Mutual funds and stock market volatility: An empirical analysis of Asian emerging markets

We investigate the empirical relationship between aggregate mutual fund flows and stock market volatility in Asian emerging markets by providing a comparative analysis of equity and balanced funds with market-wide volatility. Using a panel vector autoregressive model, we find that market volatility increases with increase in equity fund flows. However, it decreases with increase in balanced fund flows suggesting rational investment behaviour of balanced mutual funds. In addition, equity funds follow the market volatility positively, suggesting positive feedback trading (momentum) behaviour. On the other hand, balanced funds follow market volatility negatively and exhibit negative feedback trading behaviour (contrarian behaviour). We also show that macroeconomic variables influence both fund flows and market volatility. We discuss the implications of the findings for policy makers and portfolio managers.