IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cer/papers/wp672.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the Performance of Cryptocurrency Funds

Author

Listed:
  • Daniele Bianchi
  • Mykola Babiak

Abstract

We investigate the performance of funds that specialise in cryptocurrency markets. In doing so, we contribute to a growing literature that aims to understand the role of digital assets as an investment. Methodologically, we implement a novel bootstrap approach that samples jointly the cross-sectional distribution of alphas and controls for the nonnormality of fund returns and their within-strategy correlations. Empirically, we find that a sizable minority of managers are able to cover their costs and generate large alphas. However, there is weak statistical evidence of managers’ skills once withinstrategy common variation in returns is taken into account.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniele Bianchi & Mykola Babiak, 2020. "On the Performance of Cryptocurrency Funds," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp672, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
  • Handle: RePEc:cer:papers:wp672
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cerge-ei.cz/pdf/wp/Wp672.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kenneth R. French, 2008. "Presidential Address: The Cost of Active Investing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(4), pages 1537-1573, August.
    2. Getmansky, Mila & Lo, Andrew W. & Makarov, Igor, 2004. "An econometric model of serial correlation and illiquidity in hedge fund returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(3), pages 529-609, December.
    3. Chordia, Tarun & Roll, Richard & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2008. "Liquidity and market efficiency," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 249-268, February.
    4. Richard A. Ippolito, 1989. "Efficiency with Costly Information: A Study of Mutual Fund Performance, 1965–1984," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 104(1), pages 1-23.
    5. Hanno Lustig & Nikolai Roussanov & Adrien Verdelhan, 2011. "Common Risk Factors in Currency Markets," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(11), pages 3731-3777.
    6. Michael C. Jensen, 1968. "The Performance Of Mutual Funds In The Period 1945–1964," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 23(2), pages 389-416, May.
    7. Marcin Kacperczyk & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh & Laura Veldkamp, 2014. "Time-Varying Fund Manager Skill," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(4), pages 1455-1484, August.
    8. Avramov, Doron & Wermers, Russ, 2006. "Investing in mutual funds when returns are predictable," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 339-377, August.
    9. Alexander Dyck & Karl V. Lins & Lukasz Pomorski, 2013. "Does Active Management Pay? New International Evidence," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 200-228.
    10. Dyhrberg, Anne Haubo, 2016. "Bitcoin, gold and the dollar – A GARCH volatility analysis," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 16(C), pages 85-92.
    11. Berk, Jonathan B. & van Binsbergen, Jules H., 2015. "Measuring skill in the mutual fund industry," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 1-20.
    12. Huij, Joop & Verbeek, Marno, 2007. "Cross-sectional learning and short-run persistence in mutual fund performance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 973-997, March.
    13. Yukun Liu & Aleh Tsyvinski, 2018. "Risks and Returns of Cryptocurrency," NBER Working Papers 24877, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Lukas Menkhoff & Lucio Sarno & Maik Schmeling & Andreas Schrimpf, 2016. "Information Flows in Foreign Exchange Markets: Dissecting Customer Currency Trades," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(2), pages 601-634, April.
    15. Victor DeMiguel & Lorenzo Garlappi & Raman Uppal, 2009. "Optimal Versus Naive Diversification: How Inefficient is the 1-N Portfolio Strategy?," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(5), pages 1915-1953, May.
    16. Brad M. Barber & Xing Huang & Terrance Odean, 2016. "Which Factors Matter to Investors? Evidence from Mutual Fund Flows," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(10), pages 2600-2642.
    17. Berk, Jonathan B. & van Binsbergen, Jules H., 2016. "Assessing asset pricing models using revealed preference," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(1), pages 1-23.
    18. Pástor, Ľuboš & Stambaugh, Robert F. & Taylor, Lucian A., 2015. "Scale and skill in active management," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 23-45.
    19. Russ Wermers, 2000. "Mutual Fund Performance: An Empirical Decomposition into Stock-Picking Talent, Style, Transactions Costs, and Expenses," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1655-1703, August.
    20. Marcin Kacperczyk & Amit Seru, 2007. "Fund Manager Use of Public Information: New Evidence on Managerial Skills," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(2), pages 485-528, April.
    21. Chordia, Tarun & Roll, Richard & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2011. "Recent trends in trading activity and market quality," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(2), pages 243-263, August.
    22. Makarov, Igor & Schoar, Antoinette, 2020. "Trading and arbitrage in cryptocurrency markets," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 100409, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    23. Shane A. Corwin & Paul Schultz, 2012. "A Simple Way to Estimate Bid‐Ask Spreads from Daily High and Low Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(2), pages 719-760, April.
    24. Moneta, Fabio, 2015. "Measuring bond mutual fund performance with portfolio characteristics," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 223-242.
