Assessing the performance of equity mutual funds: A case study of some selected funds in Ghana.
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2016-10
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
KNUST
Abstract
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.
Description
A Thesis Submitted To The Department Of Accounting And Finance In Partial Fulfilment Of The Requirement For The Degree Of Master Of Business Administration-Finance .