Capital Flows in the Norwegian Mutual Fund Market

Abstract

This paper investigates monthly capital inflows, outflows and net flows for Norwegian mutual funds. The data set contains equity, bond, and money market funds registered at some point in the period 2006 - 2012 on Oslo Stock Exchange (OSE). The goal of the study is to identify relationships between these flows, both aggregated flows and flows for individual funds, and a range of explanatory variables. Retail and institutional investor flows are studied both separately and overall. The results indicate that retail investors, when making investment decisions, are more likely to focus on past performance than institutional investors. Moreover, equity inflows are more easily explained by past relative returns than equity outflows regardless of investor type.Specifically, inflows are larger for equity funds that have outperformed other equity funds in the past. This relationship is much stronger in bull markets and weaker for volatile equity funds.