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Assessing the Performance of Funds of Hedge Funds

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Author Info

  • Benoît Dewaele
  • Hugues Pirotte
  • N. Tuchschmid
  • E. Wallerstein

Abstract

This paper studies the performance of a sample of funds of hedge funds (FoHFs) from January 1994 to August 2009. We apply the false discoveries (FD) technique of Barras, Scaillet and Wermers (2010) to separate the FoHFs into skilled, zero-alpha and unskilled. We measure the alpha of the FoHFs using two models – (1) a 16-factor model with a combination of factors from Fung and Hsieh (2004) and Capocci, Corhay and Hübner (2005) and (2) a 13-factor model of hedge fund indices from Dow Jones Credit Suisse. Applying the FD procedure to the first model, we find that, after fees, the majority of FoHFs do not channel alpha from single-manager hedge funds. Applying the FD procedure to the second model, we find that only a very small fraction of FoHFs deliver after-fees alpha per se, i.e. on top of the alpha of the hedge fund indices. A series of robustness checks confirms the results of the FD procedure. We also compare the performance of our sample of FoHFs to artificial FoHFs constructed by randomly picking hedge funds. The lack of significant differences in the average performance of the real and artificial FoHFs confirms the results obtained by the FD procedure.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles in its series Working Papers CEB with number 11-041.

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Length: 36 p.
Date of creation: Sep 2011
Date of revision:
Publication status: Published by:
Handle: RePEc:sol:wpaper:2013/97544

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Related research

Keywords: Hedge funds; funds of funds; selection bias; abnormal returns; zero-alpha; skilled and unskilled performance; false discoveries;

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References

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  1. Capocci Daniel & Corhay Albert & Hübner Georges, 2004. "Hedge Fund Performance and Persistence in Bull and Bear Markets," Finance 0402018, EconWPA.
  2. Vikas Agarwal, 2004. "Risks and Portfolio Decisions Involving Hedge Funds," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(1), pages 63-98.
  3. Laurent Barras & Olivier Scaillet & Russ Wermers, 2010. "False Discoveries in Mutual Fund Performance: Measuring Luck in Estimated Alphas," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(1), pages 179-216, 02.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. Donald W.K. Andrews, 1988. "Heteroskedasticity and Autocorrelation Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimation," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 877R, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Jul 1989.
  7. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. " On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
  8. John D. Storey, 2002. "A direct approach to false discovery rates," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 64(3), pages 479-498.
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  1. Monkey see, monkey do
    by Tfoui in The Fount of Useless Information on 2012-01-30 12:00:00

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