Timing Decisions and the Behavior of Mutual Fund Systematic Risk

The investment performance of professionally managed portfolios, in general, and mutual funds, in particular, has been the subject of considerable attention in finance. Fama [9] has suggested that overall portfolio performance be broken down in such a manner that the individual sources of performance can be identified. Two basic sources are: (1) the ability of the portfolio manager to forecast price movements of individual common stocks relative to stocks in general (selectivity or microforecasting); and (2) the ability to forecast the direction of the stock market relative to fixed income securities (timing or macroforecasting).