Portfolio Disclosure Research Articles

How Portfolio Disclosure Impacts Monitoring Spillovers Between Competing Asset Managers

Fund managers can monitor portfolio firms to improve returns, but their incentives to engage depend on other investors' monitoring, e.g., via free riding or collaboration. In this paper, we examine how portfolio disclosure affects monitoring spillovers between competing asset managers. In our model, informed and uninformed funds use monitoring investments to compete with each other over fund flows from investors. We provide conditions for when informed and uninformed fund monitoring are strategic complements, leading to monitoring of the same firms, or strategic substitutes, leading to monitoring of different firms. We then highlight several disclosure implications of our model. Interestingly, disclosure of the informed fund's holdings facilitates monitoring complementarities across funds, above and beyond disclosure providing information to investors and firms. Overall, our results inform the debate on asset managers' incentives to invest in monitoring, and highlight the key role played by portfolio disclosure.

Partial portfolio disclosure, investors’ attention, and window dressing

I show that the disclosure of mutual funds’ holdings significantly affects investors’ investment decisions. As most mutual fund websites, advertisements, and fund-trading platforms only disclose a fund’s 10 largest holdings (top-10), this study finds that investors disproportionately focus on these stocks. However, this bias does not lead to additional profit because relative to their peers, funds with good top-10 performance tend to generate poor long-term returns. I design a clean and innovative discontinuity test between the performance of the 10th and 11th portfolio holdings to examine such window dressing behavior. I find that relative to their peers, funds that are small, new, and highly active are more likely to window dress and incur greater costs if they suffer from severe capital outflows. My findings suggest that partial disclosure misleads investors and allows effective window dressing.

Spillover effects of mandatory portfolio disclosures on corporate investment

This paper examines whether portfolio disclosure requirements for actively managed investment funds affect the investment decisions of the firms they own. We argue that mandatory portfolio disclosures reduce fund managers' incentive to collect and trade on private information, which reduces the stock price informativeness of their portfolio, and thus portfolio firm managers' ability to learn from their firms' stock prices. Using a difference-in-differences design around the May 2004 SEC regulation requiring more frequent fund disclosure, we find that investment sensitivity to stock price declines for firms with significant ownership held by actively managed funds affected by the regulation. The decline in investment-price sensitivity is concentrated among firms that are (i) owned by funds with larger expected proprietary costs and (ii) more likely to learn from price. Our results suggest that portfolio disclosure requirements have spillover effects on corporate investment by curtailing managers’ opportunities to learn from price.

Does Daily Portfolio Disclosure Impact the Pricing Efficiency of Etfs? Evidence from Us Active Etfs

Does Daily Portfolio Disclosure Impact the Pricing Efficiency of Etfs? Evidence from Us Active Etfs

The Role of Portfolio Disclosures in Mutual Funds

The Role of Portfolio Disclosures in Mutual Funds

Intended Consequences of More Frequent Portfolio Disclosure

Intended Consequences of More Frequent Portfolio Disclosure

Valuation Risk in Mutual Fund Portfolio Disclosure

Abstract Valuation risk of a security—uncertainty about its fair value—is a subject of considerable concern in the mutual fund industry. If funds report different values for identical securities, investors cannot easily compare their performance. Yet it is not unusual to see identical illiquid stocks, small-cap stocks, stocks with high analyst dispersion, stocks with less analyst coverage, and newly listed stocks valued differently across mutual funds. An equity fund that has positive price dispersion in its portfolio holdings, that performs poorly, that belongs to a fund family with an inclination for aggressive reporting, that holds more stocks subject to stale prices, that holds more pre-IPO firms, or that experiences net outflows will tend to show positive price dispersion again in the next quarter. This behavior is significant in a volatile market. Aggressive reporting helps funds gain in the mutual fund tournament. (JEL G10, G23)

Why Do Mutual Funds Hold Lottery Stocks?

AbstractWe provide evidence regarding mutual funds’ motivation to hold lottery stocks. Funds with higher managerial ownership invest less in lottery stocks, suggesting that managers themselves do not prefer such stocks. The evidence instead supports that managers cater to fund investors’ preference for such stocks. In particular, funds with more lottery holdings attract larger flows after portfolio disclosure compared with their peers, and poorly performing funds tend to engage in risk shifting by increasing their lottery holdings toward year-ends. Funds’ aggregate holdings of lottery stocks contribute to their overpricing.

Better Kept in the Dark? Portfolio Disclosure and Agency Problems in Mutual Funds

AbstractWe study the agency implications of increased disclosure using a regulatory change in the mutual fund industry as an experimental setting. This quasi-natural experiment mandated more frequent portfolio disclosure, which we show imposes managerial skill-reassessment risks from investors on funds with high relative performance volatility. In turn, this risk translates into greater agency costs to investors. We show that high-volatility funds, relative to low-volatility funds, responded to the increased skill-reassessment risk after regulation with an increase in management fees and a decrease in risk taking. These actions get transmitted to fund investors in the form of inferior net performance.

Spillover Effects of Mandatory Portfolio Disclosures on Corporate Investment

This paper examines the effect of mandatory portfolio disclosure by actively managed investment funds on investee firms’ investment decisions. Mandatory portfolio disclosures can reduce fund managers’ incentive to collect and trade on private information, and thereby reduce the stock price informativeness of their portfolio firms. Using a difference-in-differences design around the May 2004 SEC regulation requiring more frequent disclosure, we find that investment sensitivity to stock prices declines for firms with significant ownership by actively managed funds affected by the regulation. Results from cross-sectional tests indicate that the decline in investment-price sensitivity is concentrated among firms owned by funds with larger expected proprietary costs and for firms more likely to learn from the information in price. We conduct numerous placebo and robustness tests to mitigate endogeneity concerns. Overall, our results suggest that portfolio disclosure requirements have spillover effects on corporate investment by lowering managers’ opportunities to learn from price.

