This study presents a hedge fund portfolio choice model for an investor facing ambiguity. In the empirical section, we measure ambiguity as the cross-sectional dispersion in Industrial Production growth and in stock market return forecasts, and we construct the systematic ambiguity factors from...

Mandatory filings for UK hedge funds allow analysis of the effect of managerial employment networks on investment behavior. Employment in the same firm leads to significantly more similar investment behavior in terms of raw returns, abnormal performance (alpha), systematic risk (beta), and...

Hedge funds offer desirable risk-return profiles; but we also find high management fees, lack of transparency and worse, very limited liquidity (they are often closed to new investors and disinvestment fees can be prohibitive). This creates an incentive to replicate the attractive features of...

This article analyzes the effect of liquidity risk on the performance of various hedge fund portfolio strategies. Similarly to Avramov et al. (2007), we find that, before accounting for the effect of liquidity risk, hedge fund portfolios that incorporate predictability in managerial skills...

This paper develops a simple technique that controls for ldquo;false discoveries,rdquo; or mutual funds that exhibit significant alphas by luck alone. Our approach precisely separates funds into (1) unskilled, (2) zero-alpha, and (3) skilled funds, even with dependencies in cross-fund estimated...

We find evidence that hedge funds significantly manipulate stock prices on critical reporting dates. We document that stocks held by hedge funds experience higher returns on the last day of the quarter, followed by a reversal the next day. For example, the stocks in the top quartile of hedge...

Hedge funds significantly reduced their equity holdings during the recent financial crisis. In 2008Q3-Q4, hedge funds sold about 29% of their aggregate portfolio. Redemptions and margin calls were the primary drivers of selloffs. Consistent with forced deleveraging, the selloffs took place in...

We develop a new approach for evaluating performance across hedge funds. Our approach allows for performance comparisons between models that are misspecified – a common feature given the numerous factors that drive hedge fund returns. The empirical results show that the standard models used in...

I introduce dynamic option trading and non-linear views into the classical portfolio selection problem. The optimal dynamic option portfolio is characterized explicitly in terms of its expected sensitivities (Greeks) and the role of the mean-variance effi cient portfolio is played by the "Greek...

We introduce a model for portfolio selection with an extendable investment universe where the agent faces a trade-off between exploiting existing and exploring for new investment opportunities. An agent with mean-variance preferences starts with an existing investment universe consisting of a...