An analysis of relationship between unit trust performance towards KLSE CI and syariah index: a case of Public Mutual Berhad / Nurfarida Juhari

Despite the growth in the traditional mutual fund literature over the past several decades, academics still reach contradictory conclusions regarding the ability of fund managers to consistently outperform the market and the fund specific organizational and managerial factors that impact performance.(Laurie Prather, William J. Bertin*, Thomas Henker, 2002). The aim of this paper is to ascertain the relationship between Public Index fund and Public Ittikal fund performance held by Public Mutual Berhad and their return persistence with their benchmark which is Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) and Kuala Lumpur Syariah index (KLSI). This research is conducted on the 6 years data range from 7th January 2000 - 30th December 2005 unit trust market return based on Net Asset Value (NAV) and the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) and Kuala Lumpur Syariah Index (KLSI) market return, using weekly basis. The correlation between those performances is also discussed. In overall conclusion, this research shows that the unit trust performance does have a relationship but it is too weak for the benchmark to determine and estimate the performance of unit trust alone. This is supported by the findings from the previous research of Grinblatt and Titman (1994) which shows that inferences about fund performance can be dramatically affected by the chosen benchmarks.