Investor Attention, Fee Structure, and the Survival of Newly Issued Mutual Funds: Evidence from Google Trends

• Main Authors: Pei-Ling Yang, 楊佩陵
• Other Authors: Huei-Wen Lai
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/51048025536226604826

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 管理研究所 === 101 === Mutual fund sponsors usually create new funds to exploit investors’ heterogeneity, and merge or liquidate funds that do not attract sufficient investor inflows. Although the creation of new funds plays a key role in the growth of mutual fund industry, little attention has been devoted to the determinants of the survival of newly issued mutual funds. This study bridges this gap by examining whenever investor attention can increase the survival probability of newly issued funds and cash inflows to the funds. Based on all newly issued funds from the CRSP Survivor-Bias-Free US Mutual Fund Database during the period 2004 to 2012, we manually-collected Search Volume Index (SVI) of each new fund from the Google Trends to proxy for investor attention. We then compare the effects of different marketing vehicles on cash inflows of newly issued funds, where various marketing vehicles include fund advertisement, sales force, fund past performance, and SVI. We document that advertisement and sale force are no longer the only effective channels through which new funds can increase publicity as well as fund cash inflows. We find that SVI is statistically positive related to the cash inflows and the survival probability of newly issued funds. The results suggest that increasing search volume in internet is important when fund companies launch a new fund and hence investor interaction with the Internet may offer a new perspective on the marketing and product distribution in mutual fund industry.