Cookies?
Library Header Image
LSE Research Online LSE Library Services

Best ideas

Silli, Bernhard, Cohen, Randolph B and Polk, Christopher (2008) Best ideas. Financial Markets Group Discussion Papers (624). Financial Markets Group, The London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.

[img]
Preview
PDF - Published Version
Download (339kB) | Preview

Abstract

This paper provides powerful evidence that mutual fund managers can pick stocks that outperform the market. Many have argued that the inability of mutual fund managers to outperform benchmarks is the most persuasive evidence in favor of capital market efficiency. Berk and Green (2004) argue that this is not necessarily the case, because factors related to the structure of the money management industry will cause even good stock pickers not to outperform. We circumvent this problem by examining the performance of stocks that represent managers' "Best Ideas." We find that the stock that active managers display the most conviction towards ex-ante, outperforms the market, as well as the other stocks in those managers' portfolios, by approximately 39 to 127 basis points per month depending on the benchmark employed. This leads us to two conclusions. First, the U.S. stock market does not appear to be efficiently priced, since even the typical active mutual fund manager is able to identify a stock that outperforms. Second, consistent with the view of Berk and Green, the organization of the money management industry appears to make it optimal for managers to introduce stocks into their portfolio that are not outperformers, even though they are able to pick good stocks.

Item Type: Monograph (Discussion Paper)
Official URL: https://www.fmg.ac.uk/
Additional Information: © 2008 The Authors
Divisions: Finance
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory
H Social Sciences > HG Finance
JEL classification: G - Financial Economics > G1 - General Financial Markets > G11 - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
G - Financial Economics > G2 - Financial Institutions and Services > G23 - Pension Funds; Other Private Financial Institutions
Date Deposited: 22 Jul 2009 08:43
Last Modified: 15 Sep 2023 23:12
URI: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/24471

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics