We examine the risk-adjusted performance of open-end mutual funds which invest mainly in German stocks. After briefly discussing the institutional environment in which these funds operate, we focus on the benchmark problem and the risk adjustment problem. Our data set includes all German funds sold to the public in 1972, our performance analysis covers the time period 1973 to 1998. In our empirical analysis, we first look at the rates of return of individual funds and at the unweighted average rates of return of all funds in our sample. When we apply the Sharpe and Jensen measure to the latter time series in the traditional way, the funds underperform the appropriate benchmarks by approximately 1.5% per year, which is significant both from the statistical and the economic perspective. Applying the Sharpe and the Jensen measure in the traditional way creates a bias from the perspective of long-term investors, because the analysis is based on the arithmetic, not the geometric mean return. To avoid this bias we look, in a second step, at the returns of investors who risk adjust their fund investments ex-ante by borrowing or lending with the objective, that the future risk of his levered portfolio matches that of the chosen benchmark. When we again apply the Sharpe and the Jensen measure to the unweighted average rates of return, the underperformance is reduced by 40%. For large funds, on the average, the underperformance is less than for small funds. When we look at the value-weighted means of individual fund returns, the underperformance nearly disappears.

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2014 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 7.5, Maastricht University, language: English, abstract: The following study examines the performance of mutual funds investing in small cap companies in the period from 1990 until 2013. Therefore, funds investing in small companies in Germany are tested on their ability to deliver risk-adjusted abnormal returns. The returns are risk-adjusted according to Fama French (1996) three-factor model, Carhart four-factor model and the liquidity adjusted five-factor model of Pastor and Stambaugh (2003). A separate examination of the internet crisis 2000 until 2003 and the financial crisis period 2008 until 2013 is done, to assess the ability of fund managers in isolation to examine their results in situations when their skills are most needed. On average, I conclude that fund managers, investing in the small capitalization segment in Germany, are not able to outperform the market even before fees.

Master's Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Economics - Finance, grade: 1,3, University of Regensburg (Centre of Finance), language: English, abstract: Financial markets are as complex as ever due to an accelerating development in the last decades. Especially evaluations of mutual fund performance have been a subject of interest since the introduction of financial services. In this thesis, a study on the performance of mutual funds investing in German equity from July 1995 to June 2015 is conducted. The aim is to find out if fund managers have sufficient skill to generate risk adjusted return in order to cover the cost imposed on the investors. Another purpose is to provide investors with relevant results. Inter alia, Jensen one-factor, Fama and French three-factor and the Carhart four-factor model are used as different benchmark models for performance. Paired bootstrap simulations suggest that, net of cost, a small fraction of fund managers do have sufficient skill to cover cost. For the bottom ranked funds, there is statistical evidence that their poor performance is caused by bad management, rather than by bad luck. The results for gross returns show that there is an unneglectable fraction of fund managers with good performance not due to luck. Compared to net returns, there is stronger evidence of skill, negative as well as positive. Form an investor’s point of view it seems rather beneficial to invest in passively managed vehicles. High costs eat into the return, and they are the main reason why the majority of actively managed funds end up with sub-par performance.

In this paper the relation between aggregate mutual fund flows and stock market returns is analysed with respect to three issues. First, we study the relation between fund flows and long-term realized returns (past, current and future). Second, we find out that fund flows are not driven by fundamentally expected returns. Mutual fund investors appear to have naive expectations, as it seems that they just extrapolate past price trends into the future. This leads to a substantial performance loss of more than one percentage point per year. Third, the firstly presented results of the German fund market resemble those of the US market. Differences between the two fund markets do not seem to influence investor behaviour.

The purpose of this article is analyzing the performance of the mutual funds that invest solely in German stock market by using the seven different approaches of performance measures. These seven measures are the standard CAPM Jensen's alpha, the Sharpe's ratio, the Treynor's ratio, the Sortino ratio, the Fama's ratio, the Information ratio and Fama-French's three-factor model. The study investigates the performance measurement results and ranking of mutual funds for the period between January 2001 to December 2006. Moreover, the paper shows whether fund rankings according to the different measures are significantly correlated and whether the performance measures identify the same funds as the best and the worst performing funds over the sample period.

Die Messung des Anlageerfolgs von Fondmanagern ist ein sowohl f r Praktiker als auch f r Forscher herausforderndes Thema. Das Ziel beider Gruppen ist nachhaltig erfolgreiche Manager, gute Performer, zu identifizieren. Die meisten Performancema e beruhen auf der Annahme des konstanten Risikos ber die Messungsperiode. Das Risiko wird wiederum als das Beta aus dem Capital Asset Pricing Model erfasst. Als Erweiterung solcher Modelle werden zus tzliche Faktoren, ma geschnittene Benchmarks oder Nichtliniearit ten zwischen Risiken und Renditen erfasst usw. Die Dynamik der Wirtschaft und Kapitalm rkten ist f r die Zwecke der Performancemessung von Ferson und Schaft in ein Modell eingef hrt. Das Beta aus diesem Modell ist auf die Marktbedingungen bedingt und Fondsrenditen werden somit gegen eine dynamische Benchmark gemessen. Diese Studie berichtet aus einem solchen Modell ergebene Performancema e (sog. "Conditional Alphas") f r 1192 deutsche Aktien- und Rentenmanager. Diese werden auch mit CAPM-basierten Alphas auf Persistenz verglichen. Zus tzlich wird die F higkeit des Managers richtig auf die ver ndernden Marktbedingungen zu reagieren aus der Dynamik des Beta extrahiert. Die Marktentwicklung wird durch vier anerkannte Indikatoren abgebildet (kurzfristiger Zins, Dividendenrendite, Laufzeitspread und Bonit tsspread). Die Ergebnisse bef rworten die Nutzung von Modellen mit bedingtem Beta anstelle vom CAPM. Die Existenz einer dynamischen Investmentstrategie wurde anhand der Indikatoren bewiesen. Zum Schluss werden anhand der Erfahrungen aus dieser Studie konkrete Empfehlungen f r die Erforschung von Performance anhand hnlicher Modelle gegeben.