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Abstract:
This article analyzes convertible arbitrage, one of the most successful hedge fund strategies. The aim of the strategy is to exploit underpricing of convertible bonds by taking a long position in a convertible and a short position in the underlying asset. The authors find that convertible bonds are underpriced at the issuance dates; at the same time, short sales of underlying equity increase significantly. Both effects are stronger and more persistent for equity-like convertibles than for debtlike convertibles. Furthermore, short-sale pressures negatively affect stock returns around the announcement and issuance dates of convertibles. All these factors have likely contributed to the shift toward issuing more debtlike convertibles in recent years, which, in turn, has substantially lowered the returns from convertible arbitrage.

Alternative Investments, Hedge Fund Strategies, Equity Investments, Fundamental Analysis and Valuation Models, Research Sources, Portfolio Management, Hedge Fund Strategies

Abstract:
This paper analyzes convertible arbitrage, one of the most successful hedge fund strategies. The aim of the strategy is to exploit underpricing of convertible bonds by taking a long position in a convertible and a short position in the underlying asset. We find that convertible bonds are underpriced at the issuance dates. At the same time, short sales of underlying equity significantly increase. Both effects are stronger and more persistent for equity-like than for debt-like convertibles. Furthermore, we find that short sales pressures negatively affect stock returns around announcement and issuance dates of convertibles. In our opinion, this contributed to the shift towards issuing more debt-like convertibles in recent years, which in turn substantially lowered the returns from convertible arbitrage.

convertible arbitrage, underpricing, convertible bonds, hedge funds, excess returns

Abstract:
We study the pricing of reverse convertible bonds. These are bonds that carry high coupon payments. In exchange, the issuer has an option at the maturity date to either redeem the bonds in cash, or to deliver a pre-specified number of shares. We find that Dutch plain vanilla and knock-in reverse convertible bonds are, on average, overpriced by almost 6%. This overpricing is confirmed in a model-free analysis with respect to option and bond pricing models. We find that rational factors explain 23% of the documented overpricing. In addition, we find that the combination of financial marketing, framing, and the representativeness bias further increases our ability to explain the documented overpricing to more than 35%.

reverse convertible bonds, reverse exchangeable securities, structured products

Abstract:
This paper surveys the literature on socially responsible investments (SRI). Over the past decade, SRI has experienced an explosive growth around the world. Particular to the SRI funds is that both financial goals and social objectives are pursued. While corporate social responsibility (CSR) - defined as good corporate governance, sound environmental standards, and good management towards stakeholder relations - may create value for shareholders, participating in other social and ethical issues is likely to destroy shareholder value. Furthermore, the risk-adjusted returns of SRI funds in the US and UK are not significantly different from those of conventional funds, whereas SRI funds in Continental Europe and Asia-Pacific strongly underperform benchmark portfolios. Finally, the volatility of money-flows is lower in SRI funds than of conventional funds, and SRI investors' decisions to invest in an SRI fund are less affected by management fees than the decisions by conventional fund investors.

socially responsible investments, ethical investing, corporate social responsibility, mutual funds, performance evaluation, money-flows, investment screens, mutual funds

Abstract:
The literature on the motives for the issuance of convertible debt is reviewed. This literature shows a large discrepancy between theory and practice. Surveys show that managers base their motives for the use of convertible debt on factors that are irrational according to the theoretical literature. This theoretical literature in turn offers a number of rational motives. These motives are based on the resolution of the problems of informational asymmetry and agency costs, on tax motivations and managerial entrenchment arguments. Most of the rational motives have been investigated in the cross-sectional studies, which offer general support to at least some of them. However, the survey studies find very little to no support for the rational motives. This might be due to either the sensitivity of the surveys to the question contents, to the use of weak proxies in the cross-sectional studies, or a combination of these. In our view, future research in this field should aim for an approach that combines the use of survey data and cross-sectional analysis. We believe that such an approach may bridge the gap between theory and practice.

