Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Measures Of Investor Sentiment: Who Wins The Horse Race?, Arindam Bandopadhyaya

Financial Services Forum Publications

Traditional research on asset pricing has focused on firm-specific and economywide factors that affect asset prices. Recently, the finance literature has turned to noneconomic factors such as investor sentiment as possible determinants of asset prices. Some researchers (e.g., Eichengreen and Mody, 1998) suggest that a change in one set of asset prices may change investor sentiment, thus triggering changes in a seemingly unrelated set of asset prices, especially in the short run, giving rise to pure contagion. Fisher and Statman (2000) and Baker and Wurgler (2006) have also recognized that investor sentiment may be an important component of the market …

A Survey Of Demographics And Performance In The Hedge Fund Industry, Arindam Bandopadhyaya, James L. Grant

Financial Services Forum Publications

We investigate hedge fund demographics using data from the Alternative Asset Center (AAC) and then hedge fund performance over the twelve years since inception of the Credit Suisse/Tremont Hedge Fund Indices (HFI, 1994-2005). We find that hedge funds are largely domiciled “offshore” while hedge-fund managers are located primarily in the United States, particularly New York, California, Illinois, Connecticut and Florida. We find that the annualized performance of hedge funds as an “asset class” is about the same as that of U.S. equities (S&P 500). That being said, the real benefit of hedge funds lies in risk management as the volatility …

The Hedge Fund Explosion: Is The Bang Worth The Buck?, Arindam Bandopadhyaya, James L. Grant

College of Management Working Papers and Reports

Any casual following of the financial news would reveal that hedge funds have experienced phenomenal growth, especially over the last fifteen years. In terms of numbers, there were an estimated 8000 hedge funds in 2005, up from only 500 in 1990. During this fifteen-year period assets under management have grown from an estimated $50 billion to $1.5 trillion. Moreover, the hedgefund industry has spawned a “fund of funds” business, which has slowly become the preferred way of investing in hedge funds, especially for institutional investors. Today, the number of these combination funds is estimated at about 4000.

Until recently, hedge …