IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/corfin/v92y2025ics0929119925000331.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do hedge funds still manipulate stock prices?

Author

Listed:
  • Cui, Xinyu
  • Kolokolova, Olga

Abstract

We find no evidence of stock price manipulation by hedge funds from 2011 to 2019, despite confirming the portfolio-pumping pattern documented between 2000 and 2010. In the more recent period, the magnitude, frequency, and persistence of manipulation by hedge funds appear to have declined. This decrease is linked to reduced rewards, as fund flows no longer react positively to the end-of-quarter returns of hedge fund portfolios. Proactive regulatory actions, measured by SEC litigation cases involving hedge funds, and increased press attention to hedge fund fraud also contribute to reduced manipulation during both periods.

Suggested Citation

  • Cui, Xinyu & Kolokolova, Olga, 2025. "Do hedge funds still manipulate stock prices?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:corfin:v:92:y:2025:i:c:s0929119925000331
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2025.102765
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0929119925000331
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2025.102765?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

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nicolas P. B. Bollen & Veronika K. Pool, 2012. "Suspicious Patterns in Hedge Fund Returns and the Risk of Fraud," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(9), pages 2673-2702.
    2. Agarwal, Vikas & Gay, Gerald D. & Ling, Leng, 2014. "Window dressing in mutual funds," CFR Working Papers 11-07 [rev.3], University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    3. Stephen Brown & William Goetzmann & Bing Liang & Christopher Schwarz, 2008. "Mandatory Disclosure and Operational Risk: Evidence from Hedge Fund Registration," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2785-2815, December.
    4. Dan Bernhardt & Ryan J. Davies, 2009. "Smart fund managers? Stupid money?," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 42(2), pages 719-748, May.
    5. Daniel, Kent, et al, 1997. "Measuring Mutual Fund Performance with Characteristic-Based Benchmarks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(3), pages 1035-1058, July.
    6. Ng, Lilian & Wang, Qinghai, 2004. "Institutional trading and the turn-of-the-year effect," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 343-366, November.
    7. Cao, Charles & Chen, Yong & Liang, Bing & Lo, Andrew W., 2013. "Can hedge funds time market liquidity?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(2), pages 493-516.
    8. Paul Povel & Rajdeep Singh & Andrew Winton, 2007. "Booms, Busts, and Fraud," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(4), pages 1219-1254.
    9. Vikas Agarwal & Wei Jiang & Yuehua Tang & Baozhong Yang, 2013. "Uncovering Hedge Fund Skill from the Portfolio Holdings They Hide," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(2), pages 739-783, April.
    10. Xinyu Cui & Olga Kolokolova & Jiaguo (George) Wang, 2024. "On the Other Side of Hedge Fund Equity Trades," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(6), pages 3684-3710, June.
    11. R. David Mclean & Jeffrey Pontiff, 2016. "Does Academic Research Destroy Stock Return Predictability?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(1), pages 5-32, February.
    12. Duong, Truong X. & Meschke, Felix, 2020. "The rise and fall of portfolio pumping among U.S. mutual funds," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    13. Nicolas P.B. Bollen & Veronika K. Pool, 2009. "Do Hedge Fund Managers Misreport Returns? Evidence from the Pooled Distribution," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(5), pages 2257-2288, October.
    14. Sugato Bhattacharyya & Vikram Nanda, 2013. "Portfolio Pumping, Trading Activity and Fund Performance," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 17(3), pages 885-919.
    15. Itzhak Ben‐David & Francesco Franzoni & Augustin Landier & Rabih Moussawi, 2013. "Do Hedge Funds Manipulate Stock Prices?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(6), pages 2383-2434, December.
    16. Aragon, George O. & Nanda, Vikram, 2017. "Strategic Delays and Clustering in Hedge Fund Reported Returns," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(1), pages 1-35, February.
    17. Carole Comerton-Forde & Tālis Putniņš, 2011. "Pricing accuracy, liquidity and trader behavior with closing price manipulation," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(1), pages 110-131, March.
    18. Bollen, Nicolas P. B. & Pool, Veronika K., 2008. "Conditional Return Smoothing in the Hedge Fund Industry," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 43(2), pages 267-298, June.
    19. Mila Getmansky, 2012. "The Life Cycle of Hedge Funds: Fund Flows, Size, Competition, and Performance," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 2(01), pages 1-53.
    20. 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.