    25. Yang, Dennis & Zhang, Qiang, 2000. "Drift-Independent Volatility Estimation Based on High, Low, Open, and Close Prices," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 73(3), pages 477-491, July.
    26. Makarov, Igor & Schoar, Antoinette, 2020. "Trading and arbitrage in cryptocurrency markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(2), pages 293-319.
    27. De Bondt, Werner F M & Thaler, Richard, 1985. "Does the Stock Market Overreact?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(3), pages 793-805, July.
    28. 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, February.
    29. S. P. Kothari & Jerold B. Warner, 2001. "Evaluating Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(5), pages 1985-2010, October.
    30. Russ Wermers, 2000. "Mutual Fund Performance: An Empirical Decomposition into Stock‐Picking Talent, Style, Transactions Costs, and Expenses," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1655-1695, August.
    31. Anthony W. Lynch & David K. Musto, 2003. "How Investors Interpret Past Fund Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(5), pages 2033-2058, October.
    32. Conrad, Jennifer & Wahal, Sunil & Xiang, Jin, 2015. "High-frequency quoting, trading, and the efficiency of prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(2), pages 271-291.
    33. 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.
    34. Teodor Dyakov & Hao Jiang & Marno Verbeek, 2020. "Trade Less and Exit Overcrowded Markets: Lessons from International Mutual Funds," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 24(3), pages 677-731.
    35. Diebold, Francis X & Mariano, Roberto S, 2002. "Comparing Predictive Accuracy," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 134-144, January.
    36. Mitchell A. Petersen, 2009. "Estimating Standard Errors in Finance Panel Data Sets: Comparing Approaches," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(1), pages 435-480, January.
    37. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    38. Gruber, Martin J, 1996. "Another Puzzle: The Growth in Activity Managed Mutual Funds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(3), pages 783-810, July.
    39. David Yermack, 2013. "Is Bitcoin a Real Currency? An economic appraisal," NBER Working Papers 19747, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    40. Quinn McNemar, 1947. "Note on the sampling error of the difference between correlated proportions or percentages," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 12(2), pages 153-157, June.
    41. Brown, Stephen J, et al, 1992. "Survivorship Bias in Performance Studies," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 5(4), pages 553-580.
    42. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    43. Harry Mamaysky & Matthew Spiegel & Hong Zhang, 2007. "Improved Forecasting of Mutual Fund Alphas and Betas," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 11(3), pages 359-400.
    44. Nicolas P. B. Bollen & Jeffrey A. Busse, 2001. "On the Timing Ability of Mutual Fund Managers," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(3), pages 1075-1094, June.
    45. Jonathan B. Berk & Richard C. Green, 2004. "Mutual Fund Flows and Performance in Rational Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(6), pages 1269-1295, December.
    46. Joop Huij & Marno Verbeek, 2009. "On the Use of Multifactor Models to Evaluate Mutual Fund Performance," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 38(1), pages 75-102, March.
    47. Glode, Vincent, 2011. "Why mutual funds "underperform"," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(3), pages 546-559, March.
    48. Robert Novy‐Marx & Joshua Rauh, 2011. "Public Pension Promises: How Big Are They and What Are They Worth?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(4), pages 1211-1249, August.
    49. Daniele Bianchi & Massimo Guidolin & Manuela Pedio, 2020. "Dissecting Time-Varying Risk Exposures in Cryptocurrency Markets," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 20143, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    50. Marcin Kacperczyk & Clemens Sialm & Lu Zheng, 2005. "On the Industry Concentration of Actively Managed Equity Mutual Funds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(4), pages 1983-2011, August.
    51. Narasimhan Jegadeesh & Sheridan Titman, 2001. "Profitability of Momentum Strategies: An Evaluation of Alternative Explanations," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 699-720, April.
    52. Malkiel, Burton G, 1995. "Returns from Investing in Equity Mutual Funds 1971 to 1991," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(2), pages 549-572, June.
    53. Jeffrey A. Busse & Paul J. Irvine, 2006. "Bayesian Alphas and Mutual Fund Persistence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(5), pages 2251-2288, October.
    54. Juhani T. Linnainmaa, 2013. "Reverse Survivorship Bias," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(3), pages 789-813, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ben Khelifa, Soumaya & Guesmi, Khaled & Urom, Christian, 2021. "Exploring the relationship between cryptocurrencies and hedge funds during COVID-19 crisis," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    2. Andreas Renard Widarto & Harjum Muharam & Sugeng Wahyudi & Irene Rini Demi Pangestuti, 2022. "ASEAN-5 and Crypto Hedge Fund: Dynamic Portfolio Approach," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(2), pages 21582440221, April.
    3. Daniele Bianchi & Mykola Babiak, 2021. "A Factor Model for Cryptocurrency Returns," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp710, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    4. Daniele Bianchi & Massimo Guidolin & Manuela Pedio, 2020. "Dissecting Time-Varying Risk Exposures in Cryptocurrency Markets," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 20143, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.

