MUTUAL FUND PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS PRE AND POST FINANCIAL CRISIS OF 2008

Using a sample of 955 mutual funds, free of survivorship bias, we analyse the performance of diversified equity mutual funds in the United States of America that invest solely in stocks listed on the U.S. stock exchanges before and after the financial crisis of 2008. We categorize all mutual funds into their respective strategy including value, growth, and blend in order to see any relationship with respect to their strategic focus.We find that mutual funds were not able to provide a positive alpha, neither before nor after the financial crisis of 2008. These findings are consistent with other researchers such as Mark M. Carhart (1997) and Michael C. Jensen (1969).Moreover, by using Fama and French`s (1993) 3 - factor model plus an additional momentum factor, we can perceive a strong relationship between the factors size and momentum and the overall performance of mutual funds.