IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uto/dipeco/201902.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Hedge Fund Strategies: A non-Parametric Analysis

Author

Listed:

Abstract

We investigate why top performing hedge funds are successful. We find evidence that top performing hedge funds follow a different strategy than mediocre performing hedge funds as they accept risk factors that do and avoid factors than do not anticipate the troubling economic conditions prevailing after 2006. Holding alpha performance constant, top performing funds avoid relying on passive investment in illiquid investments but earn risk premiums by accepting market risk. Additionally, they seem able to exploit fleeting opportunities leading to momentum profits while closing losing strategies thereby avoiding momentum reversal.

Suggested Citation

  • Canepa, Alessandra & de la O. González, María & Skinner, Frank S., 2019. "Hedge Fund Strategies: A non-Parametric Analysis," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201902, University of Turin.
  • Handle: RePEc:uto:dipeco:201902
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.est.unito.it/do/home.pl/Download?doc=/allegati/wp2019dip/wp_2_2019.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rania Hentati-Kaffel & Philippe de Peretti, 2015. "Detecting performance persistence of hedge funds," Post-Print hal-02091679, HAL.
    2. Erik Vogt & Michael Fleming & Or Shachar & Tobias Adrian, 2017. "Market Liquidity After the Financial Crisis," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 9(1), pages 43-83, November.
    3. Sadka, Ronnie, 2010. "Liquidity risk and the cross-section of hedge-fund returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 54-71, October.
    4. Turan G. Bali & Stephen J. Brown & K. Ozgur Demirtas, 2013. "Do Hedge Funds Outperform Stocks and Bonds?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(8), pages 1887-1903, August.
    5. Rania Hentati & Philippe de Peretti, 2015. "Detecting performance persistence of hedge funds," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-01299837, HAL.
    6. Pastor, Lubos & Stambaugh, Robert F., 2003. "Liquidity Risk and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(3), pages 642-685, June.
    7. Dimitri Vayanos & Paul Woolley, 2013. "An Institutional Theory of Momentum and Reversal," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(5), pages 1087-1145.
    8. William Fung & David A. Hsieh & Narayan Y. Naik & Tarun Ramadorai, 2008. "Hedge Funds: Performance, Risk, and Capital Formation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(4), pages 1777-1803, August.
    9. Martin Eling, 2009. "Does Hedge Fund Performance Persist? Overview and New Empirical Evidence," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 15(2), pages 362-401, March.
    10. Bing Liang & Hyuna Park, 2007. "Risk Measures for Hedge Funds: a Cross‐sectional Approach," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 13(2), pages 333-370, March.
    11. Russell Davidson & Jean-Yves Duclos, 2000. "Statistical Inference for Stochastic Dominance and for the Measurement of Poverty and Inequality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(6), pages 1435-1464, November.
    12. Amin, Gaurav S. & Kat, Harry M., 2003. "Hedge Fund Performance 1990–2000: Do the “Money Machines†Really Add Value?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(2), pages 251-274, June.
    13. Ravi Jagannathan & Alexey Malakhov & Dmitry Novikov, 2010. "Do Hot Hands Exist among Hedge Fund Managers? An Empirical Evaluation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(1), pages 217-255, February.
    14. Agarwal, Vikas & Daniel, Naveen D. & Naik, Narayan Y., 2009. "Role of managerial incentives and discretion in hedge fund performance," CFR Working Papers 04-04, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    15. Cao, Charles & Simin, Timothy T. & Wang, Ying, 2013. "Do mutual fund managers time market liquidity?," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 279-307.
    16. Davidson, Russell & Flachaire, Emmanuel, 2008. "The wild bootstrap, tamed at last," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 146(1), pages 162-169, September.
    17. 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.
    18. Mason, Andrew & Agyei-Ampomah, Sam & Skinner, Frank, 2016. "Realism, skill, and incentives: Current and future trends in investment management and investment performance," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 31-40.
    19. Jonathan Ingersoll & Ivo Welch, 2007. "Portfolio Performance Manipulation and Manipulation-proof Performance Measures," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(5), pages 1503-1546, 2007 17.
    20. El Kalak, Izidin & Azevedo, Alcino & Hudson, Robert, 2016. "Reviewing the hedge funds literature I: Hedge funds and hedge funds' managerial characteristics," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 85-97.
    21. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 2015. "A five-factor asset pricing model," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 1-22.
    22. Aragon, George O., 2007. "Share restrictions and asset pricing: Evidence from the hedge fund industry," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 33-58, January.
    23. Haim Levy, 1992. "Stochastic Dominance and Expected Utility: Survey and Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 38(4), pages 555-593, April.
    24. Dichev, Ilia D. & Yu, Gwen, 2011. "Higher risk, lower returns: What hedge fund investors really earn," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(2), pages 248-263, May.
    25. Geltner, David Michael, 1991. "Smoothing in Appraisal-Based Returns," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 4(3), pages 327-345, September.
    26. Abhay Abhyankar & Keng-Yu Ho & Huainan Zhao, 2008. "Value versus growth: stochastic dominance criteria," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(7), pages 693-704.
    27. Stivers, Chris & Sun, Licheng, 2010. "Cross-Sectional Return Dispersion and Time Variation in Value and Momentum Premiums," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 45(4), pages 987-1014, August.
    28. Sheridan Titman & Cristian Tiu, 2011. "Do the Best Hedge Funds Hedge?," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(1), pages 123-168.
    29. Stafylas, Dimitrios & Anderson, Keith & Uddin, Moshfique, 2018. "Hedge fund performance attribution under various market conditions," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 221-237.
    30. Wong, Wing-Keung & Phoon, Kok Fai & Lean, Hooi Hooi, 2008. "Stochastic dominance analysis of Asian hedge funds," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 204-223, June.
