IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/glofin/v49y2021ics104402832030274x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are hedge fund managers skilled?

Author

Listed:
  • Kooli, Maher
  • Stetsyuk, Ivan

Abstract

This study measures the skill of hedge fund (HF) managers by calculating the value added that they extract from capital markets. Applying bootstrapping to control for luck, we find that HF managers are skilled, with the magnitude of the value added depending on the benchmark. Compared to the Vanguard S&P 500 Index Fund and a set of eight Vanguard index funds, HF managers add on average $3.24 million per year and $2.88 million per year, respectively, although these values were higher before the financial crisis of 2007–2008 than afterwards. Finally, we find no evidence that HF managers share this value added with their investors.

Suggested Citation

  • Kooli, Maher & Stetsyuk, Ivan, 2021. "Are hedge fund managers skilled?," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:glofin:v:49:y:2021:i:c:s104402832030274x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.gfj.2020.100574
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104402832030274X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.gfj.2020.100574?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Li, Ying & Holland, A. Steven & Kazemi, Hossein B., 2019. "Duration of poor performance and risk shifting by hedge fund managers," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 35-47.
    2. Michael C. Jensen, 1968. "The Performance Of Mutual Funds In The Period 1945–1964," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 23(2), pages 389-416, May.
    3. Bali, Turan G. & Brown, Stephen J. & Caglayan, Mustafa Onur, 2012. "Systematic risk and the cross section of hedge fund returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(1), pages 114-131.
    4. Gruber, Martin J, 1996. "Another Puzzle: The Growth in Activity Managed Mutual Funds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(3), pages 783-810, July.
    5. Turan G. Bali & Stephen J. Brown & K. Ozgur Demirtas, 2013. "Do Hedge Funds Outperform Stocks and Bonds?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(8), pages 1887-1903, August.
    6. William Fung & David A. Hsieh & Narayan Y. Naik & Tarun Ramadorai, 2008. "Hedge Funds: Performance, Risk, and Capital Formation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(4), pages 1777-1803, August.
    7. Jonathan B. Berk & Richard C. Green, 2004. "Mutual Fund Flows and Performance in Rational Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(6), pages 1269-1295, December.
    8. Agarwal, Vikas & Mullally, Kevin A. & Naik, Narayan Y., 2015. "The Economics and Finance of Hedge Funds: A Review of the Academic Literature," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 10(1), pages 1-111, December.
    9. Amin, Gaurav S. & Kat, Harry M., 2003. "Hedge Fund Performance 1990–2000: Do the “Money Machines†Really Add Value?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(2), pages 251-274, June.
    10. Agarwal, Vikas & Green, T. Clifton & Ren, Honglin, 2018. "Alpha or beta in the eye of the beholder: What drives hedge fund flows?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(3), pages 417-434.
    11. Agarwal, Vikas & Daniel, Naveen D. & Naik, Narayan Y., 2009. "Role of managerial incentives and discretion in hedge fund performance," CFR Working Papers 04-04, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    12. Berk, Jonathan B. & van Binsbergen, Jules H., 2015. "Measuring skill in the mutual fund industry," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 1-20.
    13. Marcin Kacperczyk & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh & Laura Veldkamp, 2014. "Time-Varying Fund Manager Skill," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(4), pages 1455-1484, August.
    14. Robert Kosowski & Allan Timmermann & Russ Wermers & Hal White, 2006. "Can Mutual Fund “Stars” Really Pick Stocks? New Evidence from a Bootstrap Analysis," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(6), pages 2551-2595, December.
    15. Stafylas, Dimitrios & Anderson, Keith & Uddin, Moshfique, 2017. "Recent advances in explaining hedge fund returns: Implicit factors and exposures," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 69-87.
    16. Carl Ackermann & Richard McEnally & David Ravenscraft, 1999. "The Performance of Hedge Funds: Risk, Return, and Incentives," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(3), pages 833-874, June.
    17. Agarwal, Vikas & Boyson, Nicole M. & Naik, Narayan Y., 2009. "Hedge Funds for Retail Investors? An Examination of Hedged Mutual Funds," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(2), pages 273-305, April.
    18. Eugene F. Fama & Kenneth R. French, 2010. "Luck versus Skill in the Cross‐Section of Mutual Fund Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(5), pages 1915-1947, October.
    19. René M. Stulz, 2007. "Hedge Funds: Past, Present, and Future," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 175-194, Spring.
    20. Bali, Turan G. & Brown, Stephen J. & Caglayan, Mustafa Onur, 2011. "Do hedge funds' exposures to risk factors predict their future returns?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(1), pages 36-68, July.
    21. Vikas Agarwal, 2004. "Risks and Portfolio Decisions Involving Hedge Funds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(1), pages 63-98.
    22. Vikas Agarwal & Naveen D. Daniel & Narayan Y. Naik, 2009. "Role of Managerial Incentives and Discretion in Hedge Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(5), pages 2221-2256, October.
    23. Jeffrey A. Busse & Amit Goyal & Sunil Wahal, 2010. "Performance and Persistence in Institutional Investment Management," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(2), pages 765-790, April.
    24. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    25. Bali, Turan G. & Brown, Stephen J. & Caglayan, Mustafa O., 2014. "Macroeconomic risk and hedge fund returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(1), pages 1-19.
