FX hedge funds have experienced very weak returns and high fund failure rates, as currency predictability decays. The managers of these funds face strong incentives to concentrate on new asset classes, creating a natural experiment to test whether observed manager skill is FX specific, or...

The attention-grabbing hypothesis has been offered as a behavioural explanation for post-event abnormal returns for FDA drug approval announcements for NYSE listed firms. We show that when event-day mis-specification is accounted for the market reaction is centred on the event-day and that the...

Using an entirely new dataset of audited filings from firms that manage hedge funds, this study examines whether the hedge fund compensation contract aligns managerial incentives and investor interests. Our novel dataset allows us to distinguish between firms focused exclusively on hedge fund...

We show that earning non-hedge fund income is associated with lower future hedge fund performance. Specifically, generating non-hedge fund income reflects weakened alignment between the incentives of hedge fund management firm owners and the interests of investors. Using a hand-collected...

Recent academic and practitioner attention has focused on currency momentum. In this paper we replicate technical trading rules to assess their relationship with momentum. From an investment perspective, the average out-of-sample pre-transaction cost Sharpe ratio of technical trading rules is...

Predictability of currency returns, based on Carry, Momentum and Value, is widely accepted in the literature. This paper shows that out-of-sample replication of the predictors, following publication of preeminent academic studies of their risk, reveals returns have disappeared. From an...

We show that fund-specific return skewness is associated with managerial skill and future hedge fund performance. Specifically, skewness in fund returns reflects managerial skill in avoiding large drawdowns. Using a new measure of investment skill that accounts for this managerial ability, we...

Following large positive returns in 2008, Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs) received increased attention and allocations from institutional investors. Subsequent performance has been below its long term average. This has occurred in a period following the largest financial crisis since the great...

During the recent financial crisis dedicated short bias (DSB) hedge funds exhibited extremely strong results while many other hedge fund strategies suffered badly. This study, prompted by this recent episode, investigates DSB hedge fund performance over an extended sample period, from January...

This study tests a large sample of UK equity returns from 1965-2007 for predictability. Returns are tested using the Lo and MacKinlay (1988) variance ratio test and the Chow and Denning (1993) multiple variance ratio tests. Overall, the results show strong signs of predictability. There is a...