Momentum Strategies of German Mutual Funds

Abstract

The existence of the momentum effect in stock returns has been documented for the U.S. (e.g., Jegadeesh and Titman, 1993) and many other national equity markets worldwide (e.g., Griffin et al., 2003). However, little is known about the active employment of momentum strategies among institutional investors outside the U.S. In this respect, we provide first evidence of momentum behavior among German mutual funds.We find the fund trades to follow stock returns on an aggregated institutional level. Moreover, we detect significant momentum behavior among funds with a European and global equity focus, and among funds predominantly investing in Asia. In contrast, German funds do not seem to employ momentum strategies when trading domestic stocks. While only half of the funds across the entire sample trade in accordance with past returns, 66% of the funds within the largest size quintile follow momentum strategies. Finally, we do not find momentum trading funds to outperform the other funds.