Are Greek mutual fund managers market timers?

Abstract

We use a simple non-linear model, that of Treynor and Mazuy, to test the ability of Greek mutual fund managers to time the market. The empirical findings do not reveal any ability of the Greek managers to time the market correctly or select undervalued securities. In contrary ,five out of nineteen mutual funds present a negative statistical significant coefficient of market timing. We attribute this phenomenon to the lack of experience of the managers within the short period of the life of mutual funds in Greece. Recent literature on mutual fund performance has inquired into the qualitative characteristics of mutual fund managers such as age, education, experience, etc. This line of research holds some promise in explaining the results presented in this paper.