There is much speculation regarding a “race for dominance” among financial centers in Asia, arising from the anticipated financial opening up of China. This frame of reference is, to an extent, a predilection that results from a traditional understanding of financial centers as possessing historical, geographic, and scale economy advantages. This paper, however, suggests that there is an alternative prism through which the evolution of financial centers in Asia needs to be viewed. It underscores the importance of “complementarity” rather than “dominance” to better serve regional and global financial stability. We posit that such complementarity is vital, through network analysis of the roles of Hong Kong SAR and Singapore as the current leading financial centers in the region. This analysis suggests that a competition for dominance can result in de-stabilizing levels of interconnectivity that render the global “network” as a whole more susceptible to rapid propagation of shocks. We then examine the regulatory and policy challenges that may be encountered in furthering such complementary coexistence. Click here for full article

Minsuk Kim, Vanessa Le Leslй, Franziska Ohnsorge, and Srikant Seshadri

International Monetary Fund (IMF)

The occurrence of trends within financial markets is inconsistent with the assumptions of classical financial theory. Nevertheless, it can be empirically validated that market prices can be subject to trends. But — which trends should you measure? Which trend is your friend? Click here for full article

Fabian Dori, Manuel Krieger, and Urs Schubiger

1741 Asset Management Ltd.

Properly considering all potential risk factors through tradable liquid portfolios in the context of a risk based factor model is paramount to quantifying the benefits of investing in hedge funds. We attempt to span the space of potential risk factors with exchange traded funds (ETFs). We develop a methodology of hedge fund return replication with ETFs based on cluster analysis and LASSO factor selection that overcomes multicollinearity among ETFs and the data mining bias. We find that the overall out-of-sample accuracy of hedge fund replication with ETFs increases with the number of ETFs available. This is consistent with our interpretation of ETF returns as proxies to a multitude of alternative risk factors that could be driving hedge fund returns.

We further consider portfolios of “cloneable” and “non-cloneable” hedge funds, defined as top and bottom in-sample R2 matches. We find superior risk-adjusted performance for “non-cloneable” funds, while “cloneable” funds fail to deliver significantly positive risk-adjusted performance. We conclude that our methodology provides value in both identifying skilled managers of “non-cloneable” hedge funds, and also successfully replicating out-of-sample returns that are due to alternative risk exposures of “cloneable” hedge funds, thus providing a transparent and liquid alternative to investors who may find these return patterns attractive. Click here for full article

Jun Duanmu, Yongjia Li, and Alexey Malakhov

Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas

The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of frictions and real-world investment constraints on the returns that investors can earn from investing in hedge funds. We contribute to the existing literature by accounting for share restrictions, minimum diversification requirements and fund size restrictions that are commonly used by institutional investors. We show that the size-performance relationship is positive (negative) when past (future) performance is used. Evidence of performance persistence is reduced significantly when fund size and share restrictions such as notice, redemption and lockup period are incorporated into rebalancing rules. We test several hypotheses regarding the economic mechanism that underlies the size-performance relationship. We find empirical support for theoretical models based on decreasing returns to scale as well as managers responding optimally to fee incentives. The findings have significant implications for hedge fund investors since they caution against chasing performance in hedge funds and within the billion dollar club of hedge funds, in particular. Click here for full article

Juha Joenvддrд, University of Oulu and Imperial College Business School

Robert Kosowski, Imperial College Business School and Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance

This study examines several aspects of active portfolio management by equity hedge funds between 1996-2013. Consistent with the idea that cross-sectional return dispersion is a proxy for the market’s available alpha, our results show that equity hedge funds achieve their strongest performance during periods of elevated dispersion. The performance advantage is robust to numerous risk adjustments. Portfolio managers may use the current month’s dispersion to plan the extent to which the following month’s investment approach will be active or passive. We also estimate the active share for equity hedge funds and find an average of 53%. We further document the average annual expense ratio for managing hedge funds’ active share to be about 7%. This figure is remarkably close to active expense ratios reported previously for equity mutual funds, which may be interpreted as evidence of uniform pricing for active portfolio management services. Click here for full article

David M. Smith, Department of Finance and Center for Institutional Investment Management, University at Albany

This paper contributes to the debate on the effects of the financialization of commodity futures markets by studying the conditional volatility of long-short commodity portfolios and their conditional correlation with traditional assets (stocks and bonds). Using several groups of trading strategies that hedge fund managers are known to implement, we show that long-short speculators do not cause changes in the volatilities of the portfolios they hold or changes in the conditional correlations between these portfolios and traditional assets. Thus calls for increased regulation of commodity money managers might at this stage be premature. Click here for full article

