The Performance of Canadian-Based Versus US-Based Mutual Fund Managers in the US Stock Market

This paper compares the performance of the Canadian-based mutual funds with the U.S-based mutual funds that only invest in U.S equity markets. The time horizon under study is from 1990 to 2009. Moreover, the time period was broke down in to two sub-periods to capture the effect of bull and bear market on the relative performance of the funds under study. The results in this paper are of practical importance to Canadian investors who seek exposure to U.S equity markets through investing in mutual funds. Financial theories suggest that the performance of the two must be similar since both are exposed to the same market and are large enough to be well diversified. Our results suggest that U.S based mutual funds have out-performed the Canadian-based mutual funds in the total period of 1990 to 2009. Additionally the gap between their performances increased significantly in the period of 2000 to 2009.