The paper investigates performance persistence in both Islamic focused (IFFs) and conventional focused fund families (CFFs) in four emerging markets (Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Pakistan) from 2007 to 2021 using contingency tables. In the overall sample, we find that positive (negative) persistence in IFFs (CFFs) exists only in the short-run (one-month). At the country level, IFFs demonstrate positive persistence up to one month in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia and six months in Malaysia. For CFFs, negative persistence appears up to one month in Malaysia and six months in Indonesia. Surprisingly, the positive persistence of Indonesian IFFs changes to negative persistence in six months, before disappearing completely later. This result confirms the existence of short-run persistence for both IFFs and CFFs. This study presents new evidence for the persistent performance of fund families in emerging markets.

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the various factors influencing on people to invest in mutual funds and examine the mediating role of investor’s perception. By using quantitative research approach and cross-sectional research design, 300 questionnaires are distributed among the individual investors and Smart PLS 3 is used to analyze the data. The results reveal that risk and return, liquidity of assets, demographic factors (gender, age, and material status), convenience, reduction in transection cost, tax benefits and transparency were the key factors and maintained significant relationships with investment in mutual funds. Moreover, investor’s perception maintains mediating role between all these factors and investment in mutual funds. The study contributes in literature by investigating the various factors, which influence on investors to invest in mutual funds. Moreover, it also contributes by investigating the mediating role of investor’s perception.

The growing interest in mutual funds in Ghana has been tremendous over the last decade as evidenced by the continuous increases in number and total funds under management. However, no empirical work has been done on the selectivity and timing ability of the mutual fund managers. Using monthly returns data hand-collected from the reports of the mutual fund managers for the period January 2007-December 2012, this paper examines the market timing and selectivity ability of mutual fund managers in Ghana using the classic Treynor-Mazuy (1966) model and Henriksson- Merton (1981) model. The results suggest that, in general mutual fund managers in Ghana are not able to effectively select stocks and also are not able to predict both the magnitude and direction of future market returns. More specifically, all of the sample mutual fund managers attain significant negative selectivity coefficients and also most of them attain insignificant negative timing coefficients.