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Responsible Hedge Funds, Hao Liang, Lin Sun, Song Wee Melvyn Teo
Responsible Hedge Funds, Hao Liang, Lin Sun, Song Wee Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Hedge funds that endorse the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) underperform other hedge funds after adjusting for risk but attract greater investor flows, accumulate more assets, and harvest greater fee revenues. Consistent with an agency explanation, the underperformance is driven by PRI signatories with low environmental, social, and governance (ESG) exposures and is greater for hedge funds with poor incentive alignment. To address endogeneity, we exploit regulatory reforms that enhance stewardship and show that the ESG exposure and relative performance of signatory funds improve post reforms. Our findings suggest that some hedge funds endorse responsible investment to pander …
Do Alpha Males Deliver Alpha? Facial Width-To-Height Ratio And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Melvyn Teo
Do Alpha Males Deliver Alpha? Facial Width-To-Height Ratio And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
An abundance of evidence relates facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) to masculine behaviors in males. We show that hedge funds operated by high-fWHR managers underperform those operated by low-fWHR managers, bear greater downside risk, are more susceptible to fire sales, and fail more often. High-fWHR managers compensate for their underperformance by marketing their funds more aggressively, thereby garnering higher flows and fee revenues. By exploiting major personal events that shape testosterone, namely marriage and fatherhood, we trace the biological mechanism underlying the relation between fWHR and investment performance to circulating testosterone. Our findings are robust and extend to equity mutual funds.
Race And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo
Race And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
We find that minority operated funds deliver higher alphas, Sharpe ratios, and information ratios than do non-minority operated funds. Moreover, minority fund managers attended more selective schools, worked at higher status investment banks, and are more likely to hold post-graduate degrees. Yet, minority managers raise less start-up capital and attract lower investor flows. Racial homophily fuels investors' appetite for non-minority funds. To address endogeneity, we leverage on an event study of minority manager fund transitions and an instrumental variable analysis that exploits racial imprinting during childhood. The results suggest that minorities face significant barriers to entry in the hedge fund …
Hedge Funds And Their Prime Broker Analysts, Sung Gon Chung, Manoj Kulchania, Melvyn Teo
Hedge Funds And Their Prime Broker Analysts, Sung Gon Chung, Manoj Kulchania, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Are sell-side analysts reluctant to go against the investment views of their hedge funds when these hedge funds are their prime brokerage clients? We show that prime broker analysts tend to upgrade stocks recently bought by their clients. For stocks with upgraded recommendations, post-announcement cumulative abnormal returns are significantly lower for those purchased by the prime brokerage clients. Our results are stronger with high-dollar-turnover clients who generate more trading commissions. We also find that a hedge fund with a large bet on a stock has a stronger incentive to pressure the fund’s prime brokers to issue a favorable recommendation on …
Hedge Fund Franchises, William Fung, David Hsieh, Narayan Naik, Melvyn Teo
Hedge Fund Franchises, William Fung, David Hsieh, Narayan Naik, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
We investigate the growth strategies of hedge fund firms. We find that firms with successful first funds are able to launch follow-on funds that charge higher performance fees, set more onerous redemption terms, and attract greater inflows. Motivated by the aforementioned spillover effects, first funds outperform follow-on funds, after adjusting for risk. Consistent with the agency view, greater incentive alignment moderates the performance differential between first and follow-on funds. Moreover, multiple-product firms underperform single-product firms but harvest greater fee revenues, thereby hurting investors while benefitting firm partners. Investors respond to this growth strategy by redeeming from first funds of firms …
How Smart Is Institutional Trading?, Jingi Ha, Jianfeng Hu
How Smart Is Institutional Trading?, Jingi Ha, Jianfeng Hu
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
We estimate daily aggregate order flow at the stock level from all institutional investors as well as for hedge funds and the other institutions separately. We achieve this by extrapolating the relation between quarterly institutional ownership in 13F filings, aggregate market order imbalance in TAQ, and a representative group of institutional investors’ transaction data. We find that the estimated institutional order imbalance has positive price impact in the short term, which reverses in the long term. The “smart” order flow from hedge funds generates greater and more persistent price impact than the “dumb” order flow from all the other institutions. …
Sensation Seeking And Hedge Funds, Stephen Brown, Yan Lu, Sugata Ray, Song Wee Melvyn Teo
Sensation Seeking And Hedge Funds, Stephen Brown, Yan Lu, Sugata Ray, Song Wee Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
We show that motivated by sensation seeking, hedge fund managers who own powerful sports cars take on more investment risk but do not deliver higher returns, resulting in lower Sharpe ratios, information ratios, and alphas. Moreover, sensation-seeking managers trade more frequently, actively, and unconventionally, and prefer lottery-like stocks. We show further that some investors are themselves susceptible to sensation seeking and that sensation-seeking investors fuel the demand for sensation-seeking managers. While investors perceive sensation seekers to be less competent, they do not fully appreciate the superior investment skills of sensation-avoiding fund managers.
