IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hbs/wpaper/12-013.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Cost of Capital for Alternative Investments

Author

Listed:
  • Jakub W. Jurek

    (Bendheim Center for Finance, Princeton University)

  • Erik Stafford

    (Harvard Business School, Finance Unit)

Abstract

This paper studies the cost of capital for alternative investments. We document that the risk profile of the aggregate hedge fund universe can be accurately matched by a simple index put option writing strategy that offers monthly liquidity and complete transparency over its state-contingent payoffs. The contractual nature of the put options in the benchmark portfolio allows us to evaluate appropriate required rates of return as a function of investor risk preferences and the underlying distribution of market returns. This simple framework produces a number of distinct predictions about the cost of capital for alternatives relative to traditional mean-variance analysis.

Suggested Citation

  • Jakub W. Jurek & Erik Stafford, 2011. "The Cost of Capital for Alternative Investments," Harvard Business School Working Papers 12-013, Harvard Business School.
    • Handle: RePEc:hbs:wpaper:12-013
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/12-013.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kenneth R. French, 2008. "Presidential Address: The Cost of Active Investing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(4), pages 1537-1573, August.
    2. Getmansky, Mila & Lo, Andrew W. & Makarov, Igor, 2004. "An econometric model of serial correlation and illiquidity in hedge fund returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(3), pages 529-609, December.
    3. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2009. "Market Liquidity and Funding Liquidity," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(6), pages 2201-2238, June.
    4. Vikas Agarwal, 2004. "Risks and Portfolio Decisions Involving Hedge Funds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(1), pages 63-98.
    5. Andrew J. Patton, 2004. "On the Out-of-Sample Importance of Skewness and Asymmetric Dependence for Asset Allocation," Journal of Financial Econometrics, Oxford University Press, vol. 2(1), pages 130-168.
    6. Robert C. Merton, 2005. "Theory of rational option pricing," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Sudipto Bhattacharya & George M Constantinides (ed.), Theory Of Valuation, chapter 8, pages 229-288, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    7. Gurdip Bakshi & Nikunj Kapadia, 2003. "Delta-Hedged Gains and the Negative Market Volatility Risk Premium," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(2), pages 527-566.
    8. Merton, Robert C, 1974. "On the Pricing of Corporate Debt: The Risk Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 29(2), pages 449-470, May.
    9. Frazzini, Andrea & Pedersen, Lasse Heje, 2014. "Betting against beta," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(1), pages 1-25.
    10. Lionel Martellini & Volker Ziemann, 2010. "Improved Estimates of Higher-Order Comoments and Implications for Portfolio Selection," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(4), pages 1467-1502, April.
    11. Xavier Gabaix, 2009. "Power Laws in Economics and Finance," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 255-294, May.
    12. Josh Lerner & Antoinette Schoar & Jialan Wang, 2008. "Secrets of the Academy: The Drivers of University Endowment Success," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(3), pages 207-222, Summer.
    13. Santa-Clara, Pedro & Saretto, Alessio, 2009. "Option strategies: Good deals and margin calls," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 391-417, August.
    14. Viktor Todorov, 2010. "Variance Risk-Premium Dynamics: The Role of Jumps," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(1), pages 345-383, January.
    15. Merton, Robert C, 1987. "A Simple Model of Capital Market Equilibrium with Incomplete Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(3), pages 483-510, July.
    16. Jakub W. Jurek & Erik Stafford, 2011. "Crashes and Collateralized Lending," NBER Working Papers 17422, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Amin, Gaurav S. & Kat, Harry M., 2003. "Hedge Fund Performance 1990–2000: Do the “Money Machines” Really Add Value?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(2), pages 251-274, June.
    18. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. "The Limits of Arbitrage," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 35-55, March.
    19. Fung, William & Hsieh, David A, 2001. "The Risk in Hedge Fund Strategies: Theory and Evidence from Trend Followers," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 14(2), pages 313-341.
    20. Glosten, L. R. & Jagannathan, R., 1994. "A contingent claim approach to performance evaluation," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 1(2), pages 133-160, January.
    21. Black, Fischer & Scholes, Myron S, 1973. "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 637-654, May-June.
    22. K. J. Arrow, 1964. "The Role of Securities in the Optimal Allocation of Risk-bearing," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 31(2), pages 91-96.
    23. Merton, Robert C, 1981. "On Market Timing and Investment Performance. I. An Equilibrium Theory of Value for Market Forecasts," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(3), pages 363-406, July.
