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Full-Text Articles in Business
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.
Essays On Asset Management, Lin Sun
Essays On Asset Management, Lin Sun
Dissertations and Theses Collection
Hedge funds managed by listed firms significantly underperform funds managed by unlisted firms. We argue that since the new shareholders of a listed management company typically do not invest alongside the limited partners of the funds managed, the process of going public breaks the incentive alignment between ownership, control, and investment capital, thereby engendering agency problems. In line with the agency explanation, the underperformance is more severe for funds that have low manager total deltas, low governance scores, and no manager personal capital, or that are managed by firms whose stock prices are more sensitive to earnings news. Post IPO, …
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) …
Consequences To Directors Of Shareholder Activism, Sa-Pyung Sean Shin, Sa-Pyung Sean Shin, Suraj Srinivasan
Consequences To Directors Of Shareholder Activism, Sa-Pyung Sean Shin, Sa-Pyung Sean Shin, Suraj Srinivasan
Research Collection School Of Accountancy
Using a comprehensive sample for 2004–2012, we examine the impact of shareholder activist campaigns on the careers of directors of targeted firms. We find that activism is associated with directors being almost twice as likely to leave—and performance-sensitivity of turnover being higher over the subsequent two-year period. Our evidence suggests that director turnover occurs even without shareholder activists engaging in, let alone winning, proxy contests and, in contrast to most prior research, director election results matter. Overall, our evidence suggests that shareholder activism, even in the absence of proxy fights, is associated with greater accountability for independent directors.
Hedge Fund Managers Who Eschew Asset Gathering, Melvyn Teo
Hedge Fund Managers Who Eschew Asset Gathering, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre
Fund managers may eschew financial rewards for the non-pecuniary benefits from investment management. They may be highly focused on leaving a legacy of stellar returns when they retire and prefer to preserve their ability to generate those returns by staying small. Others may prefer to run small firms so as to devote more of their time and energy into investment activities as opposed to managing people. We empirically zero in on such managers by focusing on funds that have delivered superior returns but do not take advantage of their stellar performance track records to grow capital aggressively. We find that …
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.
Can Hedge Funds Time Liquidity?, Charles Cao, Yong Chen, Bing Liang, Andrew W. Lo
Can Hedge Funds Time Liquidity?, Charles Cao, Yong Chen, Bing Liang, Andrew W. Lo
Research Collection BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre
We explore a new dimension of fund managers' timing ability by examining whether they can time market liquidity through adjusting their portfolios' market exposure as aggregate liquidity conditions change. Using a large sample of hedge funds, we find strong evidence of liquidity timing. A bootstrap analysis suggests that top-ranked liquidity timers cannot be attributed to pure luck. In out-of-sample tests, top liquidity timers outperform bottom timers by 4.0–5.5% annually on a risk-adjusted basis. We also find that it is important to distinguish liquidity timing from liquidity reaction, which primarily relies on public information. Our results are robust to alternative explanations, …
The Performance Of Listed Hedge Fund Firms, Lin Sun, Melvyn Teo
The Performance Of Listed Hedge Fund Firms, Lin Sun, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre
We examine the impact of fund management company listing on hedge fund performance. We find that hedge funds managed by listed firms underperform those managed by unlisted firms by 1.89 per annum after adjusting for risk. Using an event study framework, we show that hedge fund performance deteriorates from 10.32 percent per year in the 36-month pre-listing window to 2.16 percent per year in the 36-month post-listing window. Over the same period, firm assets under management effectively double from US$1.54bn to US$3.04bn. There is no evidence to suggest that funds managed by listed firms are better able to manage operational …
Inferring Reporting-Related Biases In Hedge Fund Databases From Hedge Fund Equity Holdings, Vikas Agarwal, Vyacheslav Fos, Wei Jiang
Inferring Reporting-Related Biases In Hedge Fund Databases From Hedge Fund Equity Holdings, Vikas Agarwal, Vyacheslav Fos, Wei Jiang
Research Collection BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre
This paper formally analyzes the biases related to self-reporting in hedge fund databases by matching the quarterly equity holdings of a complete list of 13F-filing hedge fund companies to the union of five major commercial databases of self-reporting hedge funds between 1980 and 2008. We find that funds initiate self-reporting after positive abnormal returns that do not persist into the reporting period. Termination of self-reporting is followed by both return deterioration and outflows from the funds. The propensity to self-report is consistent with the trade-offs between the benefits (e.g., access to prospective investors) and costs (e.g., partial loss of trading …
Diversification In Hedge Fund Portfolios, Melvyn Teo
Diversification In Hedge Fund Portfolios, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre
We explore the diversification benefits of increasing the number of hedge funds in an investment portfolio. Conventional wisdom suggests that investors should construct a portfolio of 20 to 30 hedge funds in order to achieve a reasonably low portfolio variance. We show using Monte Carlo simulations that the marginal benefit of including an additional hedge fund in a fund portfolio diminishes significantly once the number of hedge funds increases beyond ten. Specifically, the annualized standard deviation of a fund portfolio diminishes from 16.55 percent to 7.40 percent as we increase the number of funds from one to ten. However, the …
Momentum Strategies In Futures Markets And Trend Following Funds, Akindynos-Nikolaos Baltas, Robert Kosowski
Momentum Strategies In Futures Markets And Trend Following Funds, Akindynos-Nikolaos Baltas, Robert Kosowski
Research Collection BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre
In this paper, we rigorously establish a relationship between time-series momentum strategies in futures markets and commodity trading advisors (CTAs) and examine the question of capacity constraints in trend-following investing. First, we construct a very comprehensive set of time-series momentum benchmark portfolios. Second, we provide evidence that CTAs follow time-series momentum strategies, by showing that such benchmark strategies have high explanatory power in the time-series of CTA index returns. Third, we do not find evidence of statistically significant capacity constraints based on two different methodologies and several robustness tests. Our results have important implications for hedge fund studies and investors.