convertible debt, security issuance, theory, surveys, empirical evidence, review

Abstract:
In this Paper we evaluate (return based) style analysis. The portfolio and positivity constraints imposed by style analysis are useful in constructing mimicking factor portfolios without short positions. We use a simple simulation experiment to show that imposing these constraints in estimating the factor portfolios leads to significant efficiency gains, if the factor loadings are indeed positively weighted portfolios. If this is not the case though, imposing the constraints can substantially bias the exposure estimates. We also show that the actual portfolio holdings will in general not reveal the actual investment style of a fund because of cross exposures between the asset classes, and because fund managers may hold securities that on average do not have a beta of one relative to their own asset class. Style analysis may be used to determine a benchmark portfolio for performance measurement. If the actual exposures are a positively weighted portfolio and if the risk free rate is one of the benchmarks, then the intercept coincides with the Jensen measure. In general, the intercept in the style regression can only be interpreted as a special case of the familiar Jensen measure.

Style analysis, performance evaluation, portfolio choice

Abstract:
In this paper we evaluate applications of (return based) style analysis. The portfolio and positivity constraints imposed by style analysis are useful in constructing mimicking portfolios without short positions. Such mimicking portfolios can be used e.g. to construct efficient portfolios of mutual funds with desired factor loadings if the factor loadings in the underlying factor model are positively weighted portfolios. Under these conditions style analysis may also be used to determine a benchmark portfolio for performance measurement. Attribution of the returns on portfolios of which the actual composition is unobserved to specific asset classes on the basis of return based style analysis is attractive if moreover there are no additional cross exposures between the asset classes and if fund managers hold securities that on average have a beta of one relative to their own asset class. If such restrictions are not met, and in particular if the factor loadings do not generate a positively weighted portfolio, the restrictions inherent in return based style analysis distort the outcomes of standard regression approaches rather than that the analysis is improved. The size of the distortions is illustrated by considering empirical results on style analysis of US mutual funds.

Style Analysis, Performance Measurment, Mutual Funds, Portfolio Choice

Abstract:
In this paper we analyze the persistence in the performance of hedge funds taking into account look-ahead bias (multi-period sampling bias). To do so, we model liquidation of hedge funds and analyze how it depends upon historical performance. Next, we use a weighting procedure that eliminates look-ahead bias in measures for performance persistence. In contrast to earlier results for mutual funds, the impact of look-ahead bias is exacerbated for hedge funds due to their greater level of total risk. At the four quarter horizon, look-ahead bias can be as large as 3.8%, depending upon the decile of the distribution. At the quarterly level, we find positive persistence in hedge fund returns, also after correcting for investment style. The empirical pattern at the annual level is also consistent with positive persistence, but its statistical significance is weak.

hedge funds, survival, look-ahead bias, performance persistence

Abstract:
This paper estimates the price of ethics by studying the risk-return relation in socially responsible investment (SRI) funds. Consistent with investors paying a price for ethics, SRI funds in many European and Asia-Pacific countries strongly underperform domestic benchmark portfolios by about 5% per annum, although UK and US SRI funds do not significantly underperform their benchmarks. The underperformance of SRI funds does not seem to be driven by the loadings on an ethical risk factor. SRI funds do not suffer a cost of reduced selectivity nor do SRI funds managers time the market. There is mixed evidence of a smart money effect: SRI investors are unable to identify the funds that will outperform in the future, whereas they show some fund-selection ability in identifying ethical funds that will perform poorly. The screening activities of SRI funds have a significant impact on funds' riskadjusted returns and loadings on risk factors: corporate governance and social screens generate better risk-adjusted returns whereas other screens (e.g. environmental ones) yield significantly lower returns.

ethics, mutual funds, socially responsible investing, investment screens, smart money, risk loadings

Abstract:
Little is known about how investors select socially responsible investment (SRI) funds. Investors in SRI funds may care more about social or ethical issues in their investment decisions than about fund performance. This paper studies the money-flows into and out of the SRI funds around the world. We find that ethical money chases past returns. In contrast to conventional funds' investors, SRI investors care less about the funds' riskiness and fees. Funds characterized by shareholder activism and by in-house SRI research attract more stable investors. Membership of a large SRI fund family creates higher flow volatility due to the lower fees to reallocate money within the fund family. SRI funds receiving most of the money-inflows perform worse in the future, which is consistent with theories of decreasing returns to scale in the mutual fund industry. Finally, funds employing a higher number of SRI screens to model their investment universe receive larger money-inflows and perform better in the future than focused funds.

