An Empirical Analysis of Herding Behaviour in The US Mutual Funds Industry

The paper explores the existence of herding behaviour in the US mutual funds industry by utilising the methodology of cross-sectional dispersion in fund returns with respect to market return. We employ monthly return data of mutual funds from December, 2007 to December, 2017. In general, we find no...

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Main Author: Bui, Phuong Tram
Format: Dissertation (University of Nottingham only)
Language:English
Published: 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/54566/
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author Bui, Phuong Tram
author_facet Bui, Phuong Tram
author_sort Bui, Phuong Tram
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description The paper explores the existence of herding behaviour in the US mutual funds industry by utilising the methodology of cross-sectional dispersion in fund returns with respect to market return. We employ monthly return data of mutual funds from December, 2007 to December, 2017. In general, we find no evidence of herding towards the market consensus during periods of extreme price movements. Instead, we provide significant evidence of adverse herding behaviour where fund managers flock together around subsets of assets and ignore the market signals. No evidence of market-wide herding is found across different groups of investment objectives. The results suggest that balanced, growth and international funds exhibit significantly adverse herding behaviour. Moreover, large-sized funds are more likely to follow each other when trading than smaller-sized funds. Concerning herding asymmetry based on market return conditions, fund managers strongly engage in adverse herding behaviour during market upturns. In contrast, when the market is falling, the results are mixed: Growth, and growth & income funds show strong tendency to herd towards the market, while no evidence of herding is found in aggressive growth as well as emerging market funds. In particular, the global financial crisis (2007-2008) witnessed severe herding formation around the market movement for the whole sample, except for balanced, growth and international funds.
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spelling nottingham-545662022-08-26T09:31:52Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/54566/ An Empirical Analysis of Herding Behaviour in The US Mutual Funds Industry Bui, Phuong Tram The paper explores the existence of herding behaviour in the US mutual funds industry by utilising the methodology of cross-sectional dispersion in fund returns with respect to market return. We employ monthly return data of mutual funds from December, 2007 to December, 2017. In general, we find no evidence of herding towards the market consensus during periods of extreme price movements. Instead, we provide significant evidence of adverse herding behaviour where fund managers flock together around subsets of assets and ignore the market signals. No evidence of market-wide herding is found across different groups of investment objectives. The results suggest that balanced, growth and international funds exhibit significantly adverse herding behaviour. Moreover, large-sized funds are more likely to follow each other when trading than smaller-sized funds. Concerning herding asymmetry based on market return conditions, fund managers strongly engage in adverse herding behaviour during market upturns. In contrast, when the market is falling, the results are mixed: Growth, and growth & income funds show strong tendency to herd towards the market, while no evidence of herding is found in aggressive growth as well as emerging market funds. In particular, the global financial crisis (2007-2008) witnessed severe herding formation around the market movement for the whole sample, except for balanced, growth and international funds. 2018-09-13 Dissertation (University of Nottingham only) NonPeerReviewed application/pdf en https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/54566/1/Final_Dissertation.pdf Bui, Phuong Tram (2018) An Empirical Analysis of Herding Behaviour in The US Mutual Funds Industry. [Dissertation (University of Nottingham only)] Herd behaviour US mutual funds industry Cross-sectional dispersion of returns
spellingShingle Herd behaviour
US mutual funds industry
Cross-sectional dispersion of returns
Bui, Phuong Tram
An Empirical Analysis of Herding Behaviour in The US Mutual Funds Industry
title An Empirical Analysis of Herding Behaviour in The US Mutual Funds Industry
title_full An Empirical Analysis of Herding Behaviour in The US Mutual Funds Industry
title_fullStr An Empirical Analysis of Herding Behaviour in The US Mutual Funds Industry
title_full_unstemmed An Empirical Analysis of Herding Behaviour in The US Mutual Funds Industry
title_short An Empirical Analysis of Herding Behaviour in The US Mutual Funds Industry
title_sort empirical analysis of herding behaviour in the us mutual funds industry
topic Herd behaviour
US mutual funds industry
Cross-sectional dispersion of returns
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/54566/