Active equity managers in the US: Do the best follow momentum strategies?

Abstract

Empirical evidence from a database free of survivorship bias shows that the excess return patterns of long-only industry-level momentum strategies are highly correlated with active fund returns in the growth and the core domains, especially since publication of the momentum effect phenomenon in 1993. The best-performing managers are more strongly similar than the poorest-performing managers, who have low correlation with momentum. Investment performance of momentum strategies at the industry level is competitive, or between the top 10% and top 25% of funds in each period. The source and the persistence of these patterns compared to optimal asset allocation are cause for speculation.