Standard tests for persistence in hedge fund performance are not consistent with investment practices because they ignore performance reporting delay, overlook fund selection standards of institutional investors, and often use portfolios with too many funds. This paper introduces a set of tests...

Ratios that indicate the statistical significance of a fund’s alpha typically appraise its performance. A growing literature suggests that even in the absence of any ability to predict returns, holding options positions on the benchmark assets or trading frequently can significantly enhance...

Hedge Funds are often considered as a possibility for optimizing traditional portfolios due to their alternative risk factors and sources of return. But as the return distribution of hedge funds shows negative skewness and excess kurtosis, using portfolio optimization techniques, based on the...

Fund-of-funds (FoF) managers face the task of selecting a (relatively) small number of hedge funds from a large universe of candidate funds. We analyse whether such a selection can be successfully achieved by looking at the track records of the available funds alone, using advanced statistical...

One can consider the concept of market neutrality as having quot;breadthquot; and quot;depthquot;: quot;Breadthquot; reflects the number of market risks to which the hedge fund is neutral, while quot;depthquot; reflects the quot;completenessquot; of the neutrality of the fund to market risks. We...

A hedge fund manager invests the fund in a constant investment opportunity, and receives high-water mark fees when the fund reaches a new maximum relative to a stochastic benchmark, aiming to maximize the expected power utility from fees in the long run. The manager's optimal portfolio includes...

Using the setting of funds of hedge funds (FoFs), we show that prime brokers (PBs) facilitate investors' search for informed hedge fund managers. We find that FoFs exhibit PB bias, a disproportionate preference for hedge funds serviced by their connected PBs. This PB bias is stronger when the...

For 5,500 North American hedge funds following 11 different strategies, we analyse the stand-alone performance of these strategies using a stochastic discount factor approach. Employing the same data, we then consider the diversification benefits of each hedge fund strategy when combined with a...

We explore a new dimension of the dependence of hedge fund returns with the market portfolio by examining linear correlation and tail dependence conditional on the financial cycle. Using a large sample of hedge funds that are considered "market neutral", we document that the low correlation of...