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Abstract:
Systemic risk is commonly used to describe the possibility of a series of correlated defaults among financial institutions---typically banks---that occur over a short period of time, often caused by a single major event. However, since the collapse of Long Term Capital Management in 1998, it has become clear that hedge funds are also involved in systemic risk exposures. The hedge-fund industry has a symbiotic relationship with the banking sector, and many banks now operate proprietary trading units that are organized much like hedge funds. As a result, the risk exposures of the hedge-fund industry may have a material impact on the banking sector, resulting in new sources of systemic risks. In this paper, we attempt to quantify the potential impact of hedge funds on systemic risk by developing a number of new risk measures for hedge funds and applying them to individual and aggregate hedge-fund returns data. These measures include: illiquidity risk exposure, nonlinear factor models for hedge-fund and banking-sector indexes, logistic regression analysis of hedge-fund liquidation probabilities, and aggregate measures of volatility and distress based on regime-switching models. Our preliminary findings suggest that the hedge-fund industry may be heading into a challenging period of lower expected returns, and that systemic risk is currently on the rise.

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Abstract:
Systemic risk is commonly used to describe the possibility of a series of correlated defaults among financial institutions - typically banks - that occur over a short period of time, often caused by a single major event. However, since the collapse of Long Term Capital Management in 1998, it has become clear that hedge funds are also involved in systemic risk exposures. The hedge-fund industry has a symbiotic relationship with the banking sector, and many banks now operate proprietary trading units that are organized much like hedge funds. As a result, the risk exposures of the hedge-fund industry may have a material impact on the banking sector, resulting in new sources of systemic risks. In this paper, we attempt to quantify the potential impact of hedge funds on systemic risk by developing a number of new risk measures for hedge funds and applying them to individual and aggregate hedge-fund returns data. These measures include: illiquidity risk exposure, nonlinear factor models for hedge-fund and banking-sector indexes, logistic regression analysis of hedge-fund liquidation probabilities, and aggregate measures of volatility and distress based on regime-switching models. Our preliminary findings suggest that the hedge-fund industry may be heading into a challenging period of lower expected returns, and that systemic risk is currently on the rise.

Hedge funds, systemic risk, financial crises, risk management

Abstract:
The returns to hedge funds and other alternative investments are often highly serially correlated in sharp contrast to the returns of more traditional investment vehicles such as long-only equity portfolios and mutual funds. In this paper, we explore several sources of such serial correlation and show that the most likely explanation is illiquidity exposure, i.e., investments in securities that are not actively traded and for which market prices are not always readily available. For portfolios of illiquid securities, reported returns will tend to be smoother than true economic returns, which will understate volatility and increase risk-adjusted performance measures such as the Sharpe ratio. We propose an econometric model of illiquidity exposure and develop estimators for the smoothing profile as well as a smoothing-adjusted Sharpe ratio. For a sample of 908 hedge funds drawn from the TASS database, we show that our estimated smoothing coefficients vary considerably across hedge-fund style categories and may be a useful proxy for quantifying illiquidity exposure.

Abstract:
The returns to hedge funds and other alternative investments are often highly serially correlated in sharp contrast to the returns of more traditional investment vehicles such as long-only equity portfolios and mutual funds. In this paper, we explore several sources of such serial correlation and show that the most likely explanation is illiquidity exposure, i.e., investments in securities that are not actively traded and for which market prices are not always readily available. For portfolios of illiquid securities, reported returns will tend to be smoother than true economic returns, which will understate volatility and increase risk-adjusted performance measures such as the Sharpe ratio. We propose an econometric model of illiquidity exposure and develop estimators for the smoothing profile as well as a smoothing-adjusted Sharpe ratio. For a sample of 908 hedge funds drawn from the TASS database, we show that our estimated smoothing coefficients vary considerably across hedge-fund style categories and may be a useful proxy for quantifying illiquidity exposure.

Hedge Funds, Serial Correlation, Market Efficiency, Performance Smoothing, Liquidity

Abstract:
We study the effect of financial crises on hedge fund risk. Using a regime-switching beta model, we separate systematic and idiosyncratic components of hedge fund exposure. The systematic exposure to various risk factors is conditional on market volatility conditions. We find that in the high-volatility regime (when the market is rolling-down and is likely to be in a crisis state) most strategies are negatively and significantly exposed to the Large-Small and Credit Spread risk factors. This suggests that liquidity risk and credit risk are potentially common factors for different hedge fund strategies in the down-state of the market, when volatility is high and returns are very low. We further explore the possibility that all hedge fund strategies exhibit a high volatility regime of the idiosyncratic risk, which could be attributed to contagion among hedge fund strategies. In our sample this event happened only during the Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) crisis of 1998. Other crises including the recent subprime mortgage crisis affected hedge funds only through systematic risk factors, and did not cause contagion among hedge funds.

