Short sellers are perceived as informed, sophisticated investors. Yet little is known about their actual performance and trading strategies. Using a novel, hand-collected data set of daily position disclosures in Europe, we identify the entry, change, and exit dates of large short-sale positions...

We develop a new tail risk measure for hedge funds to examine the impact of tail risk on fund performance and to identify the sources of tail risk. We find that tail risk affects the cross-sectional variation in fund returns, and investments in both, tailsensitive stocks as well as options,...

While it is established that idiosyncratic volatility has a negative impact on the cross-section of future stock returns, the relationship between idiosyncratic volatility and future hedge fund returns is largely unexplored. We document that hedge funds with high idiosyncratic volatility...

For funds with greater incentives and greater opportunities to inflate returns, we find that (i) returns during December are significantly higher than those during the rest of the year even after controlling for risk in both time-series and the cross-section; (ii) this December spike is greater...

Recently there has been a rapid growth in the assets managed by "hedged mutual funds" - mutual funds mimicking hedge funds strategies. In this paper, we examine the performance of these funds relative to hedge funds and traditional mutual funds. We find that despite their use of similar trading...

Recently, there has been explosive growth in two products from the hedge fund industry - multi-strategy (MS) funds and funds of hedge funds (FOFs), both of which offer diversification across different hedge fund strategies. In well-functioning markets, both investment vehicles should offer...

Hedge fund flows chase alpha, yet they also follow returns attributable to traditional and exotic risk exposures. Investors appear more cognizant of exotic risks over time, with flows increasing their relative emphasis on returns from exotic betas in recent years. Investors also discriminate...

CAPM alpha explains hedge fund flows better than alphas from more sophisticated models. This suggests that investors pool together sophisticated model alpha with returns from exposures to traditional (except for the market) and exotic risks. We decompose performance into traditional and exotic...

Using 13F position valuations, we show that hedge fund advisors intentionally mismark their stock positions. We document manipulation even after eliminating issues inherent in the pricing of illiquid securities. Hedge fund advisors mark their positions up (down) following poor (good) performance...

This paper studies the “confidential holdings” of institutional investors, especially hedge funds, where the quarter-end equity holdings are disclosed with a significant delay through amendments to the Form 13F. Our evidence supports hiding private information as the dominant motive for...