money-flows, ethical funds, socially responsible investing, persistence in performance, investment screens, corporate governance screens, SRI

Abstract:
Hedge funds databases are typically subject to high attrition rates because of fund termination and self-selection. Even when all funds are included up to their last available return, one cannot prevent that ex post conditioning biases affect standard estimates of performance persistence. In this paper we analyze the persistence in the performance of U.S. hedge funds taking into account look-ahead bias (multi-period sampling bias). To do so, we model attrition of hedge funds and analyze how it depends upon historical performance. Next, we use a weighting procedure that eliminates look-ahead bias in measures for performance persistence. The results show that the impact of look-ahead bias is quite severe, even though positive and negative survival-related biases are sometimes suggested to cancel out.

hedge funds, survival, look-ahead bias, performance measurement

Abstract:
We propose a new adjustment in mean-variance portfolio weights to incorporate uncertainty caused by the fact that, in general, we have to use estimated expected returns when determining optimal portfolios. The adjustment amounts to using a higher pseudo risk-aversion rather than the actual risk-aversion and has a straightforward interpretation. The difference between the actual and the pseudo risk-aversion depends on the sample size, the number of assets in the portfolio, and the curvature of the mean-variance frontier. We show how short sales constraints and time-varying expected returns are incorporated in our framework. Applying the adjustment to international portfolios, we show that the adjustments are nontrivial for G5 country portfolios and that they are even more important when emerging markets are included. The exclusion of short sales is found to have a further important impact on the adjusted portfolio weights. In case expected country returns are time- varying, our adjustment induces a significantly smaller variability in portfolio weights that is commonly found.

Abstract:
We study the announcement effects and their determinants of convertible debt issues in the Canadian market in order to identify issuer motives. The average wealth effect for the three-day event window around the announcement of convertible bonds between 1991 and 2004 is a significantly negative -2.7%. When the issues are classified into equity- and debt-like, we find that the wealth effects are significantly more negative for the equity-like convertible bond issuers. Equity-like convertibles are significantly negatively affected by agency costs of equity. However, agency costs of debt do not have a significant effect on equity-like convertibles and agency costs of equity do not have a significant effect on debt-like convertibles. These findings suggest that convertibles are used to mitigate different aspects of informational asymmetries. These findings are in line with motives proposed by Stein (1992). Moreover, we find that convertible debt offers announced by income trusts, which have become a special feature of the Canadian market, experience significantly less negative wealth effects than similar offers announced by other issuers. This result can be explained by a more debt-like convertible design and/or very low agency costs of equity in case of income trusts.

event study, convertible bonds, wealth effects, agency costs, income trusts

Abstract:
Since 1998, large investment banks have flooded the European capital markets with issues of call warrants. This has led to a unique situation in the Netherlands, where now call warrants, traded on the stock exchange, and long-term call options, traded on the options exchange, exist. Both entitle their holders to buy shares of common stock. We use the longterm call options in order to price the call warrants. Using the model of Black and Scholes (1973), the Square Root model version of the Constant Elasticity of Variance model of Cox and Ross (1976), and the Binomial model of Cox et al. (1979) we find that the call warrants are strongly overvalued during the first five trading days. The average overvaluation is between 25 and 30 percent for all three models. Only a small part of this overvaluation can be explained by rational arguments such as transaction costs. We conclude that the overvaluation can be attributed to a behavioral preference of private investors for call warrants.

long term options, call options, call warrants, Black-Scholes option pricing model, behavioral finance

