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Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis Vol. 60 No. 8 2025

Country Rotation and International Mutual Fund Performance

Wei Jiao1; G. Andrew Karolyi2; David Tat-Chee Ng2

1 Rutgers University Rutgers School of Business–Camden · 2 Cornell University Cornell SC Johnson College of Business

open access

Abstract

International equity funds attain superior subsequent performance by actively changing their country asset allocations, which we capture through a new measure of active country rotation intensity. Across funds, those that rotate country allocations with the greatest intensity on average have the highest value added. We offer evidence that a fund’s change of holdings in a country is associated with future outperformance in those specific holdings. Outperformance is concentrated on the downside when funds sell down country holdings before subsequent poor country market returns. Overall, our findings affirm that active international mutual funds have country market timing abilities.

DOI
10.1017/s0022109025000055
Volume
60
Issue
8
Pages
3866-3898
Language
en
Sources
openalex crossref

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