Public Hedge Funds, Lin Sun, Melvyn Teo
Public Hedge Funds, Lin Sun, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Hedge funds managed by listed firms significantly under-perform funds managed by unlisted firms. The under-performance is more severe for funds with low manager deltas, poor governance, and no manager co-investment, or managed by firms whose prices are sensitive to earnings news. Notwithstanding the under-performance, listed asset management firms raise more capital, by growing existing funds and launching new funds post listing, and harvest greater fee revenues than do comparable unlisted firms. The results are consistent with the view that, for asset management firms, going public weakens the alignment between ownership, control, and investment capital, thereby engendering conflicts of interest.
Do Alpha Males Deliver Alpha? Facial Structure And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Melvyn Teo
Do Alpha Males Deliver Alpha? Facial Structure And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Facial structure as encapsulated by facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) maps onto masculine behaviors in males and may positively relate to testosterone. We find that high-fWHR hedge fund managers underperform low-fWHR hedge fund managers by 5.83% per year after adjusting for risk. Moreover, funds operated by high-fWHR managers exhibit higher operational risk, suffer from a greater asset-liability mismatch, and are more likely to fail. We trace the underperformance to high-fWHR managers’ preference for lottery-like stocks and reluctance to sell loser stocks. The results are robust to adjustments for sample selection, marital status, sensation seeking, and manager race, and suggest that investors …
Hedge Fund Franchises, William Fung, David Hsieh, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo
Hedge Fund Franchises, William Fung, David Hsieh, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Duplicate, see https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/5964/. We investigate the growth strategies of hedge fund firms. We find that firms with successful first funds are able to launch follow-on funds that charge higher performance fees, set more onerous redemption terms, and attract greater inflows. Motivated by the aforementioned spillover effects, first funds outperform follow-on funds, after adjusting for risk. The multiple-product growth strategy hurts investors while benefiting hedge fund firms; multiple-product firms underperform single-product firms but harvest greater fee revenues. Investors respond to this growth strategy by redeeming from first funds of firms with follow-on funds that do poorly. Moreover, skilled investors allocate …
Public Hedge Funds, Lin Sun, Song Wee Melvyn Teo
Public Hedge Funds, Lin Sun, Song Wee Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Hedge funds managed by listed firms significantly underperform funds managed by unlisted firms. The underperformance is more severe for funds with low manager deltas, poor governance, and no manager co-investment, or managed by firms whose prices are sensitive to earnings news. Notwithstanding the underperformance, listed asset management firms raise more capital, by growing existing funds and launching new funds post listing, and harvest greater fee revenues than do comparable unlisted firms. The results are consistent with the view that, for asset management firms, going public weakens the alignment between ownership, control, and investment capital, thereby engendering conflicts of interest.
