Can Liquidity Risk Explain Diseconomies of Scale in Hedge Funds?

2017 ◽  
Vol 07 (02) ◽  
pp. 1750002
Author(s):  
Hany A. Shawky ◽  
Ying Wang

Using data from the Lipper TASS hedge fund database over the period 1994–2012, we examine the role of liquidity risk in explaining the relation between asset size and hedge fund performance. While a significant negative size-performance relation exists for all hedge funds, once we stratify our sample by liquidity risk, we find that such a relationship only exists among funds with the highest liquidity risk. Liquidity risk is found to be another important source of diseconomies of scale in the hedge fund industry. Evidently, for high liquidity risk funds, large funds are less able to recover from the relatively more significant losses incurred during market-wide liquidity crises, resulting in lower performance for large funds relative to small funds.

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-101
Author(s):  
Soumaya Ben Khelifa

While the performance of hedge funds has grabbed much attention from researchers, a few studies have been conducted on the drivers of hedge fund liquidity and performance (Shaub & Schmid, 2013). This study proposes new approaches to investigate the effect of share restrictions on European hedge fund performance and liquidity. We run different regressions of 1) returns, 2) flows, and 3) exposure to market liquidity risk on share restrictions, managerial incentives, and a set of control variables as independent variables. Using a sample of 1423 European hedge funds, our results suggest that restrictions imposed by European hedge funds add economic value to investors. Furthermore, we find that European hedge funds with strong share restrictions take on lower liquidity risk. There is a weak difference in liquidity risk exposure across directional European hedge funds with and without share restrictions. In addition, European hedge funds’ experience, large outflows during a crisis, and all share restrictions do not seem to be significantly related to funding flows in the crisis period, as well as in times of non-crisis. Finally, only the groups of young funds are associated with significant funds exposure to market liquidity risk


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lingling Zheng ◽  
Xuemin (Sterling) Yan

Affiliation with a financial conglomerate may provide hedge funds with superior information about the conglomerate’s lending, investment banking, and brokerage clients; such affiliation can also lead to potential conflicts with the other units of the conglomerate and exacerbate the conflict between hedge fund companies and hedge fund investors. We find that affiliated funds significantly underperform unaffiliated funds. A difference-in-difference analysis confirms the negative relation between financial industry affiliation and hedge fund performance. Affiliated funds pursue asset-gathering strategies, overweight their conducted initial public offerings/seasoned equity offerings clients’ stocks, are more likely to commit legal and regulatory violations, and tend to exhibit a greater number of internal conflicts. Our results are consistent with conflict of interest exerting a negative impact on the performance of affiliated hedge funds. However, it is possible that lack of skill also contributes to the underperformance of affiliated funds. This paper was accepted by Karl Diether, finance.


2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (12) ◽  
pp. 5505-5531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Grinblatt ◽  
Gergana Jostova ◽  
Lubomir Petrasek ◽  
Alexander Philipov

Classifying mandatory 13F stockholding filings by manager type reveals that hedge fund strategies are mostly contrarian, and mutual fund strategies are largely trend following. The only institutional performers—the two thirds of hedge fund managers that are contrarian—earn alpha of 2.4% per year. Contrarian hedge fund managers tend to trade profitably with all other manager types, especially when purchasing stocks from momentum-oriented hedge and mutual fund managers. Superior contrarian hedge fund performance exhibits persistence and stems from stock-picking ability rather than liquidity provision. Aggregate short sales further support these conclusions about the style and skill of various fund manager types. This paper was accepted by Tyler Shumway, finance.


2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (10) ◽  
pp. 4771-4810 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clemens Sialm ◽  
Zheng Sun ◽  
Lu Zheng

Abstract Our paper analyzes the geographical preferences of hedge fund investors and the implication of these preferences for hedge fund performance. We find that funds of hedge funds overweigh their investments in hedge funds located in the same geographical areas and that funds with a stronger local bias exhibit superior performance. Local bias also gives rise to excess flow comovement and extreme return clustering within geographic areas. Overall, our results suggest that while funds of funds benefit from local advantages, their local bias also creates market segmentation that can destabilize the underlying hedge funds.


2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 1539-1571 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juha Joenväärä ◽  
Robert Kosowski ◽  
Pekka Tolonen

This paper examines the effect of real-world, investor-level investment constraints, including several that have not been studied before, on hedge fund performance and its persistence. Using a large consolidated database, we demonstrate that hedge fund performance persistence is significantly reduced when rebalancing rules reflect fund size restrictions and liquidity constraints but remains statistically significant at higher rebalancing frequencies. Hypothetical investor portfolios that incorporate additional minimum diversification constraints, minimum investment requirements, and focus on open funds suggest that the performance and its persistence documented in earlier studies of hedge funds is not easily exploitable, especially by large investors.


Author(s):  
Komlan Sedzro

Hedge funds are still relatively unfamiliar to most investors despite the intense popularity they have enjoyed in recent years. Measuring the performance of these financial instruments using traditional methods is, however, problematic, since their returns do not follow a normal distribution. In this study, we consider rankings obtained with the Stochastic Dominance (SD) method and compare them with ranks produced using Sharpe Ratios, Modified Sharpe Ratios, and Data Envelopment Analysis. We also explore the advantages highlighted by the literature of the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method in relation to traditional measures like Sharpe ratio and Modified Sharpe ratio. Our results show that classic performance measures are better correlated with SD than DEA results.


Author(s):  
Jeffrey S. Smith ◽  
Kenneth Small ◽  
Phillip Njoroge

This chapter discusses investment benchmarking and measurement bias in hedge fund performance. A good benchmark should be unambiguous, investible, measurable, appropriate, reflective of current investment opinions, specified in advance, and accountable. Additionally, a good benchmark should be simple, easily replicable, comparable, and representative of the market that the benchmark is trying to capture. Several biases, such as database selection bias, survivorship bias, style classification bias, backfill bias, self-reporting bias, and return-smoothing bias exist that impede the process of creating a benchmark. These biases increase the difficulty of studying hedge fund returns and managerial skill. However, most of the academic research on hedge fund returns report positive alphas for hedge funds.


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