Mutual Funds and Mispriced Stocks

We find a strong negative predictive relation between the propensity of active mutual funds to hold overpriced stocks and their subsequent performance. High-propensity funds, or overpriced funds, display poor stock picking skills as they further purchase overpriced stocks during episodes of fund inflows. Interestingly, overpriced funds attract considerable capital inflows during high sentiment episodes, after controlling for the effects of past fund performance. The overall evidence is consistent with the notion that overpriced funds, unable to improve their stock picking skills through time, target optimistic investors by engaging in marketing activities and catering to preferences for skewed returns.

Outperformance in exchange-traded fund pricing deviations: Generalized control of data snooping bias

An investigation into exchange-traded fund (ETF) outperforrnance during the period 2008-2012 is undertaken utilizing a data set of 288 U.S. traded securities. ETFs are tested for net asset value (NAV) premium, underlying index and market benchmark outperformance, with Sharpe, Treynor, and Sortino ratios employed as risk-adjusted performance measures. A key contribution is the application of an innovative generalized stepdown procedure in controlling for data snooping bias. We find that a large proportion of optimized replication and debt asset class ETFs display risk-adjusted premiums with energy and precious metals focused funds outperforming the S&P 500 market benchmark. 

Beyond ourselves: Passion and the dark side of identification in an ethical organization

How are organizational discourses enacted by people at work? In this article, instead of treating subjects as somewhat distinct from such discourses, I argue that the two are inescapably intertwined. The concept of 'ek-stasis' helps us to understand this. Ekstasis invokes an idea of the 'self ' that, through processes of identification, is always located outside of itself, embedded in a wider sociality. I explore this dynamic through an in-depth study of the powerful discourse of 'ethical living', and its enactment in one contemporary development sector organization, EWH. This ek-static enactment was somewhat ambivalent: involving mutual recognition between colleagues, but also processes of exclusion and policing. I highlight how attention to feeling and passion was important in understanding the relation between workplace discourse and identification processes, in this setting. This study shows that a view of workplace selves as ek-static is useful for understanding the enactment of discourse at work, and that this enactment can be both passionate and ambivalent. © The Author(s) 2010.