    31. Le‐Yu Chen & Sokbae Lee, 2018. "Exact computation of GMM estimators for instrumental variable quantile regression models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(4), pages 553-567, June.
    32. Slavutskaya, Anna, 2013. "Short-term hedge fund performance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(11), pages 4404-4431.
    33. Eling, Martin & Schuhmacher, Frank, 2007. "Does the choice of performance measure influence the evaluation of hedge funds?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(9), pages 2632-2647, September.
    34. Hentati-Kaffel, Rania & de Peretti, Philippe, 2015. "Detecting performance persistence of hedge funds," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 185-192.
    35. Rania Hentati-Kaffel & Philippe de Peretti, 2015. "Detecting performance persistence of hedge funds," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-02091679, HAL.
    36. Michael S. O’Doherty & N. E. Savin & Ashish Tiwari, 2016. "Evaluating Hedge Funds with Pooled Benchmarks," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(1), pages 69-89, January.
    37. René M. Stulz, 2007. "Hedge Funds: Past, Present, and Future," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 175-194, Spring.
    38. 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.
    39. Oliver Linton & Esfandiar Maasoumi & Yoon-Jae Whang, 2005. "Consistent Testing for Stochastic Dominance under General Sampling Schemes," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(3), pages 735-765.
    40. François-Eric Racicot & William F. Rentz, 2016. "Testing Fama–French’s new five-factor asset pricing model: evidence from robust instruments," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(6), pages 444-448, April.
    41. Monica Billio & Gregory Jannin & Bertrand Maillet & Loriana Pelizzon, 2013. "Portfolio Performance Measure and A New Generalized Utility-based N-moment Measure," Working Papers 2013:22, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    42. Zheng Sun & Ashley Wang & Lu Zheng, 2012. "The Road Less Traveled: Strategy Distinctiveness and Hedge Fund Performance," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(1), pages 96-143.
    43. Garry F. Barrett & Stephen G. Donald, 2003. "Consistent Tests for Stochastic Dominance," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(1), pages 71-104, January.
    44. Daniel Capocci & Albert Corhay & Georges Hubner, 2005. "Hedge fund performance and persistence in bull and bear markets," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(5), pages 361-392.
    45. Vikas Agarwal & Naveen D. Daniel & Narayan Y. Naik, 2009. "Role of Managerial Incentives and Discretion in Hedge Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(5), pages 2221-2256, October.
    46. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    47. Bali, Turan G. & Brown, Stephen J. & Caglayan, Mustafa O., 2014. "Macroeconomic risk and hedge fund returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(1), pages 1-19.
    48. Hentati-Kaffel Rania & Peretti Philippe De, 2015. "Detecting performance persistence of hedge funds," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-01315427, HAL.
    49. Agarwal, Vikas & Naik, Narayan Y., 2000. "Multi-Period Performance Persistence Analysis of Hedge Funds," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 35(3), pages 327-342, September.
    50. Brandon, Rajna Gibson & Wang, Songtao, 2013. "Liquidity Risk, Return Predictability, and Hedge Funds’ Performance: An Empirical Study," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(1), pages 219-244, February.
    51. Chen, Yong & Liang, Bing, 2007. "Do Market Timing Hedge Funds Time the Market?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(4), pages 827-856, December.
    52. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1995. "Size and Book-to-Market Factors in Earnings and Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(1), pages 131-155, March.
    53. Fong, Wai Mun & Wong, Wing Keung & Lean, Hooi Hooi, 2005. "International momentum strategies: a stochastic dominance approach," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 89-109, February.
    54. Nicole M. Boyson & Christof W. Stahel & René M. Stulz, 2010. "Hedge Fund Contagion and Liquidity Shocks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(5), pages 1789-1816, October.
    55. El Kalak, Izidin & Azevedo, Alcino & Hudson, Robert, 2016. "Reviewing the hedge funds literature II: Hedge funds' returns and risk management characteristics," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 55-66.
    56. Aggarwal, Rajesh K. & Jorion, Philippe, 2010. "The performance of emerging hedge funds and managers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 238-256, May.
    57. Fung, William & Hsieh, David A, 2001. "The Risk in Hedge Fund Strategies: Theory and Evidence from Trend Followers," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 14(2), pages 313-341.
    58. 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.
    59. María dela O. González & Nicolas A. Papageorgiou & Frank S. Skinner, 2016. "Persistent Doubt: An Examination of Hedge Fund Performance," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 22(4), pages 613-639, September.
    60. Rania Hentati & Philippe de Peretti, 2015. "Detecting performance persistence of hedge funds," Post-Print hal-01299837, HAL.
    61. Manuel Ammann & Otto Huber & Markus Schmid, 2013. "Hedge Fund Characteristics and Performance Persistence," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 19(2), pages 209-250, March.
    62. Liang, Bing & Park, Hyuna, 2010. "Predicting Hedge Fund Failure: A Comparison of Risk Measures," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 45(1), pages 199-222, February.
    63. Aggarwal, Rajesh & Boyson, Nicole M., 2016. "The performance of female hedge fund managers," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 23-36.
    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. Giertz, Jan-Paul & Stracke, Stefan, 2019. "Strategische Personalplanung: Praxiswissen Betriebsvereinbarungen," Study / edition der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, Düsseldorf, volume 127, number 433, June.
    2. Chen, Rongda & Xu, Guorui & Xu, Feng & Jin, Chenglu & Yu, Jingjing, 2022. "A clientele effect in online lending markets: Evidence from the comovement between investor sentiment and online lending rates," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    3. Lu, Shuai & Li, Shouwei & Chen, Ning, 2022. "Robust return efficiency and herding behavior of fund managers," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 46(PA).