Public Hedge Funds, Lin Sun, Song Wee Melvyn Teo
Public Hedge Funds, Lin Sun, Song Wee Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Hedge funds managed by listed firms significantly underperform funds managed by unlisted firms. The underperformance is more severe for funds with low manager deltas, poor governance, and no manager co-investment, or managed by firms whose prices are sensitive to earnings news. Notwithstanding the underperformance, listed asset management firms raise more capital, by growing existing funds and launching new funds post listing, and harvest greater fee revenues than do comparable unlisted firms. The results are consistent with the view that, for asset management firms, going public weakens the alignment between ownership, control, and investment capital, thereby engendering conflicts of interest.
Sensation-Seeking Hedge Funds, Stephen Brown, Yan Lu, Sugata Ray, Melvyn Teo
Sensation-Seeking Hedge Funds, Stephen Brown, Yan Lu, Sugata Ray, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Using a novel dataset of hedge fund manager automobile purchases, we show that, motivated by sensation seeking, hedge fund managers often take risk for personal and non-pecuniary reasons. In line with the sensation seeking view, managers who own powerful sports cars take on more investment risk but do not deliver higher returns, resulting in lower Sharpe ratios. Moreover, funds managed by performance car owners exhibit higher operational risk and are more likely to fail. Performance car owners demonstrate other attributes associated with sensation seeking, such as a preference for lottery-like stocks, unconventional strategies, and active trading.
Limited Attention, Marital Events And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Sugata Ray, Melvyn Teo
Limited Attention, Marital Events And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Sugata Ray, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
We explore the impact of limited attention by analyzing the performance of hedge fund managers who are distracted by marital events. We find that marriages and divorces are associated with significantly lower fund alpha, during the six-month period surrounding and the two-year period after the event. Busy managers who manage multiple funds and who are not part of a team are more affected by marital transitions. Inattentive managers place fewer active bets relative to their style peers, load more on index stocks, exhibit higher R-squareds with respect to systematic factors, and are more prone to the disposition effect.
Public Hedge Funds, Lin Sun, Melvyn Teo
Public Hedge Funds, Lin Sun, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Hedge funds managed by listed firms significantly underperform funds managed by unlisted firms. The underperformance is more severe for funds with low manager deltas, poor governance, and no manager co-investment, or managed by firms whose prices are sensitive to earnings news. Notwithstanding the underperformance, listed firms raise more capital and harvest greater fee revenues than do comparable unlisted firms. The results cannot be explained by endogeneity, backfill bias, serial correlation, or manager manipulation, and are consistent with the view that, for asset management firms, going public weakens the alignment between ownership, control, and investment capital, thereby engendering conflicts of interest.
Short Selling Meets Hedge Fund 13f: An Anatomy Of Informed Demand, Yawen Jiao, Massimo Massa, Hong Zhang
Short Selling Meets Hedge Fund 13f: An Anatomy Of Informed Demand, Yawen Jiao, Massimo Massa, Hong Zhang
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
The existing literature treats the short side (i.e., short selling) and the long side of hedge fund trading (i.e., fund holdings) independently. The two sides, however, complement each other: opposite changes in the two are likely to be driven by information, whereas simultaneous increases (decreases) of the two may be motivated by hedging (unwinding) considerations. We use this intuition to identify informed demand and document that it exhibits highly significant predictive power over returns (approximately 10% per year). We also find that informed demand forecasts future firm fundamentals, suggesting that hedge funds play an important role in information discovery. (C) …
Growing The Asset Management Franchise: Evidence From Hedge Fund Firms, William Fung, David Hsieh, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo
Growing The Asset Management Franchise: Evidence From Hedge Fund Firms, William Fung, David Hsieh, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
We investigate the growth strategies of hedge fund firms. We find that firms with successful first funds are able to launch follow-on funds that charge higher performance fees, set more onerous redemption terms, and attract greater inflows. While first funds outperform follow-on funds, the superior performance of the former attenuates following the launch of the second fund. Multiple-product firms underperform single-product firms, but harvest greater fee revenues. Consequently, the multiple-product firm has become the dominant business model in the hedge fund industry.
