Conference Agenda
Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 15th Sept 2026, 08:45:09am CEST
|
Daily Overview |
| Session | |
|
AP 01: Liquidity, Volume, and Trading Frictions Location: LR M2.1 (Floor 2) Session Chair: Ralph Koijen, Chicago Booth | |
| Presentation 2 | |
ID: 132
Rethinking Mutual Fund Performance: From Traditional Alpha to Achievable Alpha 1: London Business School; 2: Iowa State University; 3: EDHEC Business School, United Kingdom About 88% of mutual-fund assets are held by retail investors, who rarely take short positions because of the associated costs and risks. Yet mutual-fund performance is traditionally measured by alpha, which implicitly assumes investors can freely short the benchmark factors. We show that mutual-fund performance for constrained investors is measured by achievable alpha, computed using only factors with strictly positive weights in the shortsale-constrained benchmark portfolio. Empirically, achievable alpha and value-added reveal weaker absolute performance and starkly different rankings. Achievable alphas predict fund flows---especially during market turmoil---and indicate that funds are less scalable than implied by traditional alphas.
| |