    21. Mark M. Carhart & Ron Kaniel & David K. Musto & Adam V. Reed, 2002. "Leaning for the Tape: Evidence of Gaming Behavior in Equity Mutual Funds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(2), pages 661-693, April.
    22. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:5:p:2013-2040 is not listed on IDEAS
    23. Vikas Agarwal & Naveen D. Daniel & Narayan Y. Naik, 2011. "Do Hedge Funds Manage Their Reported Returns?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(10), pages 3281-3320.
    24. Gang Hu & R. David McLean & Jeffrey Pontiff & Qinghai Wang, 2014. "The Year-End Trading Activities of Institutional Investors: Evidence from Daily Trades," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(5), pages 1593-1614.
    25. Kosowski, Robert & Naik, Narayan Y. & Teo, Melvyn, 2007. "Do hedge funds deliver alpha? A Bayesian and bootstrap analysis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 229-264, April.
    26. Colleen Honigsberg, 2019. "Hedge Fund Regulation and Fund Governance: Evidence on the Effects of Mandatory Disclosure Rules," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 57(4), pages 845-888, September.
    27. Vikas Agarwal & Gerald D. Gay & Leng Ling, 2014. "Window Dressing in Mutual Funds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(11), pages 3133-3170.
    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. 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.
    2. Duong, Truong X. & Meschke, Felix, 2020. "The rise and fall of portfolio pumping among U.S. mutual funds," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    3. Jiang, Christine & Wang, Xianzhen, 2024. "Portfolio pumping and dumping among Chinese mutual fund companies," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    4. Brown, Stephen J. & Sotes-Paladino, Juan & Wang, Jiaguo(George) & Yao, Yaqiong, 2017. "Starting on the wrong foot: Seasonality in mutual fund performance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 133-150.
    5. Imbierowicz, Björn & Rauch, Christian, 2024. "What drives startup valuations?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    6. Vikas Agarwal & Stefan Ruenzi & Florian Weigert, 2018. "Unobserved Performance of Hedge Funds," Working Papers on Finance 1825, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance.
    7. Wang, Pingle, 2024. "Portfolio pumping in mutual fund families," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    8. Agarwal, Vikas & Gay, Gerald D. & Ling, Leng, 2014. "Window dressing in mutual funds," CFR Working Papers 11-07 [rev.3], University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    9. Aineas Mallios & Taylan Mavruk, 2025. "Do ESG funds engage in portfolio pumping to gain higher flows? An application of Benford's Law," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(2), pages 1540-1563, April.
    10. Lingling Zheng & Xuemin (Sterling) Yan, 2021. "Financial Industry Affiliation and Hedge Fund Performance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(12), pages 7844-7865, December.
    11. Colleen Honigsberg, 2019. "Hedge Fund Regulation and Fund Governance: Evidence on the Effects of Mandatory Disclosure Rules," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 57(4), pages 845-888, September.
    12. Hung, Pi-Hsia & Lien, Donald & Kuo, Ming-Sin, 2020. "Window dressing in equity mutual funds," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 338-354.
    13. Itzhak Ben‐David & Francesco Franzoni & Augustin Landier & Rabih Moussawi, 2013. "Do Hedge Funds Manipulate Stock Prices?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(6), pages 2383-2434, December.
    14. Jiao, Yawen & Massa, Massimo & Zhang, Hong, 2016. "Short selling meets hedge fund 13F: An anatomy of informed demand," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(3), pages 544-567.
    15. Joshua van Vuuren & Gary van Vuuren, 2022. "Detecting Investment Fraud Using the Bias Ratio," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(2), pages 21582440221, May.
    16. Hao Liang & Lin Sun & Melvyn Teo, 2022. "Responsible Hedge Funds [Role of managerial incentives and discretion in hedge fund performance]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 26(6), pages 1585-1633.
    17. Cai, Yu & Wang, Qing, 2022. "Money funds manage returns," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    18. Mustafa O. Caglayan & Umut Celiker & Gokhan Sonaer, 2022. "Disagreement between hedge funds and other institutional investors and the cross‐section of expected stock returns," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 57(3), pages 663-689, August.
    19. Saurin Patel & Sergei Sarkissian & Lauren Cohen, 0. "Portfolio Pumping and Managerial Structure," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 34(1), pages 194-226.
    20. Andrew J. Patton & Tarun Ramadorai & Michael Streatfield, 2015. "Change You Can Believe In? Hedge Fund Data Revisions: Erratum," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(4), pages 1862-1862, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors

    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:corfin:v:92:y:2025:i:c:s0929119925000331. 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/jcorpfin .

    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.