| dc.description.abstract | In this thesis we have analyzed Norwegian equity funds over the last eleven year period.
We investigate if the performance of individual funds can be attributed to the skillset of
managers, if investors can achieve abnormal returns by betting on funds with historical
good performance, and if applying an optimization framework within previous winners
provide additional benefits to the average of these funds. We use a data set free of
survivorship-bias with monthly and daily net returns for 55 actively managed Norwegian
mutual funds in the period 2009-2019.
We find that Norwegian equity mutual funds, on aggregate, are able to cover their costs,
but do not deliver any abnormal performance over their benchmark. To test the skillset of
managers in individual funds we apply a bootstrap procedure from Kosowski et al. (2006).
We are unable to find sufficient evidence to claim any presence of skill, or lack of skill,
among fund managers in the best and worst performing funds. Inspired by Riley (2019),
we then turn to a portfolio approach based largely on persistence in performance among
previous winners. With monthly rebalancing we find that optimal portfolios from the
Treynor and Black (1973) model achieve positive alphas before transaction costs across
several formation parameters, but do not deliver any added performance over the average
fund in the same portfolio. Despite the alphas being positive, we do not find enough
evidence to claim the strategy deliver a performance better than the passive benchmark
for an investor. We also test the long-run persistence in performance for the portfolios
and find that monthly rebalancing is necessary in order to maintain a positive alpha.
All taken together, our results indicate that actively managed Norwegian equity mutual
funds do not add value for investors compared to an equivalent passive investment. This
holds both when funds are evaluated individually and as portfolios consisting of past
winners. | en_US |
