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Mid-cap funds invest in stocks with a market cap between $2 billion and $10 billion. Some of the mid-cap firms recently overcame their small-cap status, but are still in the high growth mode with a better market positioning and stronger balance sheet. Because of their size and status, mid-cap stocks offer a unique platform to portfolio managers of mid-cap funds to earn superior returns by using their selectivity skills. This study analyzes the performance and persistence of performance of 257 U.S. domiciled retail mid-cap funds from January 2000 to December 2017. The results of this study suggest that despite the interesting platform offered by these stocks, it is not easy for fund managers to pick the stocks that beat the market. The results of this study show that mid-cap funds do not outperform the market and their poor performance persists over time.

Using intraday trading data during the 2008 financial crisis, from the Standard and Poor’s Depository Receipt (SPDR) market, we test for evidence of the informational advantage of traders. In addition, we examine the effect of pricing error on trade price. If traders are rational, and have accurate information, they will only purchase an asset at a premium (discount) if they have reason to believe that the fundamental value of that asset will increase (decrease). Our results show that the trading price of the SPDR does not significantly predict the movement of underlying asset values. This finding is consistent with traders overreacting to disparities between price and underlying value during the financial crisis.

Over the past fifty years, economic growth in emerging markets has been supported by investments in capital and technology from the developed world. The benefit of this development for the emerging markets, as measured by growth in income, employment, and wealth, is immediately apparent. There have also been significant advantages for the developed world through opportunities for higher risk adjusted returns from investments in emerging markets. This study explores the benefits of the diversification of global government bond portfolio, and provides complete performance evaluations of DMs with or without South Africa emerging market (SAEM) bonds. The study examines the benefits of inclusion of SAEM bonds in DMs, the degrees of financial integration among the research markets, the relative bond returns of dynamic factor models with time-varying coefficients and the robust tests of bond portfolio performance between DMs with SAEM and bond index. The results of this study provide important implications for global investors by identifying diversification gains in SAEM.

The Chinese stock market is an emerging market that has gained much importance over the past few decades. Because of this, it also serves as a great subject for studying market inefficiencies and anomalies. In this paper we provide a review of evidence regarding the development, efficiency and integration of the Chinese stock market. In particular, we review recent literature in the areas of market segmentation, cross-listings and calendar effects. This provides evidence of market inefficiency in China. We also pose questions that can be answered in future studies.