Asian fund investors make poor timing decisions: study

THE belief that investors are their own worst enemy underlies the study of behavioural finance. Now Morningstar has published a study on Asian investor behaviour that shows just that.

Mind the Gap - Asia 2017 is the firm's first Asia study of investor returns, focused on the fund markets of Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Morningstar has published annual Mind the Gap studies on US mutual fund investors since 2005. The exercise seeks to ascertain if mutual fund investors suffer returns gaps - which refers to the difference between a fund's time-weighted return, and the "actual" return that investors achieved when timing decisions are taken into account.