A taxonomic evaluation of Indian mutual funds’ performance and its determinants – Post-pandemic

Following the COVID-19 breakout, investment in shares, mutual funds, and life insurance are witnessing a growing trend in India. Hence, examining the determinants of investor preferences is necessary to maintain a positive trend. This study analyzes the impact of investor motives and awareness on investor preferences using the data collected from 753 Indian investors in 2020. Factor analysis grouped the investment motives into six categories, namely Nature of investments, Future financial needs, Investor personal characteristics, Safety and stability of investments, Investor behavioral aspects, and Investor’s options. The regression model used to find the impact of the investment motives and the awareness on the investor preferences explains 52.3% of changes in investor preference. Investment factors like Nature of investments, Investor personal characteristics, Investor behavior, Investor options, Awareness of mutual funds, and shares have a significant impact on investor preferences. Further, the awareness level of mutual funds and the stock market are the major variables contributing to Investors’ preference rather than identified investment factors. Investors’ personal characteristics like knowledge, confidence, ability, responsibility, and belief negatively influence investor preferences. This study adds to the existing literature by analyzing investment motives and preferences during the pandemic.

This paper is in pursuit of analyzing and elongating prior research on the performance evaluation of mutual funds by a comparative analysis with three categories of 82 Saudi equity funds during 2011 to 2016 using Fama’s decomposition model. The paper also made an attempt to explore the relationship with the risk reward ratio to the relative performance measure in predicting the future performance of the Saudi equity fund returns. The empirical results show that Saudi local equity funds perform better followed by Arabian and international/global equity funds in terms of expected signs and diagnostic tests.

Leveraged Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) (LETFs) are a recent and highly successful financial innovation; yet, investors and several studies criticized them for not performing as advertised, especially in the long term. Τhis paper discusses their unique characteristics and their path-dependent price dynamics, which may result in unexpected returns. Furthermore, the authors evaluate the performance of a large sample of European and American leveraged ETFs since each fund’s inception and show that they perform as intended for daily holding periods. Leveraged ETFs are also successful in delivering the promised performance over holding periods of up to one week, their performance starts to deviate when the holding period increases to one month. Empirical evidence suggests that bear (short) ETFs deviate from their target return more quickly than their bull (long) counterparts as the holding period lengthens. A possible explanation for this is that transaction costs, which are related to daily re-balancing activity, are higher for bear funds. When comparing the daily performance of European vs American funds, the authors find them both to be equally efficient in replicating their benchmarks, although European leveraged ETFs are much smaller in their Assets Under Management (AUM) compared to US LETFs.