IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mfj/journl/v23y2019i1-2p37-64.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are Funds of Hedge Funds Efficient? An Empirical Analysis for North American, Asia Pacific, and European Long/Short Funds of Hedge Funds

Author

Listed:
  • Lan T.P. Nguyen

    (Multinational University, Malaysia)

  • Malick O. Sy

    (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Australia)

  • Cheng M. Yu

    (Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), Malaysia)

  • Sayed Hossain

    (Cedar Valley College, USA)

  • Tan B. Chen

    (Multimedia University, Malaysia)

Abstract

This study aims to examine whether long/short funds of hedge funds truly provide better diversification benefits to hedge fund investors as compared to efficient portfolios of long/short hedge funds in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Data of long/short hedge funds and long/short FOHFs are obtained from Eurekahedge databases from 1st January 2008 to 31st December 2016. Mean-variance optimization method is employed to construct efficient portfolios of 100 long/short hedge funds with highest Sharpe ratios for each of the selected regions. To ensure the robustness of our findings, two rolling windows of observation are set up for a comparative analysis. This study concludes that most of the single-region focused long/short FOHFs in the sample, did not outperform the constructed efficient portfolios of long/short hedge funds investing in the same region. In fact, many long/short FOHFs did not survive more than a period of six years as observed in this study.

Suggested Citation

  • Lan T.P. Nguyen & Malick O. Sy & Cheng M. Yu & Sayed Hossain & Tan B. Chen, 2019. "Are Funds of Hedge Funds Efficient? An Empirical Analysis for North American, Asia Pacific, and European Long/Short Funds of Hedge Funds," Multinational Finance Journal, Multinational Finance Journal, vol. 23(1-2), pages 37-64, March - J.
  • Handle: RePEc:mfj:journl:v:23:y:2019:i:1-2:p:37-64
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.mfsociety.org/modules/modDashboard/uploadFiles/journals/MJ~0~p1dl1svd771e2vl581j588lpos4.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: http://www.mfsociety.org/modules/modDashboard/uploadFiles/journals/googleScholar/1661.html
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Franklin R. Edwards & Mustafa Onur Caglayan, 2001. "Hedge Fund Performance and Manager Skill," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(11), pages 1003-1028, November.
    2. Bill Ding & Hany A. Shawky, 2007. "The Performance of Hedge Fund Strategies and the Asymmetry of Return Distributions," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 13(2), pages 309-331, March.
    3. Fung, William & Hsieh, David A, 2001. "The Risk in Hedge Fund Strategies: Theory and Evidence from Trend Followers," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 14(2), pages 313-341.
    4. Fung, William & Hsieh, David A., 1999. "Is mean-variance analysis applicable to hedge funds?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 53-58, January.
    5. J. Cvitanic & A. Lazrak & L. Martellini & F. Zapatero, 2003. "Optimal allocation to hedge funds: an empirical analysis," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(1), pages 28-39.
    6. Shawky, Hany A. & Dai, Na & Cumming, Douglas, 2012. "Diversification in the hedge fund industry," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 166-178.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Bessler, Wolfgang & Drobetz, Wolfgang & Henn Overbeck, Jacqueline, 2005. "Hedge Funds: Die Königsdisziplin" der Kapitalanlage," Working papers 2005/04, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    2. Benoît Dewaele, 2013. "Leverage and Alpha: The Case of Funds of Hedge Funds," Working Papers CEB 13-033, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    3. Yang, Fan & Havranek, Tomas & Irsova, Zuzana & Novak, Jiri, 2022. "Hedge Fund Performance: A Quantitative Survey," EconStor Preprints 260612, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    4. Ergys Islamaj & Maziar Kazemi, 2014. "Returns to Active Management: The Case of Hedge Funds," International Finance Discussion Papers 1112, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    5. Benoît Dewaele, 2013. "Portfolio Optimization for Hedge Funds through Time-Varying Coefficients," Working Papers CEB 13-032, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    6. Martin Eling, 2009. "Does Hedge Fund Performance Persist? Overview and New Empirical Evidence," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 15(2), pages 362-401, March.
    7. 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.
    8. Rungmaitree, Pattamon & Boateng, Agyenim & Ahiabor, Frederick & Lu, Qinye, 2022. "Political risk, hedge fund strategies, and returns: Evidence from G7 countries," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    9. 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).
    10. Harris, Richard D.F. & Mazibas, Murat, 2013. "Dynamic hedge fund portfolio construction: A semi-parametric approach," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 139-149.
    11. Ludwig Chincarini, 2014. "The Impact of Quantitative Methods on Hedge Fund Performance," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 20(5), pages 857-890, November.
    12. Geetesh Bhardwaj & Gary B. Gorton & K. Geert Rouwenhorst, 2008. "Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: The Inefficient Performance and Persistence of Commodity Trading Advisors," NBER Working Papers 14424, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Hwang, Inchang & Xu, Simon & In, Francis & Kim, Tong Suk, 2017. "Systemic risk and cross-sectional hedge fund returns," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 109-130.
    14. Cumming, Douglas & Dai, Na & Haß, Lars Helge & Schweizer, Denis, 2012. "Regulatory induced performance persistence: Evidence from hedge funds," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(5), pages 1005-1022.
    15. Henn Overbeck, Jacqueline & Meier, Iwan, 2005. "Performance Analysis of Hedge Fonds," Working papers 2005/06, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    16. Douglas Cumming & Na Dai, 2010. "A Law and Finance Analysis of Hedge Funds," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 39(3), pages 997-1026, September.
    17. Harris, Richard D.F. & Mazibas, Murat, 2010. "Dynamic hedge fund portfolio construction," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 351-357, December.
    18. Martin Eling & Simone Farinelli & Damiano Rossello & Luisa Tibiletti, 2010. "Skewness in hedge funds returns: classical skewness coefficients vs Azzalini's skewness parameter," International Journal of Managerial Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 6(4), pages 290-304, September.
    19. Douglas Cumming & Na Dai, 2010. "Hedge Fund Regulation and Misreported Returns," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 16(5), pages 829-857, November.
    20. Mustafa Onur Caglayan & Sevan Ulutas, 2014. "Emerging Market Exposures and the Predictability of Hedge Fund Returns," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 43(1), pages 149-180, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    funds of hedge funds; long/short strategy; diversification; efficient portfolios; mean-variance method;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions

    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:mfj:journl:v:23:y:2019:i:1-2:p:37-64. 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: Theodossiou Panayiotis (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mfsssea.html .

    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.