Investment Strategies of Hedge Funds

Author(s):  
Ewelina Sokołowska
Author(s):  
George (Yiorgos) Allayannis ◽  
Mark R. Eaker ◽  
Alec Bocock

Fred Bocock was examining the performance of the Energy Hedge Fund and the Energy Portfolio, a hedge fund and a mutual fund respectively, which he manages. Bocock had become increasingly aware that absolute returns or relative returns (returns relative to a benchmark) may not adequately capture his performance and some measure of risk-adjusted performance was necessary. The Dynamis Energy Hedge Fund extends the discussion of performance evaluation into the hedge fund arena. (See “Zeus Asset Management,” UVA-F-1232, for an examination of performance evaluation techniques in the mutual funds arena.) More broadly, the case engages students in discussions on what hedge funds are, what investment strategies they use, and who their investors are. Since the portfolio manager of Dynamis manages both an oil sector equity mutual fund and an oil sector hedge fund, the case allows for a comparison between a hedge fund and a mutual fund. Students should consider the pros and cons of evaluating the performance of the oil stock mutual fund against a number of oil sector stock indices as well as against a number of generic indices, such as the S&P 500 Index. The use of futures, options, shorts, and leverage by hedge funds makes it a lot more difficult to measure their performance. The case comes with a spreadsheet that contains data on the energy mutual fund, the Dynamis hedge fund, and several relevant indices.


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vuk Janus ◽  
Greyson Robin Meek

Since 1997, the hedge fund industry has grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 16.07%, resulting in a 26-fold increase from its original value to its present value of $3.1 trillion Assets Under Management. This study researched the varying investment strategies used by hedge funds to determine the strategy that provides the highest returns for its investors. From the previous literature, the study identified Long/Short Equity, Global Macro, Arbitrage, Event Driven, and Cross-Asset Multi-Strategy as viable and relevant investment approaches. Using hedge fund index data from Bloomberg, Hedge Fund Research, Eureka Hedge, Barclay’s, and Credit Suisse, returns for each respective strategy were collected and compared against the Bloomberg Global Hedge Fund (BHEDGE) Index and the S&P 500 Index. Alpha adjusted returns for each strategy were later calculated and plotted against the average weighted returns of each individual strategy. The results of this study show that the L/S Equity strategy provided the highest returns for its investors. Specifically, only the L/S Equity strategy outperformed the BHEDGE Index by a narrow margin, while all other strategies provided negative alpha figures. All hedge fund strategies outperformed the overall equity market on a year-to-date basis, however, provided negative alpha returns when compared to the S&P 500 1-Year market gains. This deficit between hedge funds and the overall equity market can be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic and its inflationary effects through low interest rates, market stimulus packs, and an increased money supply.


2021 ◽  
pp. 112-135
Author(s):  
Hany A. Shawky

This chapter reviews a number of different hedge fund strategies, including equity hedge, long/short, market neutral, relative value arbitrage, convertible arbitrage strategy, capital structure arbitrage strategy, fixed income arbitrage strategy, yield curve arbitrage strategy, other relative value arbitrage strategies, emerging markets strategies, global macro strategies, event driven strategies, distressed securities, and merger arbitrage strategies. In addition, the author discusses the growth and performance of different strategies, as well as fraud, fund failures, activism, and regulation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 40-56
Author(s):  
Daniela Catan

Abstract This paper explores the relationship between hedge fund size and risk-adjusted performance employing a data sample of 245 US hedge funds classified into eight different investment strategies. The studied period spans from January 2005 to February 2021, with calculations performed both on the whole coverage period as well as three sub-periods, to isolate the pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis funds’ behavior. Similar to previous evidence found in the literature, the results reveal an inverse relationship between hedge fund size and risk-adjusted performance (as measured by the Sharpe, Treynor and Black-Treynor ratios) in most of the cases.


Author(s):  
H. Kent Baker ◽  
Greg Filbeck

This chapter provides background material for understanding the multifaceted nature of hedge funds. The first section begins by defining a hedge fund, followed by a discussion of distinguishing characteristics, benefits and risks, history of hedge funds, hedge fund investment strategies, funds of funds, hedge fund performance, and hedge fund biases, including selection bias, survivorship bias, backfill bias, and liquidation bias. The next section discusses the purpose of the book followed by sections on its distinguishing features and the intended audience. The chapter then outlines the six major parts of the book, including an abstract for each of the remaining 29 chapters. These six parts are (1) background, (2) structure of hedge funds, (3) investment strategies of hedge funds, (4) risk and regulation, (5) hedge fund performance, and (6) issues, trends, and future prospects of hedge funds. The final section offers a summary and conclusions.


2014 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 797-815 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Hodder ◽  
Jens Carsten Jackwerth ◽  
Olga Kolokolova

AbstractNumerous hedge funds stop reporting each year to commercial databases, wreaking havoc with analyzing investment strategies that incur the unobserved delisting return. We use estimated portfolio holdings for funds-of-funds to back out estimated hedge-fund delisting returns. For all exiting funds, the estimated mean delisting return is insignificantly different from the average monthly return for live hedge funds. However, funds with poor prior performance and no clearly stated delisting reason had a significantly negative estimated mean delisting return of -5.97%, suggesting that a shock to their returns “tips them over the edge” and leads to delisting.


2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 654-670
Author(s):  
Cedric Mbanga ◽  
Jeffrey Scott Jones ◽  
Seth A. Hoelscher

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the overlooked relationship between politics and the performance of anomaly-based investment strategies. Design/methodology/approach Monthly long-short portfolios are formed based on relative mispricing scores according to the Stambaugh et al. (2012, 2015) relative mispricing measure. Portfolio performance is examined throughout various presidential terms. The design also introduces economic policy uncertainty (EPU) as a possible explanatory variable for portfolio performance. Findings The analysis reveals that anomaly-based returns are higher under Republican administrations than they are under Democratic administrations. Moreover, the results show that the impact of EPU on the relationship between the political party affiliation of the president and future anomaly-based returns are driven by the election and post-election years. Practical implications The examination of returns on a long-short portfolio may be of particular value to investment companies, such as hedge funds, who regularly employ this type of strategy. Originality/value While the impact of presidential terms on raw equity returns has been well examined, the paper is the first to examine the impact of presidential terms on the return of an anomaly-based investment strategy. EPU is also introduced as an important contributing factor.


Author(s):  
David M. Smith

A diverse set of measures allow investors to evaluate hedge fund portfolio managers’ performance across different dimensions. The various measures quantify the effectiveness of security selection; account for investor flows, operating risk, and worst-case investment scenarios; net out benchmark and peer-fund performance; and control for risk factors that are unique to hedge fund investment strategies. Hedge fund return information in published databases is usually self-reported, which is a conflict of interest that produces several reporting biases and inflated published average returns. After adjusting for these biases, hedge fund average returns trail equity market returns and in fact almost exactly equal U.S. Treasury bill average returns between January 1994 and March 2016. Yet, after risk adjustment, the hedge fund performance picture brightens. In the aggregate, hedge funds have higher Sharpe ratios and multifactor alphas, and lower maximum drawdown levels than equity market benchmarks.


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