    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. Agarwal, Vikas & Ruenzi, Stefan & Weigert, Florian, 2017. "Tail risk in hedge funds: A unique view from portfolio holdings," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(3), pages 610-636.
    3. Benoît Dewaele, 2013. "Leverage and Alpha: The Case of Funds of Hedge Funds," Working Papers CEB 13-033, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    4. Benoît Dewaele, 2013. "Portfolio Optimization for Hedge Funds through Time-Varying Coefficients," Working Papers CEB 13-032, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    5. Vikas Agarwal & Stefan Ruenzi & Florian Weigert, 2018. "Unobserved Performance of Hedge Funds," Working Papers on Finance 1825, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance.
    6. Zheng Sun & Ashley W. Wang & Lu Zheng, 2016. "Only Winners in Tough Times Repeat: Hedge Fund Performance Persistence over Different Market Conditions," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2016-030, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    7. Agarwal, Vikas & Green, Tracy Clifton & Ren, Honglin, 2017. "Alpha or beta in the eye of the beholder: What drives hedge fund flows?," CFR Working Papers 15-08, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR), revised 2017.
    8. 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).
    9. Agarwal, Vikas & Green, T. Clifton & Ren, Honglin, 2018. "Alpha or beta in the eye of the beholder: What drives hedge fund flows?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(3), pages 417-434.
    10. Wilkens, Marco & Yao, Juan & Jeyasreedharan, Nagaratnam & Oehler, Patrick, 2013. "Measuring the performance of hedge funds using two-stage peer group benchmarks," Working Papers 2013-18, University of Tasmania, Tasmanian School of Business and Economics, revised 01 Jun 2013.
    11. Yang, Fan & Havranek, Tomas & Irsova, Zuzana & Novak, Jiri, 2022. "Hedge Fund Performance: A Quantitative Survey," EconStor Preprints 260612, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    12. Hwang, Inchang & Xu, Simon & In, Francis & Kim, Tong Suk, 2017. "Systemic risk and cross-sectional hedge fund returns," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 109-130.
    13. Bali, Turan G. & Brown, Stephen J. & Caglayan, Mustafa O., 2014. "Macroeconomic risk and hedge fund returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(1), pages 1-19.
    14. Joenväärä, Juha & Kauppila, Mikko & Kahra, Hannu, 2021. "Hedge fund portfolio selection with fund characteristics," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    15. Wenbo Wu & Jiaqi Chen & Zhibin (Ben) Yang & Michael L. Tindall, 2021. "A Cross-Sectional Machine Learning Approach for Hedge Fund Return Prediction and Selection," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(7), pages 4577-4601, July.
    16. 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.
    17. Lu, Yan & Ray, Sugata & Teo, Melvyn, 2016. "Limited attention, marital events and hedge funds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(3), pages 607-624.
    18. Stafylas, Dimitrios & Andrikopoulos, Athanasios & Tolikas, Konstantinos, 2023. "Hedge fund performance persistence under different business cycles and stock market regimes," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    19. Bali, Turan G. & Brown, Stephen J. & Caglayan, Mustafa Onur, 2012. "Systematic risk and the cross section of hedge fund returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(1), pages 114-131.
    20. Namvar, Ethan & Phillips, Blake & Pukthuanthong, Kuntara & Raghavendra Rau, P., 2016. "Do hedge funds dynamically manage systematic risk?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 1-15.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G2 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services

    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:uto:dipeco:201902. 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: Piero Cavaleri or Marina Grazioli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/detorit.html .

    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.