Enter Paper Title]Valuation Risk in Mutual Fund Portfolio Disclosure

Valuation risk of a security—uncertainty about its fair value—is a subject of considerable concern in the mutual fund industry. If funds report different values for identical securities, investors cannot easily compare performance. Yet it is not unusual to see identical illiquid stocks, small-cap stocks, stocks with high analyst dispersion, stocks with less analyst coverage, and newly listed stocks valued differently across mutual funds. An equity fund that has positive price dispersion in its portfolio holdings, that performs poorly, that belongs to a fund family with an inclination for aggressive reporting, that holds more stocks subject to stale prices, that holds more pre-IPO firms, or that experiences net outflows will tend to show positive price dispersion again in the next quarter. This behavior is significant in a volatile market. Aggressive reporting helps funds gain in the mutual fund tournament.

Mutual Fund's Discretionary Portfolio Disclosure Policies

Mutual Fund's Discretionary Portfolio Disclosure Policies

Incentive Realignment: Mutual Funds’ Influence on Executive Compensation Contracts

Using a regulation that increased portfolio disclosure frequency of US mutual funds as an exogenous shock shortening funds’ investment horizon, we find that affected funds influence portfolio firms to reduce the pay duration of their executives to incentivize them to also have shorter investment horizon. We show that funds affect this change through both voice and exit channels, i.e., voting on compensation-related issues and divesting from portfolio firms. Cross-sectional tests corroborate these findings to reveal more pronounced effects when fund managers have stronger career incentives and are less distracted, and when funds are less concerned about free rider problems and share ownership with potentially supportive other short-term oriented investors.

Market Feedback and Access to Buy-side Research: Evidence From Monthly Mutual Fund Portfolio Disclosures

Market Feedback and Access to Buy-side Research: Evidence From Monthly Mutual Fund Portfolio Disclosures

Does Portfolio Disclosure Make Money Smarter?

Does Portfolio Disclosure Make Money Smarter?

Mutual Fund Voluntary Portfolio Disclosure

ABSTRACT A growing fraction of individual investors delegate their portfolio management to professional managers. As a result, the importance of transparency and investor protections have increased in financial markets. In Spain, management companies must report their mutual fund portfolios quarterly to investors. However, this information may be disclosed on a monthly basis to private information providers. In this study, we examine the influence of performance on voluntary portfolio disclosure from 2003 to 2013. The transparency and reporting strategies may differ from fund industries with different level of development, we will discuss the implications of the results for emerging markets. We find a positive significant relationship between the probability of fund portfolio disclosure and fund performance, and this effect is more significant when we consider risk-adjusted performance measures. The addition of some control variables in the model shows that the probability of the fund portfolio to be reported is positively related to fund age, management company size and fees and is negatively related to fund size.

Impact of competition on fund disclosures and consumer search costs

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of competition in financial markets on the frequency of portfolio disclosures by mutual funds and its implications for consumer search costs.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical analysis merges the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) survivorship bias-free mutual fund database, the Thompson Financial CDA/ Spectrum holdings database and the CRSP stock price data. The sample covers the time period between 1993 and 2010 and OLS and logistic regressions are used to investigate the impact of competition on fund disclosures.FindingsThis paper finds that mutual fund disclosures decrease with market competition and this effect is amplified for funds holding illiquid assets. These results provide empirical support for the findings of Carlin et al. (2102). Mutual funds use portfolio disclosures as a marketing tool to attract investments in a tournament-like market, where superior relative performance and greater visibility are rewarded with convex payoffs. With competition, the likelihood of receiving new investments decreases for each fund and funds respond by reducing costly voluntary disclosures. The disclosure costs are higher for funds holding illiquid assets, and hence, the effect is stronger for them.Originality/valueThis paper has important policy implications for disclosures in a market where relative performance matters. The traditional view is that competition induces voluntary disclosure because entities would like to differentiate themselves from competitors, and hence, competition should increase market transparency. However, this paper sheds light on the negative consequence of competition in a tournament-like mutual fund market.

Why Do Mutual Funds Hold Lottery Stocks?

We provide evidence regarding mutual funds' motivation to hold lottery stocks. Funds with higher managerial ownership invest less in lottery stocks, suggesting that managers themselves do not prefer such stocks. The evidence instead supports that managers cater to fund investors' preference for such stocks. In particular, funds with more lottery holdings attract larger flows after portfolio disclosure compared to their peers, and poorly performing funds tend to engage in risk shifting by increasing their lottery holdings towards year-ends. Funds' aggregate holdings of lottery stocks contribute to their overpricing.

Why Do Mutual Funds Hold Lottery Stocks?

We provide evidence regarding mutual funds' motivation to hold lottery stocks. Funds with higher managerial ownership invest less in lottery stocks, suggesting that managers themselves do not prefer such stocks. The evidence instead supports that managers cater to fund investors' preference for such stocks. In particular, funds with more lottery holdings attract larger flows after portfolio disclosure compared to their peers, and poorly performing funds tend to engage in risk shifting by increasing their lottery holdings towards year-ends. Funds' aggregate holdings of lottery stocks contribute to their overpricing.

The impact of portfolio disclosure on hedge fund performance

Consistent with the argument that portfolio disclosure reveals trade secrets, a difference-in-differences estimation suggests a drop in fund performance after a hedge fund begins filing Form 13F as well as an increase in return correlations with other funds in the same investment style. The drop in performance is concentrated among funds with larger expected proprietary costs of disclosure, for instance, funds that disclose a greater fraction of their assets or hold more illiquid stocks. The drop in performance cannot be fully explained by alternative explanations such as decreasing returns to scale or mean reversion in fund returns.