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Do Hedge Funds Exploit Rare Disaster Concerns?

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  • George P Gao
  • Pengjie Gao
  • Zhaogang Song

Abstract

We find hedge funds that have higher return covariation with a disaster concern index, which we develop through out-of-the-money puts on various economic sector indices, earn significantly higher returns in the cross-section. We provide evidence that these funds’ managers are more skilled at exploiting the market’s ex ante rare disaster concerns (SEDs), which may not be associated with disaster risk. In particular, high-SED funds, on average, outperform low-SED funds by 0.96% per month, but have less exposure to disaster risk. They continue to deliver superior future performance when SEDs are estimated using the disaster concern index purged of disaster risk premiums and have leverage-managing and extreme market-timing abilities. Received June 30, 2014; editorial decision August 26, 2017 by Editor Laura Starks. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web Site next to the link to the final published paper online.

Suggested Citation

  • George P Gao & Pengjie Gao & Zhaogang Song, 2018. "Do Hedge Funds Exploit Rare Disaster Concerns?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(7), pages 2650-2692.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:31:y:2018:i:7:p:2650-2692.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rfs/hhy027
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    Cited by:

    1. Karagiorgis, Ariston & Drakos, Konstantinos, 2022. "The Skewness-Kurtosis plane for non-Gaussian systems: The case of hedge fund returns," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    2. Liya Chu & Xue-Zhong He & Kai Li & Jun Tu, 2022. "Investor Sentiment and Paradigm Shifts in Equity Return Forecasting," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(6), pages 4301-4325, June.
    3. Vikas Agarwal & Stefan Ruenzi & Florian Weigert, 2018. "Unobserved Performance of Hedge Funds," Working Papers on Finance 1825, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance.
    4. Manuel Ammann & Alexander Feser, 2019. "Robust Estimation of Risk-Neutral Moments," Working Papers on Finance 1902, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance.
    5. Pascal Albert & Michael Herold & Matthias Muck, 2023. "Estimation of rare disaster concerns from option prices—An arbitrage‐free RND‐based smile construction approach," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(12), pages 1807-1835, December.
    6. Manuel Ammann & Alexander Feser, 2019. "Robust estimation of risk‐neutral moments," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(9), pages 1137-1166, September.
    7. 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).
    8. Pakorn Aschakulporn & Jin E. Zhang, 2022. "Bakshi, Kapadia, and Madan (2003) risk-neutral moment estimators: A Gram–Charlier density approach," Review of Derivatives Research, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 233-281, October.
    9. Pascal François & Rémi Galarneau‐Vincent & Geneviève Gauthier & Frédéric Godin, 2022. "Venturing into uncharted territory: An extensible implied volatility surface model," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(10), pages 1912-1940, October.
    10. Wang, Xiaoxiao, 2023. "Bank affiliation and mutual funds’ trading strategy distinctiveness," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    11. Turan G. Bali & Florian Weigert, 2018. "Have Hedge Funds Solved the Idiosyncratic Volatility Puzzle?," Working Papers on Finance 1827, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance.
    12. Liu, Mengxi (Maggie) & Chan, Kam Fong & Faff, Robert, 2022. "What can we learn from firm-level jump-induced tail risk around earnings announcements?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    13. Cheng, Tingting & Yan, Cheng & Yan, Yayi, 2021. "Improved inference for fund alphas using high-dimensional cross-sectional tests," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 57-81.
    14. PeiLin Hsieh & QinQin Zhang & Yajun Wang, 2018. "Jump risk and option liquidity in an incomplete market," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(11), pages 1334-1369, November.
    15. Julien Hambuckers & Marie Kratz & Antoine Usseglio-Carleve, 2023. "Efficient Estimation In Extreme Value Regression Models Of Hedge Fund Tail Risks," Working Papers hal-04090916, HAL.
    16. Julien Hambuckers & Marie Kratz & Antoine Usseglio-Carleve, 2023. "Efficient Estimation in Extreme Value Regression Models of Hedge Fund Tail Risks," Papers 2304.06950, arXiv.org.
    17. Wei Jiang & Jitao Ou & Zhongyan Zhu, 2021. "Mutual Fund Holdings of Credit Default Swaps: Liquidity, Yield, and Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(2), pages 537-586, April.
    18. Cortes, Gustavo S. & Gao, George P. & Silva, Felipe B.G. & Song, Zhaogang, 2022. "Unconventional monetary policy and disaster risk: Evidence from the subprime and COVID–19 crises," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    19. Matthias Muck, 2022. "Arbitrage-free smile construction on FX option markets using Garman-Kohlhagen deltas and implied volatilities," Review of Derivatives Research, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 293-314, October.
    20. Silva, Felipe Bastos Gurgel, 2021. "Fiscal Deficits, Bank Credit Risk, and Loan-Loss Provisions," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 56(5), pages 1537-1589, August.

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