Joлlle Miffre, PhD, Professor of Finance, EDHEC Business School

Chris Brooks, Professor of Finance and Director of Research, ICMA Centre, Reading

The goal of this paper is to analyze the equity risk hedging capabilities of CTA Trend Following (TF) strategies and to evaluate enhancements that would stabilize their hedging characteristics to equities. With real yields on US treasuries below zero, institutions are pushing the envelope to find new sources of return, Alpha and risk. More complex, but less liquid and less transparent, new investment conduits such as hedge funds have hidden the usually apparent equity market risk, as measured by volatility, by converting it in the form of tail risk and negative skew.

Fixed Income has been extremely stable in the past 30 years and not many worry or care to hedge exposure to it yet. Equities, on the other side, have had some large cycles and drawdowns, which include some over 50%. Although it is now in the form of tail risk, rather than “old fashioned” volatility, most investors would still like to hedge the residual equity risk that is now the core risk in almost every portfolio including hedge funds and fund of hedge funds. The DJCS HFI Dedicated Short Bias (Short Biased Index) has been extremely costly with a negative true Alpha of around -5.5% a year to the SP500. Timing the overall equity market on a discretionary or fundamental basis has not worked for most. Put option buying is extremely costly despite the low implied volatility of the equity markets and it only rewards sporadically due to the negative skew of equities. A profitable or at least cheaper hedge would be most welcome and there still seems to be some hope that TF can effectively hold this responsibility. We will offer some enhancements that will make the correlation of TF to equities significantly negative in order to stabilize this relationship.

Despite strong performance during equity drawdowns, TF has been used (and sized) only as a diversifier in portfolios, not as a hedge. This could be due to:

1) A lack of model transparency and understanding, 2) High volatility that sometimes correlates to equities, and 3) Neutral rather than negative long term correlation to equities.

In this paper, we will: 1) Analyze the ability of TF to improve a hedge fund portfolio’s risk adjusted returns and drawdowns, 2) Explore the increase in correlation of TF managers to equities and the reduction in their equity hedging characteristics over time, 3) Specifically analyze the impact of Fixed Income in TF portfolios and its role in TF hedging of equities, 4) Estimate the ability of TF ex-Fixed Income to hedge equity drawdowns across trading time frames and trading styles, 5) Explore the use of TF as a timing filter for equity indices, and 6) Enhance a diversified TF portfolio with covariance filtering to stabilize its ability to hedge equity risk. Click here for full article

Nigol Koulajian, Quest Partners LLC

Paul Czkwianianc, Quest Partners LLC

The paper provides significant evidence of limits of arbitrage in the hedge fund sector. Using unique data on institutional transactions, we show that the price impact of hedge fund trades increases when aggregate conditions deteriorate. The peak in trading impatience is reached during the financial crisis. The finding is consistent with arbitrageurs’ withdrawal from liquidity provision following a tightening in funding liquidity. Compared to other institutions in our data, hedge funds display the largest sensitivity of trading costs to aggregate conditions. We pin down this effect to a subset of hedge funds whose leverage, lack of share restrictions, asset illiquidity, and low reputational capital make them particularly exposed to funding constraints. These characteristics appear to negatively impact hedge funds’ trading performance when times get worse. Click here for full article

Francesco Franzoni, Professor of Finance, University of Lugano – Institute of Finance

We investigate hedge fund stock trading from 1998-2010 to test for fire sales. While funds with high capital outflows sell large amounts of stock during crises, these funds also buy stock, rather than using all the proceeds to fulfill redemptions. Further, funds with large outflows rarely sell the same stocks at the same time. For the relatively few stocks that are sold en masse, there is no evidence of price pressure, largely because hedge funds overwhelmingly choose to sell their most liquid, largest, and best-performing stocks. We provide new and compelling evidence that hedge funds neither engage in nor induce fire sales, since their well-diversified portfolios allow them to cherry-pick the most appropriate stocks to sell during crises. Click here for full article

Nicole Boyson, Northeastern University

Jean Helwege, University of South Carolina

Jan Jindra, Ohio State University

We develop a framework for informing the decision of stopping a portfolio manager or investment strategy once it has reached the drawdown or time under water limit associated with a certain confidence level. Under standard portfolio theory assumptions, we show that it takes three times longer to recover from the maximum drawdown than the time it took to produce it, with the same confidence level (“triple penance rule”).

