Leveraged investment funds: A framework for assessing risks and designing policies

This article develops a framework for assessing risks and formulating policies for leveraged alternative investment funds by integrating entity-level information for investment funds with transaction-level data on derivatives and repurchase agreements. Combining both types of data allows us to better understand the use of leverage in alternative investment funds and assess its implications for financial stability. Using a comprehensive set of risk metrics, our analysis identifies hedge funds and liability-driven investment (LDI) funds as the most vulnerable to leverage-related risks. We demonstrate the usefulness of our framework for risk assessment by analysing the sensitivity of leveraged funds to interest rate shocks. We find that LDI funds may face significant liquidity needs and mark-to-market losses. Hedge funds appear to be more resilient to this type of shock, but depending on their investment strategy, they could be sensitive to other risk factors. Our framework allows us to flexibly analyse other risk scenarios and to evaluate regulatory measures in terms of both their effectiveness and their precision in addressing potential vulnerabilities arising from leverage. JEL Classification: G11, G15, G23.