We examine the relation between country and industry portfolio concentration and performance using a data set of international equity mutual funds. When sorted by concentration measures, funds in the most concentrated quintile outperform those in the most diversified quintile by 0.16% and 0.30% monthly in country and industry dimensions, respectively. Further analysis shows that the superior performance of concentrated funds is largely driven by industry rather than country concentration, suggesting the existence of global industry private information. Finally, we show that industry-concentrated funds rotate top-holding industries less frequently than their diversified counterparts, and that the industries these funds purchase subsequently outperform the industries they sell.

We demonstrate the estimation biases that arise when stock returns from 12month prior and 2month prior are included within intermediate and recent past momentum profits. These biases lead to an overestimation of intermediate past momentum but an underestimation of recent past momentum in the US market. There is no significant difference between the predictability of stock performance in the intermediate past and the recent past once we exclude these two months from the construction of momentum strategies in the US and each of the 26 major international markets.