20 years ago, Sharpe (1992) developed the Style Analysis for mutual funds; in this analysis, the weights mutual funds allocate to major asset classes are constrained to sum up to 1. In this paper we develop a Time-Varying Style Analysis (TVSA) in which the weights must sum up to 1 but are...

We examine the portfolio holdings of Funds of Hedge Funds (FoFs) to identify the channels through which FoFs add value for their clients. FoFs offer access to a diversified portfolio of funds that would be costly for constrained investors to manage on their own. Though we find only limited...

We examine the relative weights hedge fund investors attach to past information in the fund selection process. The weighting scheme appears inconsistent with econometric forecasting models that predict fund returns, alphas or Sharpe ratios. In particular, investor flows are highly sensitive to...

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,...

We develop a new systematic tail risk measure for equity-oriented 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, tail-sensitive...

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...

We examine the relationship between deviating from the benchmark and subsequent performance for hedge funds. We propose a simple new measure of benchmark deviations, termed the Dispersion Contribution Index (DCI), which is based on a fund's return-distance from the mean return of same-style...

Consistent with the well-documented relation between political orientation and psychological traits, hedge funds' political orientations are related to their portfolio decisions. Relative to politically conservative hedge funds, politically liberal hedge funds exhibit a preference for smaller...

This study examines several aspects of active portfolio management by equity hedge funds between 1996-2013. Consistent with the idea that cross-sectional return dispersion is a proxy for the market's available alpha, our results show that equity hedge funds achieve their strongest performance...

This paper empirically decomposes hedge fund excess return into factor timing, security selection, and risk premium using Lo (2008)'s performance measure. Portfolio-level tests show that security selection explains most of the excess return generated by hedge funds during 1994-2009, and the...