Abstract:
In our paper we examine whether hedge fund investors chase investment styles, focusing on the style effect in investment decisions. We find that hedge fund styles compete for investors' money. We explain this result by investors' tendency to look for the future best performing styles and reallocating funds from previously successful styles into future winners. The findings are in line with the style investing theory of Barberis and Shleifer (2003). We suggest that hedge funds investors are looking for the best investment strategy via style parameters such as relative flows of style and relative performance of style. As a result, better performing and more popular styles are rewarded with higher inflows in the next periods. Furthermore, we find that within style money flows are not equally distributed. Despite that in general style popularity attracts higher investments into the style, within fund competition weakens the style effect. Better performing and more popular funds within style experience higher inflows in the next periods. We explain this result by within style competition, stimulated by investors search for the best funds. Style analysis, being a key element in inferring the risk exposures of fund managers, helps in classifying fund managers and determining an appropriate benchmark for their performance evaluation. Finally, we test whether the hedge funds' version of style chasing justifies itself. Our results show that the way hedge fund investors chase investment styles appears as a smart one. We find that style chasing implemented together with search for the best within style funds is profitable.

investment style, hedge funds, money flows, investors, investment decisions, smart money, investment strategy

Abstract:
This paper examines whether investors chase hedge fund investment styles. We find that better performing and more popular styles are rewarded with higher inflows in subsequent periods. This indicates that investors compare styles according to style characteristics relative to other styles, and subsequently reallocate their funds from less successful into more successful hedge fund investment styles of the recent past. Furthermore, we find evidence for within style competition between individual hedge funds. Funds outperforming their styles and funds with above style average inflows experience higher inflows in subsequent periods. One of the reasons for within style competition is the investors' search for the best managers. The extremely high level of minimum investments limits the diversification opportunities and makes this search particularly important. Finally, we show that hedge funds' version of style chasing in combination with within-style fund selection represents a smart strategy.

Investment styles, hedge funds, competition

Abstract:
This paper investigates to what extent ongoing integration has eroded the equity home bias. To measure home bias, we compare observed foreign asset holdings of 25 markets with optimal portfolio weights obtained from 5 benchmark models. The International CAPM optimal weights equal the relative world market capitalization shares. Alternative models that allow for various degrees of mistrust in the I-CAPM and involve returns data in computing optimal weights indicate a substantially lower yet positive home bias. For many countries, home bias decreases sharply at the end of the 1990s, a development which we link to time-varying globalization and regional integration.

Home Bias, Market Integration, Euro, Model Uncertainty

Abstract:
This paper investigates to what extent ongoing integration has eroded the equity home bias. To measure home bias, we compare observed foreign asset holdings of 25 markets with optimal portfolio weights obtained from 5 benchmark models. The International CAPM optimal weights equal the relative world market capitalization shares. Alternative models that allow for various degrees of mistrust in the I-CAPM and involve returns data in computing optimal weights indicate a substantially lower yet positive home bias. For many countries, home bias decreases sharply at the end of the 1990s, a development which we link to time-varying globalization and regional integration.

Home Bias, Market Integration, Euro, Model Uncertainty

Abstract:
A wide range of empirical biases hampers hedge fund databases. In this paper we focus upon survival-related biases and disentangle look-ahead biases due to self-selection of funds and due to fund termination. Self-selection arises because funds voluntarily report their information to data vendors and may decide to stop doing so. By extending existing methodology, we analyze persistence in hedge fund performance over the period 1994-2000, taking into account the above biases. The results show that look-ahead biases due to liquidation and self-selection enforce each other and may lead to overestimating expected returns by as much as 8% per year. Overall, the results are consistent with positive persistence in hedge fund returns at horizons of two and four quarters.

