Selecting portfolios for mutual funds

In modem investment theory the path to portfolio selection involves two steps, which are efficient frontier and expected utility maximization, the latter being necessary to determine the best efficient choice for an individual investor with particular preferences for profitability and safety. However, mutual funds are not individual investors, and therefore, the analyst could make very little sense of expected utility maximization as he fails to see how a utility function can be assigned to the multiplicity of share holders and potential investors related to a fund. We address the problem of mutual fund portfolio selection by searching for a portfolio ranking based on compromise properties to find utility bounds from statistical information on investor's preferences. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.