We provide a theoretical justification to why hedge funds typically set less strict stop-out rules to portfolio managers with higher Sharpe ratios, despite the fact that they should be expected to deliver superior performance. We generalize this framework to the case of first-order serially-correlated investment outcomes, and conclude that ignoring the effect of serial correlation leads to a gross underestimation of the downside potential of hedge fund strategies, by as much as 70%. We also estimate that some hedge funds may be firing more than three times the number of skillful portfolio managers, compared to the number that they were willing to accept, as a result of evaluating their performance through traditional metrics, such as the Sharpe ratio.

We believe that our closed-formula compact expression for the estimation of drawdown potential, without having to assume IID cashflows, will open new practical applications in risk management, portfolio optimization and capital allocation. The Python code included confirms the accuracy of our solution. Click here for full article

David H. Bailey, Complex Systems Group Leader, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Marcos Lуpez de Prado, Head of Global Quantitative Research, Tudor Investment Corporation and Research Affiliate, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

We examine the value of Funds-of-Hedge-Funds (FoFs) using a hand-collected database of the funds’ hedge fund holdings. This holdings level data allows us to examine the determinants of hedge fund selection by FoFs, as well the ability to gauge the FoFs’ skill at hiring and firing managers. We find that FoFs hire hedge funds that are more difficult for individual investors to access, all else equal. FoFs hire larger, younger hedge funds with more restrictive share liquidity and higher minimum investments. Contrary to the previous literature, we do not find that FoFs perform worse than their single manager peers. Rather, we find evidence that a primary source of FoF value comes via skillful monitoring of their underlying hedge fund investments after the hire date. Specifically, we find that hedge funds that are held by FoFs are less likely to fail. The hazard rate for hedge funds held by FoFs is 57% lower than comparable hedge funds. Further, funds fired by FoFs are more likely to underperform and subsequently fail more often; indicating FoFs have skill in their firing decisions. Click here for full article

Adam L. Aiken, Quinnipiac University

Christopher P. Clifford, University of Kentucky

Jesse Ellis, University of Alabama

Big losses by traders are back in the news. In September the trial of former Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) derivatives trader Kweku Adoboli opened in London with jury selection. Adoboli stands accused of four counts of fraud and false accounting in connection with losses of $2.3 billion on apparently unauthorized equity derivatives trades in 2011. The trial comes not long after JPMorgan Chase’s credit derivatives traders—including Bruno Iksil, known as the London Whale due to the size of his positions lost an estimated $7.5 billion ($5.8 billion in realized losses in addition to $1.7 billion yet to come) on apparently authorized credit default swap trades.

Since 1990, there have been 15 instances when traders lost at least $1 billion (in 2011 dollars). Trading losses of this size are uncommon but matter when they occur. Shareholders suffer losses, counterparties are exposed to potential settlement failure in over-the-counter markets, bank regulators face the prospect of individual bank insolvencies or even systemic problems in the financial markets, and the public is always on the hook when a bailout is deemed necessary. Click here for full article

James R. Barth, Senior Finance Fellow, Milken Institute

Donald McCarthy, Consultant, Econ One Research

This paper investigates mega hedge fund management companies that manage over 50% of the industry’s assets, incorporating previously unavailable data from those that do not report to commercial databases. We document similarities among mega firms that report performance to commercial databases compared to those that do not. We show that the largest divergences between the performance reporting and non-reporting can be traced to differential exposure to credit markets. Thus the performance of hard-to-observe mega firms can be inferred from observable data. This conclusion is robust to delisting bias and the presence of serially correlated returns. Click here for full article

Daniel Edelman, Head of Quantitative R&D, Alternative Investment Solutions

William Fung, Visiting Research Professor, London Business School

In her paper, Ms. Till presents an organized series of events leading up to the downfall of MF Global and subsequently the eighth largest filing of bankruptcy in U.S. history. Click here for full article

