who had been disciplined for their misconduct from 2007 to 2014.

The study finds that a supervisor’s reminders positively contribute to the career success of a mutual fund dealer in the form of extending their time to fraud. As well, being female is an adverse factor to career success even when both female and male dealers received about the same level of supervisor reminders. It also finds that being in a management position has no association with time to fraud.

The study establishes the statistically significant positive relationship between time to fraud and supervisor’s reminders for mutual fund dealers. At the same time, it shows that human capital and access to organizational resources, measured by being in a management position, have no significant relation to when fraud is committed. This result indicates the value of continuing education for all mutual fund dealers, both inexperienced and experienced.

This paper investigates the performance of locally focused equity mutual funds (LFEFs) in Saudi Arabia as compared with the performance of benchmark funds. More specifically, the focal question pertains to whether Shariah-compliant mutual funds (SMFs) and conventional mutual funds (CMFs) outperform their respective benchmarks. Undertaken in the context of Saudi Arabia's economic planning under Vision 2030, the study offers a foundation for determining whether and the extent to which Shariah-compliant investment strategies are competitive—a matter of considerable importance across 57 Muslim countries.

The Carhart four-factor model is applied to a sample of 39 Saudi Arabian mutual funds (MFs) using the monthly net asset value (NAV) per share. The sample period, April 2007 to October 2016, is considered in its entirety and as three sub-periods, i.e. low-, medium- and high-volatility.

The results show that the locally focused equity mutual funds (LFEFs) significantly outperformed their benchmark, i.e. the Tadawul All Share Index (TASI), during the full sample period and the low-volatility period. According to the empirical comparison, the CMFs also outperformed their TASI benchmark for the full sample period and the low-volatility period. However, the SMFs neither outperformed nor underperformed their S&P Saudi Arabia Domestic Shariah Index benchmark. That is, for each of the SMFs included in the sample, the Jensen's alpha was insignificant for both the full sample and all three volatility sub-periods.

In this paper, the four-factor model is used in the context of a single country. The results, therefore, may not be generalizable to the multi-country level in the Gulf Council Cooperation (GCC) region given differences between the member countries in terms of financial structure and economic focus.

The results reported constitute a useful guide for policymakers and faith-based-sensitive investors concerned about the Shariah compliancy of their portfolios given that there is very little difference between how CMFs and SMFs performed in the focal period. This research can be extended to include other Islamic countries in the GCC region as a basis for identifying optimal investment vehicles, i.e. those most likely to produce high returns at low risk.

The work reported in this paper is original and constitutes a valuable asset for ethnoreligious-sensitive investors. The research has not been published in any capacity and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

We model the relation between excess returns, fund size and industry size for active equity funds.

We study and contrast four markets – global equities, emerging markets, Australia core and Australia small caps – and use the results to investigate the extent to which funds deviate from estimated capacity.

We uncover a significantly negative relation between returns and both fund size and industry size across all markets. The estimated percentage of funds operating above versus below capacity varies both across markets and over time, as does the role played by fund size versus industry size. We find a greater prevalence of funds operating significantly below than above capacity, in contrast to findings for US equity mutual funds. Significant deviations from estimated capacity persist for a median of between two and six quarters.

Our main contribution is to show that the dynamics governing deviations from capacity for active equity funds vary across markets.

This study aims to examine the role of fund family size on the money flow of Saudi Arabian open-end equity mutual funds. The author also investigates whether the relationship between fund flow and past return varies based on the fund's family size.

The study analyses 256 equity funds that operated in Saudi Arabia from 2006 until 2017. Pooled and fixed-effect regression models are used to test the relationship between mutual fund flow and family size.

The results indicate that fund flow is higher for large size family funds. The results also show that the relationship between mutual fund flow and past performance is more pronounced for large size families, which supports the concept that investors pay extra attention to funds' return and size.

The author provides evidence of the significant effect of family size of mutual funds on future money flow, which helps fund managers to understand investors' motivations for allocating their cash.

This paper contributes to the literature by examining the impact of family size level on the interaction between fund flow and past performance. This study is believed to be the first to investigate the family size factor in Saudi Arabia using a comprehensive data set.

This paper evaluates the performance of actively managed conventional and Islamic equity funds in a developing economy with a focus to assess the performance-growth puzzle posited by Gruber (1993) (a.k.a Gruber’s puzzle). Under the context of an emerging market of Pakistan, this study explores if actively managed equity fund (AMEF) managers have been able to add value by outperforming the market in terms of stock-selection and market-timing abilities; and the comparative performance analysis of Islamic versus conventional AMEFs is also carried out.