The Liquidity Risk Of Liquid Hedge Funds, Melvyn Teo
The Liquidity Risk Of Liquid Hedge Funds, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
This paper evaluates hedge funds that grant favorable redemption terms to investors. Within this group of purportedly liquid funds, high net inflow funds subsequently outperform low net inflow funds by 4.79% per year after adjusting for risk. The return impact of fund flows is stronger when funds embrace liquidity risk, when market liquidity is low, and when funding liquidity, as measured by the Treasury-Eurodollar spread, aggregate hedge fund flows, and prime broker stock returns, is tight. In keeping with an agency explanation, funds with strong incentives to raise capital, low manager option deltas, and no manager capital co-invested are more …
Hedge Funds, Managerial Skill, And Macroeconomic Variables, Doron Avramov, Robert Kosowski, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo
Hedge Funds, Managerial Skill, And Macroeconomic Variables, Doron Avramov, Robert Kosowski, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
This paper evaluates hedge fund performance through portfolio strategies that incorporate predictability based on macroeconomic variables. Incorporating predictability substantially improves out-of-sample performance for the entire universe of hedge funds as well as for various investment styles. While we also allow for predictability in fund risk loadings and benchmark returns, the major source of investment profitability is predictability in managerial skills. In particular, long-only strategies that incorporate predictability in managerial skills outperform their Fung and Hsieh (2004) benchmarks by over 17% per year. The economic value of predictability obtains for different rebalancing horizons and alternative benchmark models. It is also robust …
The Liquidity Risk Of Liquid Hedge Funds, Melvyn Teo
The Liquidity Risk Of Liquid Hedge Funds, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
This paper evaluates hedge funds that grantfavorable redemption terms to investors. Within this group of purportedlyliquid funds, high net inflow funds subsequently outperform low net inflowfunds by 4.79% per year after adjusting for risk. The return impact of fundflows is stronger when funds embrace liquidity risk, when market liquidity islow, and when funding liquidity, as measured by the Treasury-Eurodollar spread,aggregate hedge fund flows, and prime broker stock returns, is tight. Inkeeping with an agency explanation, funds with strong incentives to raisecapital, low manager option deltas, and no manager capital co-invested are morelikely to take on excessive liquidity risk. These results …
Does Size Matter In The Hedge Fund Industry?, Song Wee Melvyn Teo
Does Size Matter In The Hedge Fund Industry?, Song Wee Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
We document a negative and convex relationship between hedge fund size and future risk-adjusted returns. Small hedge funds outperform large hedge funds by 3.65 percent per year after adjusting for risk. This over performance is not driven by fund age, leverage, serial correlation, or self-selection biases. The capacity constraints manifest across various investment styles and regions. In particular, they are strongest for funds managed by multiple principals who trade small, illiquid securities, suggesting that the observed diseconomies can be traced to price impact and hierarchy costs (Stein, 2002). While investors direct disproportionately more capital to smaller funds, they do not …
Do Hedge Funds Deliver Alpha? A Bayesian And Bootstrap Analysis, Robert Kosowski, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo
Do Hedge Funds Deliver Alpha? A Bayesian And Bootstrap Analysis, Robert Kosowski, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Using a robust bootstrap procedure, we find that top hedge fund performance cannot be explained by luck, and that hedge fund performance persists at annual horizons. Moreover, we show that Bayesian measures, which help overcome the short-sample problem inherent in hedge fund returns, lead to superior performance predictability. Relative to sorting on OLS alphas, sorting on Bayesian alphas yields a 5.5 percent per year increase in the alpha of the spread between the top and bottom hedge fund deciles. Our results are robust, and relevant to investors, as they are neither confined to small funds, nor driven by incubation bias, …
Is Stellar Hedge Fund Performance For Real?, Robert Kosowski, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo
Is Stellar Hedge Fund Performance For Real?, Robert Kosowski, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