Hilary Till, Principal, Premia Risk Consultancy

We study how hedge fund performance is related to the presence of mutual funds operating in the same asset class. We argue that hedge funds are able to exploit the constraints of the mutual funds related to both the high correlation between flows and value of investment and their tendency to cater to investors by invest in stocks that are hot. Hedge funds exploit these features of the mutual funds, especially the domestic ones. We show that the performance of the hedge funds is significantly higher when mutual fund market coverage is higher. This effect is mostly concentrated among domestic mutual funds and is stronger the higher investment horizon of the hedge funds. A high presence of the mutual fund industry helps to explain 28% of the yearly hedge fund performance. Hedge funds are more likely to be alpha in the presence of a high degree of mutual fund market coverage and their probability of survival is higher. Hedge funds employ contrarian strategies at the very moment in which mutual funds ride market expectations. The degree by which hedge funds react to changes in public information is directly related to the degree of mutual fund market coverage. Click here for full article

Massimo Massa, Rothschild Chaired Professor of Banking, Professor of Finance at INSEAD

Andrei Simonov, Associate Professor Finance, Eli Broad Graduate School of Mgmt. MSU and CEPR; and

Shan Yan, Eli Broad Graduate School of Mgmt. MSU

This paper presents new stylized facts about hedge fund performance and data biases based on a novel database aggregation. Our aim is to improve the ability of researchers in this literature to compare results across different studies by highlighting differences between databases and their effect on previously documented results. Using a comprehensive hedge fund database, we document economically important positive risk-adjusted performance of the average fund while differences in magnitude are due to differences in fund size and data biases, but not differences in fund risk exposures. However, this performance does not persist in any of databases when using value-weighted returns; a finding which we show to be linked to fund size and more pronounced biases in certain databases. Hedge funds with greater managerial incentives, smaller funds and younger funds outperform while hedge funds with strict share restrictions are not associated with higher risk-adjusted returns. Overall we find that several stylized facts are sensitive to the choice of the database. To avoid biases, it is therefore important to use a high quality consolidated database such as the one used in this paper. Click here for full article

Juha Joenvддrд, University of Oulu,

Robert Kosowski, Imperial College Business School, Imperial College, and

Pekka Tolonen, University of Oulu and GSF

In what is beginning to seem like the distant past, a clear line had once separated traditional and alternative investment products. But as investors faced multiple market crises and rising volatility, fund managers responded with a range of innovative products designed to better manage volatility and offer alternatives to long-only investing in traditional markets.

As investor segments and products converge, alternative strategies are increasingly being packaged within registered fund structures originally designed for retail buyers, but also used by institutions and other fund selectors. A growing number of alternative funds are being launched as UCITS (Undertaking for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities), a fund vehicle accepted for sale in countries throughout the European Union and many other nations. Alternatives also are becoming more prominent within U.S. mutual funds (registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940 or, in some cases, under the Securities Act of 1933). The growing popularity of these funds is clearly evident in strong asset flows, product proliferation, and a growing presence in Asian markets.

One factor driving the popularity of alternative UCITS and mutual funds is the detailed requirements around risk measurement and management, liquidity, counterparty diversification, and limits on leverage. However, the increased use of derivatives and their associated counterparty and operational risks continue to concern investors and regulators alike. The regulatory environment remains in flux as new rules on hedge funds take shape in Europe, and as the framework around UCITS gets reviewed amidst the expansion of more complex products. Yet this too is encouraging further innovation.

Meanwhile, new frontiers are emerging. Europe and the U.S. have led the way in the adoption of alternative strategies, but other markets are developing a taste for non-correlated funds. One of the biggest retail fund launches in Japan this year was an alternative managed futures strategy. Demand for alternatives is growing among sovereign wealth funds and national pension funds in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Wealthy individual investors around the world are also expected to consider alternatives more seriously after their recent experiences with traditional asset classes. Although U.S. institutions and high net worth individuals (HNWIs) can access hedge funds and alternatives directly, they may see the benefits of sourcing such strategies through regulated structures, just as their European counterparts have done. Click here for full article

contributed by SEI Global Services, Inc. — Investment Manager Services

division

We quantify risks associated with investor behavior using several asset pricing models and hedge fund data. After finding that irrational sentiments play a role in hedge fund returns, our multi-beta CAPM estimations reveal that beta belonging to irrational component varies around .037 for risky hedge funds and .018 for relatively less risky ones. Investors can use this irrational beta to gauge the extent of irrational sentiments prevailing in markets and compare the values in turbulent periods with more tranquil periods to re-adjust their portfolios and use these betas as an early warning sign. It can also guide investors in avoiding those funds that display greater irrational behavior. Our approach offers investors a solid quantitative rather than subjective approach in assessing the oncoming of a financial downturn and in doing so better protect against unpredicted losses that may result from irrational trading. Click here for full article

Andres Bello, University of Texas-Pan American,

Gцkзe Soydemir, California State University Stanislaus, and

Jan Smolarski, University of Texas-Pan American

Food price volatility has spiked to levels last seen in the 1970s. For low-income countries, food price hikes, such as have occurred recently, tend to significantly increase the incidence of intra-state conflicts, according to IMF research. Therefore, it was fitting and proper that the G20 meeting of agricultural ministers, which was hosted by France at the end of June, put food insecurity squarely at the top of the 2011 G20 agenda.

