Disagreement between Hedge Funds and Other Institutional Investors and the Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns

We find that strong disagreements between hedge funds and other institutions in their common stock trades are twice as likely as agreements. The overall success of hedge funds’ trades is confined to disagreement stocks. While hedge funds are on average positive feedback traders, albeit weaker than other institutions, they are neither positive nor negative feedback traders for stocks heavily sold by other institutions. Hedge funds also depend less on earnings news. Our findings highlight the importance of disagreement in studying the performance of institutional investors’ trades and are consistent with the notion that skilled investors rely less on public information