Portfolio turnover and performance of equity investment funds in Brazil

The purpose of this paper was to analyze the relationships between the portfolio turnover and performance of equity investment funds in Brazil. There are few published studies on the subject, but the previously identified Brazilian studies that have examined making changes to portfolios have been limited to very restricted data samples and have only worked with an ordinary least squares (OLS) model without taking into account the indications of international studies and economic theory itself of the possible endogeneity of turnover, which would make OLS estimation inadequate. The expressive growth of the fund industry in the Brazilian market shows the relevance of the object of research. Two portfolio turnover metrics were analyzed: one based on changes in the monetary values of the assets and another based on changing the weights of the assets in the portfolio. The estimations were performed for fixed effects panel data and then for a two-stage least squares model, using instrumental variables. The funds that make up the sample are those classified as “free shares” in the period from January of 2012 to January of 2018. The results showed that there is a positive relationship between the portfolio turnover and performance of the equity investment funds, showing that managers have been able to take advantage of moments of mispricing in the market and that they carry out more trades in search of higher returns. This research extends the results in the literature as it shows that there is a positive relationship between the turnover and performance of equity investment funds that is independent of the way turnover or performance are measured, which has shown inconclusive results in previous studies. Furthermore, it presents evidence for a more representative and current sample in an emerging market.