    26. Cai, Biqing & Cheng, Tingting & Yan, Cheng, 2018. "Time-varying skills (versus luck) in U.S. active mutual funds and hedge funds," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 81-106.
    27. Edelman, Daniel & Fung, William & Hsieh, David A., 2013. "Exploring uncharted territories of the hedge fund Industry: Empirical characteristics of mega hedge fund firms," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(3), pages 734-758.
    28. El Kalak, Izidin & Azevedo, Alcino & Hudson, Robert, 2016. "Reviewing the hedge funds literature II: Hedge funds' returns and risk management characteristics," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 55-66.
    29. Fung, William & Hsieh, David A., 2011. "The risk in hedge fund strategies: Theory and evidence from long/short equity hedge funds," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 547-569, September.
    30. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    31. Harvey, Campbell R. & Liu, Yan, 2019. "Cross-sectional alpha dispersion and performance evaluation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(2), pages 273-296.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Choi, Hae Mi & Gupta-Mukherjee, Swasti, 2022. "Price sensitivity of the consumer-investor: Evidence from energy prices and mutual fund fees," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    2. Yang, Fan & Havranek, Tomas & Irsova, Zuzana & Novak, Jiri, 2022. "Hedge Fund Performance: A Quantitative Survey," EconStor Preprints 260612, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    3. Ali, Sara & Badshah, Ihsan & Demirer, Riza, 2022. "Value-at-risk and the cross section of emerging market hedge fund returns," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Agarwal, Vikas & Green, T. Clifton & Ren, Honglin, 2018. "Alpha or beta in the eye of the beholder: What drives hedge fund flows?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(3), pages 417-434.
    2. Benoît Dewaele, 2013. "Portfolio Optimization for Hedge Funds through Time-Varying Coefficients," Working Papers CEB 13-032, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    3. Namvar, Ethan & Phillips, Blake & Pukthuanthong, Kuntara & Raghavendra Rau, P., 2016. "Do hedge funds dynamically manage systematic risk?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 1-15.
    4. Benoît Dewaele, 2013. "Leverage and Alpha: The Case of Funds of Hedge Funds," Working Papers CEB 13-033, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    5. Agarwal, Vikas & Ruenzi, Stefan & Weigert, Florian, 2017. "Tail risk in hedge funds: A unique view from portfolio holdings," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(3), pages 610-636.
    6. Charles Cao & Grant Farnsworth & Hong Zhang, 2021. "The Economics of Hedge Fund Startups: Theory and Empirical Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(3), pages 1427-1469, June.
    7. Canepa, Alessandra & de la O. González, María & Skinner, Frank S., 2020. "Hedge fund strategies: A non-parametric analysis," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    8. Agarwal, Vikas & Green, Tracy Clifton & Ren, Honglin, 2017. "Alpha or beta in the eye of the beholder: What drives hedge fund flows?," CFR Working Papers 15-08, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR), revised 2017.
    9. Andrew W. Lo & Mila Getmansky & Peter A. Lee, 2015. "Hedge Funds: A Dynamic Industry in Transition," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 483-577, December.
    10. El Kalak, Izidin & Azevedo, Alcino & Hudson, Robert, 2016. "Reviewing the hedge funds literature II: Hedge funds' returns and risk management characteristics," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 55-66.
    11. Kooli, Maher & Zhang, Min, 2022. "Not only skill but also scale: Evidence from the hedge funds industry," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    12. Agarwal, Vikas & Fos, Vyacheslav & Jiang, Wei, 2010. "Inferring reporting biases in hedge fund databases from hedge fund equity holdings," CFR Working Papers 10-08, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    13. Newton, David & Platanakis, Emmanouil & Stafylas, Dimitrios & Sutcliffe, Charles & Ye, Xiaoxia, 2021. "Hedge fund strategies, performance &diversification: A portfolio theory & stochastic discount factor approach," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(5).
    14. Sandro Lunghi & Daniel Schmidt & Bastian von Beschwitz, 2021. "Fundamental Arbitrage under the Microscope: Evidence from Detailed Hedge Fund Transaction Data," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-022, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    15. Bali, Turan G. & Weigert, Florian, 2021. "Hedge funds and the positive idiosyncratic volatility effect," CFR Working Papers 21-01, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    16. Stafylas, Dimitrios & Andrikopoulos, Athanasios & Tolikas, Konstantinos, 2023. "Hedge fund performance persistence under different business cycles and stock market regimes," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    17. Yong Chen & Bing Han & Jing Pan, 2021. "Sentiment Trading and Hedge Fund Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(4), pages 2001-2033, August.
    18. Mason, Andrew & Agyei-Ampomah, Sam & Skinner, Frank, 2016. "Realism, skill, and incentives: Current and future trends in investment management and investment performance," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 31-40.
    19. Servaes, Henri & Sigurdsson, Kari, 2022. "The Costs and Benefits of Performance Fees in Mutual Funds," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    20. Vikas Agarwal & Stefan Ruenzi & Florian Weigert, 2018. "Unobserved Performance of Hedge Funds," Working Papers on Finance 1825, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Hedge funds; Manager skill; Value added; Alpha; Bootstrap;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:glofin:v:49:y:2021:i:c:s104402832030274x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620162 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.