We apply a robust bootstrap to evaluate the performance of a large universe of hedge funds. Our bootstrap estimates indicate that the performance of the top hedge funds cannot be attributed to chance alone. This is true even after adjusting for back fill bias, serial correlation, and structural breaks. Also, we find that hedge fund alpha differences persist over three year horizons. However, an investment strategy designed around this will run into difficulties as the persistence is often confined to small funds that are effectively closed to new inflows. Moreover, Bayesian estimates suggest that standard alphas may be overestimated by …
Investing In Hedge Funds: Risks, Returns And Performance Measurement, Francis Koh, Winston T. H. Koh, David K. C. Lee, Kok Fai Phoon
Investing In Hedge Funds: Risks, Returns And Performance Measurement, Francis Koh, Winston T. H. Koh, David K. C. Lee, Kok Fai Phoon
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Hedge funds are collective investment vehicles that are often established with a special legal status that allows their investment managers a free hand to use derivatives, short sell, and exploit leverage to raise returns and cushion risk. We review various issues relating to the investment in hedge funds, which have become popular with high net-worth individuals and institutional investors, as well as discuss their empirical risk and return profiles. The concerns regarding the empirical measurements are highlighted, and meaningful analytical methods are proposed to provide greater risk transparency in performance reporting. We also discuss the development of the hedge fund …
Asian Hedge Funds: Return Persistence, Style, And Fund Characteristics, Francis Koh, Winston T. H. Koh, Melvyn Teo
Asian Hedge Funds: Return Persistence, Style, And Fund Characteristics, Francis Koh, Winston T. H. Koh, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
This study explores the return persistence properties, styles, and fund characteristics of hedge funds that mainly invest in Asia. We examine, for the first time, a high resolution hedge fund dataset which includes monthly return information as well as detailed fund characteristics data. We find that the returns of Asian hedge funds persist most strongly at monthly horizons to quarterly horizons. This persistence weakens considerably when we lengthen the measurement period beyond a quarter, and does not appear to be due to the imputation of fees or to systematic risk as measured by a simple factor model. Further, we show …
Investing In Hedge Funds: Risks, Returns And Pitfalls, Francis Koh, Winston T. H. Koh, David Kuo Chuen Lee, Kok Fai Phoon
Investing In Hedge Funds: Risks, Returns And Pitfalls, Francis Koh, Winston T. H. Koh, David Kuo Chuen Lee, Kok Fai Phoon
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Hedge funds are collective investment vehicles fast becoming popular with high net worth individuals as well as institutional investors. These are funds that are often established with a special legal status that allows their investment managers a free hand to use derivatives, short sell, and exploit leverage to raise returns and cushion risk. Given that that they have substantial latitude to invest, it is instructive to examine the performance of hedge funds compared to other forms of managed funds. This paper provides an overview of hedge funds and discusses their empirical risk and return profiles. It also poses some concerns …
Investing In Hedge Funds: Risks, Returns And Pitfalls, Dong Hong, David Kuo Chuen Lee, Kok Fai Phoon
Investing In Hedge Funds: Risks, Returns And Pitfalls, Dong Hong, David Kuo Chuen Lee, Kok Fai Phoon
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Hedge funds are collective investment vehicles fast becoming popular with high net worth individuals as well as institutional investors. These are funds that are often established with a special legal status that allows their investment managers a free hand to use derivatives, short sell, and exploit leverage to raise returns and cushion risk. Given that that they have substantial latitude to invest, it is instructive to examine the performance of hedge funds compared to other forms of managed funds. This paper provides an overview of hedge funds and discusses their empirical risk and return profiles. It also poses some concerns …
An Evaluation Of Hedge Funds: Risk, Return And Pitfalls, Francis Koh, David K. C. Lee, Kok Fai Phoon
An Evaluation Of Hedge Funds: Risk, Return And Pitfalls, Francis Koh, David K. C. Lee, Kok Fai Phoon
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Hedge funds are collective investment vehicles fast becoming popular with high net worth individuals as well as institutional investors. These are funds that are often established with a special legal status that allows their investment managers a free hand to use derivatives, short sell and exploit leverage to raise returns and cushion risk. Given that they have substantial latitude to invest, it is instructive to examine the performance of hedge funds as compared to other forms of managed funds. This paper provides an overview of hedge funds and discusses their empirical risk and return profiles. It also poses some concerns …