One-Stop Shopping in Mutual Fund Families

Abstract

We analyze a new database of individual shareholders sampled from 14 large mutual fund families in order to test whether mutual fund shareholders engage in one-stop shopping. The distribution of the amount of money shareholders invest with the fund family is skewed: the top ten percent of shareholders control over two-thirds of the assets. These large shareholders open multiple funds when they first enter the fund family, and two-thirds of them invest in two or more asset classes. Large shareholders are disproportionately likely to open new funds after family entry date, especially if they only opened one fund on family entry date. Shareholders who opened only hybrid funds on family entry date are especially unlikely to open new funds after family entry date. We also find evidence of spillovers: shareholders who initially buy top-performing funds are disproportionately likely to open multiple funds both on and after family entry date.