| This dissertation explores mutual fund family performance and the political and economic effects of Bin Laden's capture.; My fund family research shows the following. (1) Evaluations of the four families in the Duke University retirement plan: Fidelity, Vanguard, TIAA-CREF and Scudder. (2) Even after adjusting for style and examining performance gross of expenses, fund families typically under performed their corresponding index basket. However, fund families with low loads, low expenses in their most favored asset class, and low turnover outperform the index basket. (3) Minimum expense ratio, turnover ratio and load negatively affect style-adjusted performance of fund families, gross of expense. (4) Even in addition to these characteristics, the performance of an individual fund's siblings within the same family predicts that fund's gross performance. So fund family ranking based on past performance adds predictive value. (5) Most funds in each fund class will under perform corresponding index baskets, with the underperformance depending on expense ratios. (6) In ranking fund families it is important (a) to distinguish between share classes, (b) to emphasize gross-of-expenses returns so investors can predict return differentials by adding in expenses for specific share classes, (c) to examine the role of front-end load, deferred load and the minimum family expense to search for general rules about which types of families are best, (d) to continuously compound rates of return gross of expenses to facilitate adjusting for expense, (e) to compare style-adjusted performance, with unadjusted performance, and historical performance of the portfolios held by clients, to isolate the efficacy of managers' stock picking from style picking and to assess the wisdom of individual investors, (f) to compare managed mutual funds with the corresponding index basket, not just one index.; Many people conjecture that capturing Bin Laden would have boosted Bush's presidential prospectus. Surprisingly, I find that during the election campaign an increase in the Bin Laden capture probability reduced the Bush presidential reelection probability. Also, an increase in the Bin Laden capture probability reduced the gold price, reduced the gasoline price and boosted the bond yield: capturing Bin Ladin would make investment in gold less appealing, shrink oil prices and stimulate investment, making money scarcer.;... |
