Dumb money: Mutual fund flows and the cross-section of stock returns

A-Tier
Journal: Journal of Financial Economics
Year: 2008
Volume: 88
Issue: 2
Pages: 299-322

Score contribution per author:

2.011 = (α=2.01 / 2 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

We use mutual fund flows as a measure of individual investor sentiment for different stocks, and find that high sentiment predicts low future returns. Fund flows are dumb money-by reallocating across different mutual funds, retail investors reduce their wealth in the long run. This dumb money effect is related to the value effect: high sentiment stocks tend to be growth stocks. High sentiment also is associated with high corporate issuance, interpretable as companies increasing the supply of shares in response to investor demand.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:jfinec:v:88:y:2008:i:2:p:299-322
Journal Field
Finance
Author Count
2
Added to Database
2026-01-25