Browsing by Author "POKU, ABENA BOATEMAA"

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    Assessing the performance of equity mutual funds: A case study of some selected funds in Ghana.
    (KNUST, 2016-10) POKU, ABENA BOATEMAA
    Mutual funds are investment vehicles made up of a pool of funds collected from many investors for the purpose of investing in securities such as stocks, bonds and money market instruments. Equity mutual funds refer to financial service providers that pool investor monies and invest them in domestic and international equity and fixedincome securities. However, equity mutual funds are not allowed to be invested directly in real (tangible) assets thus; real estates, antiquities, commodities. The research measured how the equity mutual funds in Ghana have relatively performed against the Ghana Stock Exchange. Accordingly, the study sought to measure the following objectives; to find out whether the funds outperformed the Ghana Stock Exchange Index within the study period, to establish the impact of fund manager skills on equity mutual funds performance and finally to find out whether investment in mutual fund is better off than investment in a risk free rate fund. All the forty-six mutual funds operating in Ghana including the Government of Ghana 90-days T-bills returns (which acted as the risk free investment option) and finally the Ghana Stock Exchange return (as the benchmark investment index) constituted the study population. The study employed purposive sampling technique hence the study sample came from Databank Epack investment, SAS Fund and HFC Equity trust fund since they had a complete dataset for the whole eight-year period of the study time interval. It became evident that the mean return for all the three funds ranges from 2.30 to 7.49.The study found out that out of the three funds, HFC Equity trust outperformed both the Ghana Stock Exchange and the interest free rate investment options by a margin of 7.2 and 5.9 respectively. Also the study found out that the other two funds thus Databank Epack investment and SAS Fund performances all fell below the GSE market index and the T-bill rate average annual returns.