Hedge Fund, Risk Management, Financial Crisis

Abstract:
In the context of convertible bond issuance, we examine the impact of arbitrage activity on underlying equity markets. In particular, we use changes in equity short interest following convertible bond issuance to identify convertible bond arbitrage activity and analyze its impact on stock market liquidity and prices for the period 1993 to 2006. There is considerable evidence of arbitrage-induced short selling resulting from issuance. Moreover, we find strong evidence that this activity is systematically related to liquidity improvements in the stock. These results are robust to controlling for the potential endogeneity of arbitrage activity.

Convertible Bond Arbitrage, Liquidity, Spillovers

Abstract:
We document the empirical properties of a sample of 1,765 funds in the TASS Hedge Fund database from 1994 to 2004 that are no longer active. The TASS sample shows that attrition rates differ significantly across investment styles, from a low of 5.2% per year on average for convertible arbitrage funds to a high of 14.4% per year on average for managed futures funds. We relate a number of factors to these attrition rates, including past performance, volatility, and investment style, and also document differences in illiquidity risk between active and liquidated funds. We conclude with a proposal for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to play a new role in promoting greater transparency and stability in the hedge-fund industry.

Hedge funds, risk management, liquidity

Abstract:
This paper studies the effect of share restrictions on the flow-performance relation of individual hedge funds. As such, we reconcile previous research that shows conflicting results for this relation without explicitly considering restrictions. Specifically, we find that hedge funds exhibit a convex flow-performance relation in the absence of share restrictions (similar to mutual funds), but exhibit a concave relation in the presence of restrictions—our evidence is consistent with both a direct effect of the binding restrictions and an indirect effect that is due to investors endogenizing expected future binding restrictions when investing their money. Further, we find that live funds exhibit a concave flow-performance relation due to stricter flow restrictions than defunct funds, which display a convex relation. Finally, we find that money is “smart,” that is, fund flows predict future hedge fund performance; however, this “smart money” effect is eliminated among funds with greater share restrictions.

hedge fund flows, share restrictions, asset illiquidity, life/defunct funds, smart money effect

Abstract:
This paper examines the potential impact of capital supply on security issuance. We focus on the role of convertible bond arbitrageurs as suppliers of capital to issuers of convertible bonds. We estimate a simultaneous equations model of demand and supply of convertible bond capital, linking the time series of aggregate convertible bond issuance to measures of capital supply: convertible bond arbitrage hedge fund flows, returns, and a proxy for arbitrageurs' use of leverage. We find that issuance is positively and significantly related to increases in all three supply measures. To provide further interpretation, we conduct a second test. We use the ban on short selling in September and October 2008 as a natural experiment to examine the impact of an exogenous shock to the supply of capital from convertible bond arbitrageurs. We find a significant decline in issuance during the ban. Results from both empirical approaches provide evidence that the supply of capital from convertible bond arbitrageurs impacts issuance.

capital structure, supply of capital, convertible bond arbitrage, hedge funds, short selling, crisis of 2008

Abstract:
This paper examines four daily hedge fund return indices: MSCI, FTSE, Dow Jones, and HFRX, all based on investable hedge funds, and three monthly hedge fund return indices: CSFB Tremont, CISDM, and HFR, which comprise both investable and non-investable hedge funds. Our study, based on standard statistical analysis, non-parametric analysis of the return distribution, and non-parametric regressions with respect to the S&P 500 index shows that key biases like fund selection, asset liquidity, data frequency, sample period, and index construction methodologies are responsible for different statistical properties of hedge fund indices. One key variable that highly affects the statistical properties of hedge fund index returns is the “investability” of hedge fund indices.

Hedge Funds, Risk Management, High frequency data

Abstract:
We document the empirical properties of a sample of 1,765 funds in the TASS Hedge Fund database from 1994 to 2004 that are no longer active. The TASS sample shows that attrition rates differ significantly across investment styles, from a low of 5.2% per year on average for convertible arbitrage funds to a high of 14.4% per year on average for managed futures funds. We relate a number of factors to these attrition rates, including past performance, volatility, and investment style, and also document differences in illiquidity risk between active and liquidated funds. We conclude with a proposal for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to play a new role in promoting greater transparency and stability in the hedge-fund industry.

Hedge funds, risk management, liquidity

Abstract:
Press accounts of hedge fund failures, rapidly followed by new hedge funds started by the same fund managers, suggests that it may not be that costly for a hedge fund manager to fail. If true, this may lead to excessive risk taking by the manager ex ante.

We undertake a systematic analysis of the cost of failure and restart for hedge fund managers in order to understand their incentives. We estimate how quickly a manager can start a new fund, and how much his assets under management will change in the process. We test how the cost of a restart varies across managers, and what variables allow us to predict this cost and thus anticipate the potential agency issue. We also investigate the likelihood of repeated failures to see if managers learn something in the process. Finally, we discuss ways in which the hedge fund contracts could mitigate this potential agency issue.