Article: Market impact hurting mutual fund returns

Something is eating into mutual fund returns. It is called market impact cost -- in essence, the impact that buy or sell orders can have on stock prices. And Barra Inc., a research and consulting firm in Berkeley, Calif., has developed a program to let investors see how much those costs are affecting a portfolio's performance.

"Like expense ratios, market impact creates a cost that funds have to overcome before they can add any value," said Nicolo Torre, Barra's managing director for research. "The lower the hurdle, the more likely that they will be able to do that."

Barra, which began selling market impact data to institutional investors about a year ago, has picked up two mutual fund ...

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