We employ Sharpe and Treynor ratios, Capital asset pricing model, Fama–French three factors model (1993), Carhart four-factor model (1997) and Hendrickson (1981) market timing models on 45 equity funds comprising of 23 conventional and 22 Islamic equity funds operating in Pakistan for a period of 10 years. The overall sample period (2008–2018) is divided into two 5 years sub-periods (i.e. 2009–2013 and 2014–2018) and three 3 years sub-periods (2009–2011, 2012–2014 and 2015–2017) to be viewed in conjunction with the country's macro-economic condition.

We report that the actively managed equity funds (AMEFs) were unable to beat the market index with their stock selection or market timing capabilities. However, AMEFs depicted improved performance in the post-global financial crisis period where both conventional and Islamic AMEFs generated substantial rewards for the given amount of risk. Also, conventional AMEFs outperformed Islamic AMEFs potentially due to their holdings in highly leveraged value and large-cap stocks, while Islamic AMEFS invest more cautiously in small-cap and value firms. Analysis of market timing skills revealed that the funds have not been able to select the undervalued stocks and adopted a defensive strategy in the post-global financial crisis recovery period.

Our findings shed some interesting insights and raise some pertinent questions for research, policy, and practice – specifically for developing countries’ context. The no ‘return-growth’ configuration defies its fit with the ‘Gruber puzzle’ and somewhat presents a case of what we call the ‘Inverse Grubber puzzle’. This novel notion of the ‘Inverse Grubber puzzle’ should inform policy and practice to reflect on their practices, institutional arrangement, regulatory framework and policy design in developing economies characterized by lacklustre performance and growth of AMEFs. For example, the regulatory design may consider focusing on stimulating financial inclusion and deepening by motivating low-cost Index tracker funds (ITFs) – with lower fund management costs, while allocating the avoided cost to flow towards effective marketing campaigns driving greater awareness, financial deepening, and investor base diversification. For future research, financial development researchers may explore the implications and appropriateness of AMEFs versus ITFs in other developing economies.

The work reported in this paper is original and constitutes a valuable asset for ethno-religious-sensitive investors. The research has not been published in any capacity and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

The purpose of the study is to investigate, synthesize and critically evaluate empirical research findings on the behavioral traits of fund managers from 1994 to 2024. The ultimate goal is to provide a unified body of literature on three broad topics: first, fund managers' demographic and professional characteristics, such as age, gender, level of education and years of industry experience; second, fund managers' social and political connections; and third, fund managers' behavioral biases that lead to irrational investment decisions.

The relevant papers from selected journals were discovered and manually validated using the Scopus database. From 317 retrieved documents, 57 relevant articles were chosen and analyzed after the forward and backward search of the existing articles.

This paper presents a categorized summary of behavioral factors that have gained a foothold in influencing the behavior of fund managers in fund management research, with several studies demonstrating their significance leading to improved prediction and model precision, as this review indicates. In addition, the study summarized the contributions of prior empirical studies within the aforementioned three major categories and illustrated their consequences.

The present study contributes to the understanding of the effects of behavioral finance theories on fund managers by providing meaningful explanations of their behavioral traits based on empirical evidence and existing trends and knowledge gaps, both of which can influence the future direction of research.

This study examines current dynamics, consolidates current knowledge, elicits trends, identifies and analyzes primary research clusters, and offers future research directions for mutual fund marketing.

Using bibliographic information from the SCOPUS database, this study used sequential bibliometric (143 documents) and content analyses (37 documents). Bibliometric analysis aids descriptive analysis and science mapping, while content analysis facilitates identifying and analyzing research clusters and provides future research directions.

The study identifies publication trends, the most relevant authors, and journal articles and unveils the knowledge structures of the field. Analysis of bibliographic coupling reveals the following significant clusters: (1) socially responsible investing and investor preferences, (2) investor factors and traits and investment decisions; (3) external factors, mutual funds' performance and proxy information; (4) the role of disclosures and ratings in shaping investment choices, and (5) cognitive biases, information processing errors and investor behavior. Finally, it offers future research directions.

Using different databases, bibliometric analysis tools, study periods or article screening criteria for the study might yield different results. However, this study's significant findings are robust to such alternatives.

