BIO

Karsyn Lang is a first-year student at Florida State planning to study Finance and Economics. Her research primarily focuses on mutual funds and their performance in the market, building foundational research of the different assets. She has been conducting the research under the mentorship of Dr. John Kim, who has provided research and financial guidance throughout the project. Karsyn is also involved in many other clubs on campus, including Women in Business and Security Societies.

Understanding the Competitive Landscape of the Mutual Fund Industry

Abstract

Mutual funds are a popular investment vehicle for retail investors to diversify their portfolios. Mutual funds tend to hold hundreds of stocks, and to actively invest in the financial markets, mutual funds purport to beat the market. With thousands of different mutual funds, understanding the landscape of competition, how many funds are available, the many available investment styles, and how dispersed fees are is paramount to ensuring that investors receive good risk-adjusted returns that fund managers claim to deliver. In a study with Dr. John Kim, researchers are in the process of building a panel dataset of actively managed mutual funds. The study first accessed data on mutual funds from Morningstar, a cloud-based financial software system that, and examined some summary statistics that include investment styles: allocation, equity, and fixed income. Each investment style is catered to different investors, allowing for an individualized strategy depending on the type of investment they want. Researchers have compiled over 80 different key snapshot data points (data points identified at the most recent point in time). Plans in the future include incorporating historical data on fund returns and fund assets (i.e., dollar amount managed by a given fund at a given point in time).

Keywords: Mutual Funds, Assets, Finance