The June G20 agricultural meeting resulted in an action plan that will be carried forward at the Cannes Summit of G20 leaders in November.

The 2007-2008 food crisis, and the resumption of more recent food price spikes, clearly have a number of causes, which will require a great deal of political courage to address and ameliorate. That said, in reviewing over a century of commodity price volatility, there are episodes of low volatility and high volatility, which would indicate that this may be a pattern of recurrent phenomena. As a result, it may be wise to focus on how to manage price volatility rather than believe that this phenomenon can be eradicated, as noted by Dr. Pierre Jacquet of the Agence Franзaise de Dйveloppement.

The World Bank, for example, has launched a program that will assist and encourage companies in developing countries to buy insurance in the derivative markets against sudden changes in food prices, according to the Financial Times. Notably, the action plan, agreed to by the G20 agricultural ministers in June, largely embraces marketbased solutions to the problems of food insecurity and food volatility, amongst its many action items.

In contrast to the benign view of commodity derivatives trading, French president Nicolas Sarkozy stated at the opening of the June G20 agricultural meeting that the financialization of agriculture markets. is a contributory factor in price volatility and that this was a priority issue for regulators to address.

Ultimately, whether commodity derivatives trading (and speculation) increases price volatility is an empirical question. Assuming that one has access to transparent marketparticipant, position, and price data, one can carry out empirical studies to confirm or challenge this assumption.

In reviewing the evidence so far regarding the impact of commodity trading, speculation, and index investment on price volatility, this report finds that the evidence for the prosecution does not seem sufficiently compelling at this point. That said, given the disastrous performance of financial institutions in 2007 and especially, in 2008, it is fully appropriate to revisit one’s assumptions regarding the economic usefulness of all manner of financial instruments, including commodity derivatives contracts.

This paper’s conclusion is to agree with the World Bank president who has said, the answer to food price volatility is not to prosecute or block markets, but to use them better. And one sensible use of financial engineering is for hedging volatile food price risk with appropriate commodity derivatives contracts. Click here for full article

Hilary Till, Research Associate, EDHEC-Risk Institute,

Principal, Premia Capital Management, LLC

This issue summarizes two recent Delaware court decisions determining the validity of life insurance policies under a stranger originated life insurance program. These decisions are relevant to hedge funds and other investors that purchase life insurance policies for investment purposes. Click here for full article

Christopher Machera, Hedge Funds Returns

This paper demonstrates that liquidity risk as measured by the covariation of fund returns with unexpected changes in aggregate liquidity is an important predictor of hedge fund performance. The results show that funds that significantly load on liquidity risk subsequently outperform low-loading funds by about 6.5% annually, on average, over the period 1994-2009, while negative performance is observed during liquidity crises. The returns are independent of share restriction, pointing to a possible imbalance between the liquidity a fund offers its investors and the liquidity of its underlying positions. Liquidity risk seems to account for a substantial part of hedge fund performance. The results suggest several practical implications for risk management and manager selection. Click here for full article

Ronnie Sadka, Boston College, Carroll School of Management

Over the past two years, Merlin has published several white pa¬pers that are designed to highlight and help managers imple¬ment industry best practices — from shoring up their business model to identifying their target investors based on the devel¬opment stage of their fund.

In continuing with this theme, our latest white paper discusses the impor¬tance of business process automation within an asset management firm at all stages of development and how these organizations can measure their current processes versus investor expectations.

It is critical that business process maturity and automation evolve over the life of a fund in a disciplined and forward-looking manner as they are key components to maintaining a scalable business. As a firm grows, processes that are maintained manually or with home-grown spread¬sheets will stress and may break, adding business risk and overhead to a firm’s operations. This concept is especially important for fund manag¬ers because they cannot afford distractions and errors caused by broken or manual processes that affect the viability of the fund. Click here for full article