Hedge funds, survival, self-selection, look-ahead bias, performance persistence

Abstract:
We study determinants of public financing choice in relation to three security issuance theories: market timing (e.g., Stein, 1996), pecking order (Donaldson, 1961; Myers and Majluf, 1984), and investor-manager agreement (Dittmar and Thakor, 2007), in a sample of debt and equity issues and share repurchases of Canadian firms between 1998 and 2004. With respect to market timing, using the market-to-book equity ratio to measure valuation, we find that equity issuers are more overvalued than debt issuers and equity repurchasers. Recognizing that the market-to-book ratio may also indicate growth prospects, we further study the announcement and post-announcement (3-month) return performance. We find that short-run announcement period returns do not lead to a robust conclusion regarding the relation between market performance and market-to-book. However, the long-run returns are consistently lower for issuers with high market-to-book ratios, and this long-run return difference is an order of magnitude more significant than the difference in announcement period returns. These findings give support to the market timing theory of security issuance. With respect to pecking order, we find that a higher degree of financial constraints increases the probability of issuing equity compared to debt, but only after controlling for firm size. This result indicates that large firms use debt financing more than small firms do; after controlling for this size effect, firms' choice between debt and equity issuance is consistent with the pecking order theory that less constrained firms prefer debt to equity. Our finding indicates that pecking order and market timing theories are not mutually exclusive and can affect issuance decisions simultaneously. Lastly, we find no evidence that companies issue equity when agreement between outside investors and managers is high. On the contrary, we find that the probability of issuing equity increases in the level of "disagreement", as proxied by the dispersion of analyst earnings forecasts, and is unrelated to "agreement", as proxied by the discrepancy between actual and forecast earnings. Since these proxies are also measures of information asymmetry, our results are inconsistent with findings based on US studies that firms with high levels of information asymmetry tend to issue debt to avoid high informational costs. Therefore, the investor-manager agreement theory of Dittmar and Thakor (2007), and more broadly, the information asymmetry theory about debt-equity choice, are not robust to different capital markets.

security issuance choice, market timing, pecking order theory, investor-manager agreement

Abstract:
In this paper we evaluate applications of (return based) style analysis. The portfolio and positivity constraints imposed by style analysis are useful in constructing mimicking portfolios without short positions. Such mimicking portfolios can be used e.g. to construct efficient portfolios of mutual funds with desired factor loadings if the factor loadings in the underlying factor model are positively weighted portfolios. Under these conditions style analysis may also be used to determine a benchmark portfolio for performance measurement. Attribution of the returns on portfolios of which the actual composition is unobserved to specific asset classes on the basis of return based style analysis is attractive if moreover there are no additional cross exposures between the asset classes and if fund managers hold securities that on average have a beta of one relative to their own asset class. If such restrictions are not met, and in particular if the factor loadings do not generate a positively weighted portfolio, the restrictions inherent in return based style analysis distort the outcomes of standard regression approaches rather than that the analysis is improved. The size of the distortions is illustrated by considering empirical results on style analysis of US mutual funds.

Style analysis, performance measurement, mutual funds, portfolio choice

Abstract:
A lockup period for hedge funds restricts a multi-period investor’s ability to rebalance his portfolio and has non-trivial effects on the allocation decision and portfolio efficiency. Investors compensate for a hedge fund lockup period by making adjustments to their equity and bond holdings. Adding hedge funds with a lockup period to the portfolio of stocks and bonds generates large, negative hedge demands for stocks. More importantly, an investor with a portfolio of stocks, bonds and hedge funds under both the unconditional strategy and conditional strategy is hurt by the presence of a hedge fund lockup period. In an unconditional setting, we find a Sharpe ratio of 1.11 for the portfolio of stocks, bonds and hedge funds adjusted for stale pricing, with a three-month lockup period for hedge funds and monthly rebalancing of stocks and bonds. For the same portfolio, but without a hedge fund lockup period, we find a significantly higher Sharpe ratio of 1.43. The certainty equivalent is 4.11%, i.e. a three-month lockup costs the investor 4.11% per annum.

Hedge funds, lockup period, multi-period asset allocation, timing portfolios

Abstract:
A lockup period for hedge funds restricts a multi-period investor’s ability to rebalance his portfolio and has non-trivial effects on the allocation decision and portfolio efficiency. Investors compensate for a hedge fund lockup period by making adjustments to their equity and bond holdings. Adding hedge funds with a lockup period to the portfolio of stocks and bonds generates large, negative hedge demands for stocks. More importantly, an investor with a portfolio of stocks, bonds and hedge funds under both the unconditional strategy and conditional strategy is hurt by the presence of a hedge fund lockup period. In an unconditional setting, we find a Sharpe ratio of 1.11 for the portfolio of stocks, bonds and hedge funds adjusted for stale pricing, with a three-month lockup period for hedge funds and monthly rebalancing of stocks and bonds. For the same portfolio, but without a hedge fund lockup period, we find a significantly higher Sharpe ratio of 1.43. The certainty equivalent is 4.11%, i.e. a three-month lockup costs the investor 4.11% per annum.

