Using a unique database of daily trading activity, the present study examines the ability of active Australian equity managers to earn superior risk-adjusted returns. We find evidence of superior trade performance, where performance is a function of stock size. Our findings indicate that active equity managers are able to successfully exploit private information more readily in stocks ranked 101-150 by market-cap, where the degree of analyst coverage, information flows and market efficiency are lower than for large-cap stocks. We also find evidence of manager specialization. Our evidence provides further support of the value of active investment management in Australian equities. Copyright The Authors Journal compilation (c) 2006 AFAANZ.

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Recent studies find evidence that small funds outperform large funds. This fund size effect is commonly hypothesized to be caused by transaction costs. Due to the lack of transactions data, prior studies have investigated the transaction costs theory indirectly. Our study, however, analyses the daily transactions of active Australian equity managers and finds aggregate market impact costs incurred by large managers are significantly greater than those incurred by small managers. Furthermore, we show large managers exhibit preferences for trade package formation and portfolio characteristics consistent with transaction cost intimidation. We analyse the interaction between transaction cost intimidation and the fund size effect, and document that large managers pursuing a highly active trading strategy suffer more from fund size, than large funds following a more passive strategy. This suggests the fund size effect is related to transaction costs, as trading activity is a good proxy for expected market impact. Finally, based on a simulation experiment, we find that transaction cost intimidation is at least as important as the increase in market impact costs due to fund size.

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The present study investigates the stock characteristic preferences of institutional Australian equity managers. In aggregate we find that active managers exhibit preferences for stocks exhibiting high-price variance, large market capitalization, low transaction costs, value-oriented characteristics, greater levels of analyst coverage and lower variability in analyst earnings forecasts. We observe stronger preferences for higher volatility, value stocks and wider analyst coverage among smaller stocks. We also find that smaller investment managers prefer securities with higher market capitalization and analyst coverage (including low variation in the forecasts of these analysts). We also document that industry effects play an important role in portfolio construction. Copyright The Authors Journal compilation (c) 2006 AFAANZ.