Performance Evaluation of Polish Mutual Fund Managers

Abstract

This study aims at evaluating the performance of mutual fund managers in one of the fastest growing financial markets in emerging Europe. We use well-known performance evaluation measures to investigate whether private investors in Poland have benefited from investing in mutual funds. Our analysis focuses on returns over the period 2000-2007 for three categories of mutual funds: (1) equity, (2), bond, and (3) balanced mutual funds. Our results indicate that mutual funds in each of these three categories have positive, but insignificant selectivity skill, indicating that a private investor would not have been worse of by investing in mutual funds. We do not find any evidence of equity or bond market timing skill by Polish mutual funds. This conclusion does not depend on our choice of evaluation model taking into account the direction and/or the magnitude of the market return.