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How Active Is Your Fund Manager? A New Measure That Predicts Performance

K. J. Martijn Cremers; Antti Petajisto

Review of Financial Studies 2009

We introduce a new measure of active portfolio management, Active Share, which represents the share of portfolio holdings that differ from the benchmark index holdings. We compute Active Share for domestic equity mutual funds from 1980 to 2003. We relate Active Share to fund characteristics such as size, expenses, and turnover in the cross-section, and we also examine its evolution over time. Active Share predicts fund performance: funds with the highest Active Share significantly outperform their benchmarks, both before and after expenses, and they exhibit strong performance persistence. Nonindex funds with the lowest Active Share underperform their benchmarks.

DOI
10.1093/rfs/hhp057
Volume
22 (9)
Pages
3329-3365
Language
en
Export
BibTeX
Sources
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