A Study on the Style Investment of Equity Funds

Abstract

We classify “fund style” by the fund name and conduct a portfolio-based style analysis. The main results are as follows. First, the proportion of value-style and dividend-style funds is very high compared to other style types in active funds. Second, managers tend not to adhere strictly to the fund style classified by the fund name. Interestingly, the smaller the fund size, the weaker the style characteristics. This result suggests that the management industry neglects small funds and does not fulfill its fiduciary duty. Third, we find that the persistency of the growth style is far behind the value style, and both winner and loser styles have the lowest persistency among all styles. Fourth, timing abilities for market factor, size factor, and value factor are not observed in general, but the timing ability for momentum factor is significantly observed in the active fund group. Fifth, we define artificial fund styles with consistent style investment strategy and compare those with the actual fund styles. We find that the risk of artificial types is generally lower than that of actual types and that several artificial types dominate real types due to higher returns and smaller risks.