How skilful are US fixed-income fund managers?

We develop a performance evaluation model that incorporates the factors proposed by Huij and Derwall (2008) and a fund-specific benchmark to analyse the performance of US fixed income funds. Using the full sample, and accounting for the possibility of false discoveries, we find that fund management companies extract most of any abnormal performance produced by their fund managers. Our sub-sample analysis indicates that after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) there was a substantial increase in the number of bond funds with: both positive gross-of-fee alpha and positive net-of-fee alpha performance; and also a reduction in funds with negative-alpha performance. However, because the GFC was such a unique event, it would still be difficult to conclude that these managers offer value for money for investors compared to passive alternatives. •We develop a performance evaluation model of US fixed income fund managers.•We find that fund management companies extract most of any abnormal performance produced by their fund managers.•Our analysis indicates that after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) there was a substantial increase in the number of bond funds with both positive gross-of-fee alpha and positive net-of-fee alpha performance.•However, it would still be difficult to conclude that these managers offer value for money compared to passive alternatives.