Most textbook finance literature assumes risk to be the standard deviation of returns (volatility), which is not only used by academics but also financial advisors, regulators and more. This paper comprehensively examines whether volatility is consistent with investors’ actual perception of...

Suppose funds managers are differentiated by intrinsic or innate ability at some origin point in time. Using formal theoretical propositions, and with risk continuously increasing, the continuum of assets available to funds managers is endogenously segmented into continuums of `safe', and...

Using hedge fund returns and county-level religiosity data during 1996-2013, we examine the effects of local religious beliefs on hedge fund risk-taking behaviors. We find that local religiosity is significantly negatively related to both total and idiosyncratic volatilities of hedge funds, even...

Following the Pension Protection Act of 2006, there was a sharp increase in the use of TDFs as default investment options in defined contribution retirement plans. We document large differences in realized TDF returns and risk profiles, even for funds with the same target retirement date. Using...

Downside deviation, semivariance, or the second lower partial moment are different names for the same risk measure, proposed in the literature for capturing the downside risk of investment decisions. This paper analyzes multiperiod decision making under such a risk measure, and finds that a...

We use a deep learning model to extract syntax and context information from mutual fund managers' narrative discussions and measure their risk assessment. We validate the forward-looking nature of the risk measure by showing that more negative (positive) risk assessment in managers' narratives...

The concept of enterprise risk management will be examined in the context of multi-strategy hedge funds and fund of hedge funds. This paper seeks to demonstrate that risk at these organizations has to be considered holistically and not in “silos”. A number of qualitative and quantitative...

Is the asset management sector a source of financial instability? This paper contributes to the debate by performing a macroprudential stress test in order to quantify systemic risks in the mutual fund sector. For this purpose we include the welldocumented flow-performance relationship as an...

The 27th SUERF Colloquium in Munich in June 2008: New Trends in Asset Management: Exploring the Implications was already topical in the Summer of 2008. The subsequent dramatic events in the Autumn of 2008 made the presentations in Munich even more relevant to investors and bankers that want to...

Hedge funds, on average, outperform other actively managed funds. However, hedge fund managers often use trading strategies that are not used by other managed portfolios, and thus they bear unique risks. In particular, many hedge funds use short selling. I construct an option-based measure of...