Mutual Fund Performance in Pakistan, 1995-2004

Author: 
Naim Sipra
JEL codes: 
Description: 
CMER WORKING PAPER No. 06-45
Organisation: 
Abstract: 

Mutual funds are the most popular vehicle of investing in the stock market and their performance evaluation is a topic dear to both investors and academics. Surprisingly, mutual funds have not played a very important role in the Pakistani stock market and perhaps consequently almost nothing has been written about their performance in any academic journal. This paper looks at the performance of
Pakistani mutual funds over the last five and ten year periods using Sharpe, Jensen and Treynor measures of portfolio performance analysis. The performance is compared to that of the market portfolio defined as the KSE 100 index. Using the Sharpe measure the performance of virtually all the funds was found to be inferior to that of the market portfolio. The Jensen and Treynor measures showed about half the funds to be outperforming the market portfolio over the last five years, but when the risk measure was corrected using Famas net selectivity measure the market portfolio outperformed all the funds except one. These results support the semi-strong form of market efficiency hypothesis even more strongly than it has been demonstrated in the developed markets.