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A mutual fund is a common instrument for households and corporations to invest in the financial markets through diversified portfolios of securities. Investing in managed mutual funds involves relying on a fund manager's knowledge, expertise, and investment strategy to beat the fund's benchmark. The purpose of this paper is to help mutual fund investors in their fund selection process. The fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) is the methodology applied to identify combinations of factors that facilitate the selection of performing mutual funds. The goal is to determine whether fund manager skill, as measured by Jensen's Alpha and other qualitative factors, is a key driver of performance. Our research focuses on US-registered equity funds with a global investing scope over a 5-year period (2016–2021), and we combine three mutual fund databases to obtain more complete data while enhancing data accuracy and consistency. The findings reveal that both manager skill and fund size are pervasive factors included in all three successful combinations of sufficiency conditions leading to high-performance funds. In addition, it is verified that manager skill is the only necessary condition to ensure high returns on mutual funds. Investors' fund selection process is a cumbersome task that can be simplified with the successful recipes provided by the fsQCA model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this research is to ascertain the factors associated with financial indicators, independent sources of information, financial necessities, advocate recommendations, and personal reputation/firm reputation compliance that can influence the behavior of the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) individual investors. The research was carried out by questionnaire method. The survey was conducted with 300 investors trading on DSE. The survey includes only gender as a demographic factor of the participants, 5 main variables, and 27 sub-factors related to them. The obtained data were analyzed with SPSS 26 program. In the research, descriptive analysis was used to achieve the research objective. The findings of the research present that financial indicators, independent sources of information, and personal reputation/firm reputation compliance have a significant impact while financial necessities have a moderate impact, and advocate recommendations have very little impact on DSE individual investors' behavior. The research provides guidance to individual investors, firms, policymakers, and investment advisors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the current complex economic situation and the impact of COVID-19, China's capital market reform has entered a critical period, with opportunities and challenges coexisting. One of the important challenges is how to improve the well-being of investors in capital markets. Financial education, which has been offered by financial institutions in many countries in recent years, is likely to become an effective policy instrument to meet this challenge. Using survey data of individual investors from China, this study examines the potential impact of financial education programs offered by financial institutions on individuals' investment diversification. The results show financial education is positively associated with the investment diversification of individual investors. An analysis of the underlying mechanism shows that financial education contributes to the improvement of investment diversification by mitigating limited attention bias, strengthening social trust, and promoting the use of professional investment advisors. These findings suggest that the persistent promotion of financial education programs has a positive effect on optimizing financial asset allocation decisions and improving financial welfare of Chinese households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the large number of stock companies, complex stock categories and inconsistent evaluation standards of market value, it is not conducive to the choice of investors. Based on the theory and practice of traditional stock performance evaluation model, this paper integrates the algorithm thought structure of Fama–French five-factor model and proposes a machine learning algorithm model for stock performance research. In addition, this paper also builds a model that can evaluate the style and timing ability of fund managers to improve the fund performance evaluation system to a greater extent. With the help of the performance evaluation updating function of the model, it provides a new experience material in the empirical research composition of the fund performance field. In the system test module, the former prediction data and the actual experimental data are integrated, and the two are sorted out and compared, which proves the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm model. The final experimental results verify the usefulness of the model in stock return prediction and analysis of influencing factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is witnessed that the marketplace of mutual funds is complex and contain high visibility of risks. Considering this, investors' decision regarding mutual fund investment is critical. Therefore, the study aims to evaluate the implications of knowledge and information sharing facets along with involvement of financial advisers and behavioural aspects. The primary qualitative method has been adopted which has implemented the semi-structured interview. In the interview process, three participants have been selected to gain adequate data related to the topic. Since it is a qualitative study, therefore, a thematic analysis has been presented. The results showcased that investor's perception and attitude is determined through gaining accurate information as well as investment advisers have an influential impact. It is concluded with the observation that both information sharing and financial experts are responsible to induce changes in investor perception. Beside, the involvement of behavioural aspects also alters the dimensions of decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial-advisor misconduct often has devastating consequences, leading lawmakers to seek tightened investor protections at the federal level. But many advisors can choose whether to be regulated under the federal regime or instead be overseen by state insurance regulators, giving advisors with a history of misconduct reason to select the laxer state-level regulatory environment. Despite extensive debate over the regulation of financial advice, no prior work has examined those incentives. Using a novel dataset, this Article identifies thousands of financial advisors who have committed serious misconduct and exited the federal regulatory regime--yet continue to advise investors, often using state insurance licenses. Because lobbying has blurred the line between financial advice and insurance sales, current law lets wayward advisors continue to provide similar services under state insurance regulators' light touch. We show that advisors who do this are disproportionately likely to harm investors in the future. And they are overwhelmingly male: Women who have committed serious misconduct are more likely to exit financial services entirely. Our analysis identifies a limit of federal lawmaking in this area. Federal regulators necessarily rely on state regulators, who may become beholden to the interests of the insurance industry itself rather than the public. We show that more than one in ten state legislators who oversee insurance regulation are now, or were previously, in the business of selling insurance. We argue that existing tools for federal regulation of advisor misconduct risk the unintended consequence of pushing the worst advisors into poorly regulated state regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vignette methodology is used to examine how the personal characteristics of investors and financial advisors contribute to portfolio recommendations, and the judgements that advisors make about investment knowledge and control of prospective millionaire UK clients. We find that advisors use investor characteristics to make recommendations broadly in line with economic theory and regulatory requirements. However, women are judged less knowledgeable and in control of their investments than equivalent men. They also receive portfolio recommendations with slightly lower risk profiles. Portfolio recommendations vary by advisor, with experienced advisors and those with wealthier clients recommending higher risk portfolios. Unmeasured advisor variables also impact on judgements and recommendations. These findings have relevance to the wealth management industry and regulators, in focusing attention on the conscious and unconscious influences on the judgements advisors make about their clients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]