This study summarizes primary clusters and identifies gaps in the current literature, which helps scholars, practitioners, regulators and policymakers understand the nuances of mutual funds marketing. Future studies may focus on the role of online and offline integration, using neuroscience for data m and contemporary investment behavior models.

This is the first study to apply a two-stage sequential hybrid review of articles published over the last decade in high-quality journals, enabling an analysis of the depth and breadth of mutual funds marketing research.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether the classification of the equity mutual fund depends on the performance measure used.

The sample for this study includes stock mutual funds for the USA, Europe and emerging market economies covering the period 2010 to 2020. Using more than 20 performance measures the results are compared using the Sharpe ratio as the reference.

The results show that performance measures based on absolute reward–risk ratios like Sortino, Treynor, etc. have similar rankings, because in general the numerator (mean excess return) is the same. However, when the authors employ other types of performance measures, results may be significantly different, especially in the case of metrics for “incremental returns”, i.e. alphas. Focussing on markets, their results show that choosing performance measures is more relevant for emerging markets.

The sample is only limited to the USA, Europe and the emerging market, and there are other performance metrics in the literature which have not been covered in this work.

The ordering of equity mutual funds depends on the measure used, specially if investors employ factor models to measure excess returns (alphas). Hence, policy formulation on disclosure of mutual fund performance should encourage the use of several metrics from different families. Investors must be aware of the different rankings made and the most appropriate metrics based on their preferences.

This paper focusses specifically on the effect that performance metrics have on relative fund performance. Previous studies have ignored alpha metrics to rank funds, which are commonly employed by investors. The authors’ study performs an analysis for three different markets considering the two main developed ones (the American and European equity markets), as well as the emerging one, largely ignored until now.

This study is about the determinants of cash holding and impact of cash holding on mutual funds’ performance. In addition, the study analyzes the impact of performance-related determinants of cash holding on funds' performance.

Panel data of ten years of 190 open-end mutual funds are analyzed through fixed effect regression technique. The risk-adjusted funds' performance of cash based portfolios is computed through capital asset pricing model (CAPM) (1964), Fama and French (1993) and Carhart (1997) models.

The results indicate that small size funds, high charging front-end load funds, high turnover ratio funds, high 12-month fund returns run up, high dividend paying funds and high redemption level funds hold more cash for precautionary purpose to avoid costs of cash short-falls. Further, monthly average raw returns and risk-adjusted performance of funds with the lowest raw and residual cash holding are found higher than the funds with the highest cash holding. An increase in cash is found to dilute performance.

This is a pioneer study in a corporate environment with shallow capital market, reliance of businesses on bank credit, firms exposed to agency issues, wealth expropriations and existence of business groups with political linkages but with opportunities of investments due to expected favorable geo-socio-political situation. The study generates outcomes relevant for other similar economies.

In modern societies, consumer well-being is dependent on choices regarding complex services, such as investments, health care, insurance and lending. However, evaluating costs of such services is often difficult for consumers due to a combination of limited cognitive resources and complexity of the service. The purpose of this study is to empirically examine to what extent three specific consequences of complexity influence consumer tendencies to make mistakes when evaluating the costs (or price) of complex services.

Three studies were conducted (survey: n = 153, experiment: n = 332 and conjoint analysis: n = 225), all focusing on how consumers evaluate costs in the complex mutual fund setting.

The authors find that consumers struggle with estimating and using cost information in decision-making in the complex services setting. Consumers of complex services frequently underestimate the costs over the long-term, may see costs as a signal of service quality and are susceptible to influence from presentation formats when evaluating costs.

The study investigates mutual funds, which is one example of a complex service. In order to get a full picture of how consumers deal with costs in complex setting, future research needs to expand this focus to other types of complex services.

The results have implications for both marketers of complex services and policymakers. For marketers, this paper highlights that competing with a low-cost strategy may be difficult in the complex services setting as consumers may lack the ability to actually evaluate what they pay over the long term. For policymakers, increased simplification of prices may be an attractive option. However, it is important that this simplification is done in a way that increases the possibility to compare prices.

As complexity influences several aspects of decision-making, an understanding of how consumers evaluate costs in complex settings is dependent on taking a multidimensional research approach. This paper makes a novel contribution to the literature on pricing by showing that consumers struggle with multiple aspects when evaluating costs in complex contexts. Understanding these effects is important to policy, as well as to research on the cognitive value of simplicity that is currently gaining traction in marketing research.