Diseconomies Of Scale In The Hedge Fund Industry, Melvyn Teo
Diseconomies Of Scale In The Hedge Fund Industry, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre
How does fund size impact fund performance in the hedge fund industry? We find unsurprisingly that fund size crimps both raw and risk-adjusted fund returns for the average hedge fund. An increase in fund assets under management from US$20m to US$1bn decreases fund alpha by 2.04 percent per year. However, significant variation exists across funds when funds are grouped by investment strategy and region. Equity long/short, event driven, and macro funds are susceptible to capacity constraints while fixed income and managed futures funds are largely immune to such concerns. Our finding that capacity issues impact macro fund performance raises fresh …
How Skilled Are Hedge Funds? Evidence From Their Daily Trades, Russell Jame
How Skilled Are Hedge Funds? Evidence From Their Daily Trades, Russell Jame
Research Collection BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre
We examine the trading skill of hedge funds using transaction-level data. After accounting for trading commissions, we find no evidence that the trades of the average hedge fund outperform across holding periods ranging from one month to one year. However, bootstrap simulations indicate that the trading skill of the top 10% of hedge funds cannot be explained by luck. Similarly, we find that the performance of top hedge funds persists and much of this persistence stems from intra-quarter trading skill. Skilled hedge funds tend to be short-term contrarians and their profits are largely concentrated in smaller, more illiquid stocks. Our …
Asian Hedge Funds In A Risk-On, Risk-Off World, Melvyn Teo
Asian Hedge Funds In A Risk-On, Risk-Off World, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre
We analyze the performance of Asia-focused and Asia-based funds in risk-on and risk-off periods between 2002 and 2011. We find that Asian hedge funds, like their US and European counterparts, deliver equity-like payoffs with bond-like risk. They generate returns that are roughly in line with the equity markets in risk-on and neutral states of the world. While their returns do not dominate those of US Treasuries in risk-off situations, they generally outperform the equity market by a significant margin. Indeed, their risk-adjusted returns in riskoff states are on par if not higher than their risk-adjusted returns in risk-on states. Of …
Asian Hedge Fund Report, Melvyn Teo
Asian Hedge Fund Report, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre
We survey the Asian hedge fund landscape and shed light on the size, investment region, strategy, and performance metrics of funds operating in Asia. Our findings indicate that hedge funds in the region typically maintain close physical proximity to their investment markets. Institutional quality hedge funds with assets under management greater than US$100m tend to focus on Greater China and Japan. Relative to Hong Kong, Japan, and Australia, Singapore harbors the most diverse group of hedge funds in terms of investment strategy. Between January 2000 and December 2011, Greater China focused funds have on average outperformed hedge funds investing in …
Hedge Fund Return Correlation Under Extreme Market Condition, Melvyn Teo
Hedge Fund Return Correlation Under Extreme Market Condition, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre
How dependent are returns across hedge fund investment strategies? We estimate the probability that each investment strategy performs poorly when other investment strategies are delivering extreme negative returns. Under extreme market conditions, we find that event driven, distressed debt, and equity long/short funds exhibit the highest correlation with other styles while commodity trading advisors, macro, and equity market neutral funds exhibit the lowest correlation. In addition, we show that Asia-focused event driven and equity market neutral funds provide diversification for investors holding US- and Europe-focused funds.