Hedge funds, lockup period, multi-period asset allocation, timing portfolios

Abstract:
Since 1998, large investment banks have become active as issuers of options, generally referred to as call warrants or bank-issued options. This has led to an interesting situation in the Netherlands, where simultaneously call warrants are traded on the stock exchange, and long-term call options are traded on the options exchange. Both entitle their holders to buy shares of common stock. We start with a direct comparison between call warrants and call options, written on the same stock and with the same exercise price, but where the call option has a longer time to maturity. In 13 out of 16 cases we find that the call warrants are priced higher, which is a clear violation of basic option pricing rules. In the second part of the analysis we use option pricing models to compare the pricing of call warrants and call options. If implied standard deviations from options are used to price the call warrants, we find that the call warrants are strongly overpriced during the first five trading days. The average overpricing is between 25 and 30%. Only a small part of the overpricing can be explained by rational arguments such as transaction costs. We suggest that the overvaluation can be explained by a combination of an active financial marketing by the banks and the framing effect.

Abstract:
A wide range of empirical biases hampers hedge fund databases. In this paper we focus upon survival-related biases and disentangle look-ahead biases due to self-selection of funds and due to fund termination. Self-selection arises because funds voluntarily report their information to data vendors and may decide to stop doing so. By extending existing methodology, we analyze persistence in hedge fund performance over the period 1994-2000, taking into account the above biases. The results show that look-ahead biases due to liquidation and self-selection enforce each other and may lead to overestimating expected returns by as much as 8% per year. Overall, the results are consistent with positive persistence in hedge fund returns at horizons of two and four quarters.

hedge funds, performance persistence, look-ahead bias, fund survival

Abstract:
Performance persistence studies typically suffer from ex-post conditioning biases. As stressed by Carhart (1997a) and Carpenter and Lynch (1999), standard methods of analysis on a survivorship free sample are subject to look-ahead biases. In this paper, we show how one can easily correct for look-ahead bias using weights based on probit regressions.

First, we model how survival probabilities depend upon historical returns, fund age and aggregate economy-wide shocks, using two samples of US based 'income' and 'growth' funds. Subsequently, we employ a Monte Carlo study to analyze the size and shape of the look-ahead bias in performance persistence that arise when a survivorship free sample is used with standard techniques. In particular, we show that look-ahead bias induces a spurious U-shaped pattern in performance persistence. Finally, we demonstrate how a weighting procedure based upon probit regressions can be used to correct for this bias. In this way, we obtain look-ahead bias-corrected estimates of abnormal performance relative to a one-factor and the Carhart (1997b) four-factor model, as well as its persistence. The results suggest that in this sample, look-ahead bias is of minor importance and does not seriously affect estimates of persistence. Our bias-corrected results closely correspond to the findings of Carhart (1997b), implying that there is no evidence on a risk-adjusted basis for persistence in performance.

mutual funds, performance evaluation, look-ahead bias

Abstract:
We analyze the performance persistence in hedge funds taking into account look-ahead bias (multi-period sampling bias). We model liquidation of hedge funds by analyzing how it depends upon historical performance. Next, we use a weighting procedure that eliminates look-ahead bias in measures for performance persistence. In contrast to earlier results for mutual funds, the impact of look-ahead bias is exacerbated for hedge funds due to their greater level of total risk. At the four-quarter horizon, look-ahead bias can be as much as 3.8%, depending upon the decile of the distribution. We find positive persistence in hedge fund quarterly returns after correcting for investment style. The empirical pattern at the annual level is also consistent with positive persistence, but its statistical significance is weak.

hedge funds, look-ahead bias, performance, persistence

Abstract:
This paper analyzes the properties of a number of estimators that can be used to estimate short-run persistence in mutual fund returns. When data for different funds are pooled, it is advisable to correct for cross-sectional differences in expected returns. However, these adjustments may induce biases in the estimated persistence coefficients and thus lead to spurious persistence. Theoretical derivations, combined with a Monte Carlo study, show that these biases cannot be neglected for the samples that are typically used in applied work. The short-run persistence is estiamted in two samples of US open-end mutual funds using quarterly returns for 1987-1994. An important conclusion is that the results are quite sensitive to the estimation method that is employed.

performance persistence, small sample bias