    24. Jarque, Carlos M. & Bera, Anil K., 1980. "Efficient tests for normality, homoscedasticity and serial independence of regression residuals," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 255-259.
    25. Campbell Harvey & John Liechty & Merrill Liechty & Peter Muller, 2010. "Portfolio selection with higher moments," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(5), pages 469-485.
    26. Campbell R. Harvey & Akhtar Siddique, 2000. "Conditional Skewness in Asset Pricing Tests," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(3), pages 1263-1295, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kevin Guo & Tim Leung & Brian Ward, 2019. "How to mine gold without digging," International Journal of Financial Engineering (IJFE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 6(01), pages 1-30, March.
    2. Bradley Jones, 2015. "Asset Bubbles: Re-thinking Policy for the Age of Asset Management," IMF Working Papers 2015/027, International Monetary Fund.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fung, William & Hsieh, David A., 2011. "The risk in hedge fund strategies: Theory and evidence from long/short equity hedge funds," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 547-569, September.
    2. Wilkens, Marco & Yao, Juan & Jeyasreedharan, Nagaratnam & Oehler, Patrick, 2013. "Measuring the performance of hedge funds using two-stage peer group benchmarks," Working Papers 2013-18, University of Tasmania, Tasmanian School of Business and Economics, revised 01 Jun 2013.
    3. Paul Karehnke & Frans de Roon, 2020. "Spanning Tests for Assets with Option-Like Payoffs: The Case of Hedge Funds," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(12), pages 5969-5989, December.
    4. Gregory Connor & Lisa R. Goldberg & Robert A. Korajczyk, 2010. "Portfolio Risk Analysis," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9224.
    5. Andrew W. Lo & Mila Getmansky & Peter A. Lee, 2015. "Hedge Funds: A Dynamic Industry in Transition," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 483-577, December.
    6. François-Éric Racicot & Raymond Théoret, 2022. "Tracking market and non-traditional sources of risks in procyclical and countercyclical hedge fund strategies under extreme scenarios: a nonlinear VAR approach," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 8(1), pages 1-56, December.
    7. Linnenluecke, Martina K. & Chen, Xiaoyan & Ling, Xin & Smith, Tom & Zhu, Yushu, 2017. "Research in finance: A review of influential publications and a research agenda," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 188-199.
    8. Adam Zaremba & Jacob Koby Shemer, 2018. "Price-Based Investment Strategies," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-319-91530-2, April.
    9. Antonio Diez De Los Rios & René Garcia, 2011. "Assessing and valuing the nonlinear structure of hedge fund returns," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(2), pages 193-212, March.
    10. Bessler, Wolfgang & Drobetz, Wolfgang & Henn Overbeck, Jacqueline, 2005. "Hedge Funds: Die Königsdisziplin" der Kapitalanlage," Working papers 2005/04, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    11. Duarte, Jefferson & Longstaff, Francis A. & Yu, Fan, 2005. "Risk and Return in Fixed Income Arbitage: Nickels in Front of a Steamroller?," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt6zx6m7fp, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    12. Bakshi, Gurdip & Madan, Dilip & Panayotov, George, 2010. "Returns of claims on the upside and the viability of U-shaped pricing kernels," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 130-154, July.
    13. Miguel Antón & Christopher Polk, 2014. "Connected Stocks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(3), pages 1099-1127, June.
    14. Kevin Aretz & Ming-Tsung Lin & Ser-Huang Poon, 2023. "Moneyness, Underlying Asset Volatility, and the Cross-Section of Option Returns," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 27(1), pages 289-323.
    15. Peter Van Tassel, 2016. "Merger options and risk arbitrage," Staff Reports 761, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    16. Caporin, Massimiliano & Costola, Michele & Jannin, Gregory & Maillet, Bertrand, 2018. "“On the (Ab)use of Omega?”," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 11-33.
    17. Noël Amenc & Lionel Martellini & Jean†Christophe Meyfredi & Volker Ziemann, 2010. "Passive Hedge Fund Replication – Beyond the Linear Case," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 16(2), pages 191-210, March.
    18. Paul Schneider & Christian Wagner & Josef Zechner, 2020. "Low‐Risk Anomalies?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(5), pages 2673-2718, October.
    19. Liam Gallagher & Mark Hutchinson & John O’Brien, 2018. "Does Convertible Arbitrage Risk Exposure Vary Through Time?," Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies (RPBFMP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 21(04), pages 1-25, December.
    20. Douglas Cumming & Lars Helge Haß & Denis Schweizer, 2014. "Strategic Asset Allocation and the Role of Alternative Investments," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 20(3), pages 521-547, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hbs:wpaper:12-013. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: HBS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/harbsus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.