    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. Bianchi, Daniele & Babiak, Mykola, 2021. "On the Performance of Cryptocurrency Funds," Working Paper Series 408, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    2. Bianchi, Daniele & Babiak, Mykola, 2022. "On the performance of cryptocurrency funds," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    3. Matallín-Sáez, Juan Carlos & Soler-Domínguez, Amparo & Tortosa-Ausina, Emili, 2016. "On the robustness of persistence in mutual fund performance," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 192-231.
    4. Ľuboš Pástor & Robert F. Stambaugh & Lucian A. Taylor, 2017. "Do Funds Make More When They Trade More?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(4), pages 1483-1528, August.
    5. Victor DeMiguel & Javier Gil-Bazo & Francisco J. Nogales & André A. P. Santos, 2021. "Can Machine Learning Help to Select Portfolios of Mutual Funds?," Working Papers 1245, Barcelona School of Economics.
    6. 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.
    7. Ferson, Wayne E., 2013. "Investment Performance: A Review and Synthesis," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 969-1010, Elsevier.
    8. Cuthbertson, Keith & Nitzsche, Dirk & O'Sullivan, Niall, 2008. "UK mutual fund performance: Skill or luck?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 613-634, September.
    9. Livingston, Miles & Yao, Ping & Zhou, Lei, 2019. "The volatility of mutual fund performance," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 1-1.
    10. Ferson, Wayne & Mo, Haitao, 2016. "Performance measurement with selectivity, market and volatility timing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 93-110.
    11. Grønborg, Niels S. & Lunde, Asger & Timmermann, Allan & Wermers, Russ, 2021. "Picking funds with confidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(1), pages 1-28.
    12. Cai, Biqing & Cheng, Tingting & Yan, Cheng, 2018. "Time-varying skills (versus luck) in U.S. active mutual funds and hedge funds," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 81-106.
    13. Berk, Jonathan B. & van Binsbergen, Jules H., 2015. "Measuring skill in the mutual fund industry," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 1-20.
    14. Pástor, Ľuboš & Stambaugh, Robert F. & Taylor, Lucian A., 2015. "Scale and skill in active management," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 23-45.
    15. Zambrana, Rafael & Zapatero, Fernando, 2021. "A tale of two types: Generalists vs. specialists in asset management," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 844-861.
    16. Cuthbertson, Keith & Nitzsche, Dirk & O'Sullivan, Niall, 2016. "A review of behavioural and management effects in mutual fund performance," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 162-176.
    17. Ekholm, Anders G., 2012. "Portfolio returns and manager activity: How to decompose tracking error into security selection and market timing," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 349-358.
    18. Lee, Jaeram & Jeon, Hyunglae & Kang, Jangkoo & Lee, Changjun, 2020. "Do actively managed mutual funds exploit stock market mispricing?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    19. Andrew Clare & Mariana Clare, 2019. "An examination of ex ante fund performance: identifying indicators of future performance," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 20(3), pages 175-195, May.
    20. Hendriock, Mario, 2020. "Implied cost of capital and mutual fund performance," CFR Working Papers 20-11, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    cryptocurrency; investments; active management; alternative investments; boot-strap methods; bitcoin;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G17 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Financial Forecasting and Simulation
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • C58 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Financial Econometrics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cer:papers:wp672. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: . General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eiacacz.html .

    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: Lucie Vasiljevova (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eiacacz.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.