IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ofr/wpaper/20-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Leverage and Risk in Hedge Funds

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel Barth

    (Office of Financial Research)

  • Laurel Hammond

    (Office of Financial Research)

  • Phillip Monin

    (Office of Financial Research)

Abstract

The use of leverage is often considered a key potential systemic risk in hedge funds. Yet, data limitations have made empirical analyses of hedge fund leverage difficult. Traditional theories predict leverage and portfolio risk are positively linearly related. Alternatively, an emerging wave of theories of leverage constraints predict leverage and asset risk are negatively correlated, and therefore leverage and portfolio risk may be unrelated or even negatively related. Consistent with theories of leverage constraints, we find that hedge fund leverage and portfolio risk are weakly negatively correlated. This arises from a strong negative association between leverage and asset risk - in particular, market beta. The average market beta on funds' assets explains 20% of the cross-sectional variation in hedge fund leverage, and 47% for the subsample of equity-style funds. Also consistent with these theories, leverage and portfolio alpha are strongly positively related, but this relationship is entirely explained by market beta. Our findings suggest that the association between leverage and risk in hedge funds is nuanced, and that leverage is in part used to scale the payoffs of low-beta, high-alpha securities, resulting in an essentially flat relationship between leverage and portfolio risk.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Barth & Laurel Hammond & Phillip Monin, 2020. "Leverage and Risk in Hedge Funds," Working Papers 20-02, Office of Financial Research, US Department of the Treasury.
    • Handle: RePEc:ofr:wpaper:20-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.financialresearch.gov/working-papers/files/OFRwp-20-02_leverage-and-risk-in-hedge-funds.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2020
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Novy-Marx, Robert, 2013. "The other side of value: The gross profitability premium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 1-28.
    3. 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.
    4. Andrew W. Lo, 2010. "Hedge Funds: An Analytic Perspective Updated Edition," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9177.
    5. Petri Jylhä, 2018. "Margin Requirements and the Security Market Line," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(3), pages 1281-1321, June.
    6. Nicolae Gârleanu & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2011. "Margin-based Asset Pricing and Deviations from the Law of One Price," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(6), pages 1980-2022.
    7. Frazzini, Andrea & Pedersen, Lasse Heje, 2014. "Betting against beta," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(1), pages 1-25.
    8. Malcolm Baker & Mathias F. Hoeyer & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2016. "The Risk Anomaly Tradeoff of Leverage," NBER Working Papers 22116, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Harry Markowitz, 1952. "Portfolio Selection," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 7(1), pages 77-91, March.
    10. Daniel Barth & Phillip Monin, 2020. "Illiquidity in Intermediate Portfolios: Evidence from Large Hedge Funds," Working Papers 20-03, Office of Financial Research, US Department of the Treasury.
    11. Boguth, Oliver & Simutin, Mikhail, 2018. "Leverage constraints and asset prices: Insights from mutual fund risk taking," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(2), pages 325-341.
    12. William F. Sharpe, 1964. "Capital Asset Prices: A Theory Of Market Equilibrium Under Conditions Of Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 19(3), pages 425-442, September.
    13. Robert F. Stambaugh & Jianfeng Yu & Yu Yuan, 2015. "Arbitrage Asymmetry and the Idiosyncratic Volatility Puzzle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(5), pages 1903-1948, October.
    14. Bing Liang & Liping Qiu, 2019. "Hedge fund leverage: 2002–2017," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 25(4), pages 908-941, September.
    15. Fama, Eugene F & MacBeth, James D, 1973. "Risk, Return, and Equilibrium: Empirical Tests," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 607-636, May-June.
    16. Black, Fischer, 1972. "Capital Market Equilibrium with Restricted Borrowing," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 45(3), pages 444-455, July.
    17. Mark D. Flood & Phillip Monin & Lina Bandyopadhyay, 2015. "Gauging Form PF: Data Tolerances in Regulatory Reporting on Hedge Fund Risk Exposures," Working Papers 15-13, Office of Financial Research, US Department of the Treasury.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Zhong, Angel, 2018. "Idiosyncratic volatility in the Australian equity market," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 105-125.
    2. Bradrania, Reza & Veron, Jose Francisco, 2023. "The beta anomaly in the Australian stock market and the lottery demand," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    3. González-Urteaga, Ana & Rubio, Gonzalo, 2021. "The quality premium with leverage and liquidity constraints," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    4. Han, Xing & Li, Kai & Li, Youwei, 2020. "Investor overconfidence and the security market line: New evidence from China," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    5. Boguth, Oliver & Simutin, Mikhail, 2018. "Leverage constraints and asset prices: Insights from mutual fund risk taking," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(2), pages 325-341.
    6. Joshua Traut, 2023. "What we know about the low-risk anomaly: a literature review," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 37(3), pages 297-324, September.
    7. Wang, Jianqiu & Wu, Ke & Pan, Jiening & Jiang, Ying, 2023. "Disagreement, speculation, and the idiosyncratic volatility," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 232-250.
    8. Bradrania, Reza & Veron, Jose Francisco & Wu, Winston, 2023. "The beta anomaly and the quality effect in international stock markets," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(C).
    9. Sara Kelly Anzinger & Chinmoy Ghosh & Milena Petrova, 2017. "The Other Side of Value: The Effect of Quality on Price and Return in Real Estate," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 54(3), pages 429-457, April.
    10. Shiyang Huang & Xin Liu & Dong Lou & Christopher Polk, 2024. "The Booms and Busts of Beta Arbitrage," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(8), pages 5367-5385, August.
    11. Adam Zaremba & Jacob Koby Shemer, 2018. "Price-Based Investment Strategies," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-319-91530-2, January.
    12. Lou, Dong & Polk, Christopher & Skouras, Spyros, 2019. "A tug of war: Overnight versus intraday expected returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 192-213.
    13. Rajnish Mehra & Sunil Wahal & Daruo Xie, 2021. "Is idiosyncratic risk conditionally priced?," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(2), pages 625-646, May.
    14. Sebastien Valeyre & Sofiane Aboura & Denis Grebenkov, 2019. "The Reactive Beta Model," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 42(1), pages 71-113, March.
    15. Calvet, Laurent E. & Betermier, Sebastien & Jo, Evan, 2019. "A Supply and Demand Approach to Equity Pricing," CEPR Discussion Papers 13974, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Wang, Huijun & Yan, Jinghua & Yu, Jianfeng, 2017. "Reference-dependent preferences and the risk–return trade-off," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(2), pages 395-414.
    17. Tran, Vu Le, 2023. "Sentiment and covariance characteristics," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    18. Jianfeng Hu, 2020. "Is the synthetic stock price really lower than actual price?," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(12), pages 1809-1824, December.
    19. Ruenzi, Stefan & Ungeheuer, Michael & Weigert, Florian, 2020. "Joint Extreme events in equity returns and liquidity and their cross-sectional pricing implications," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    20. González-Sánchez, Mariano, 2022. "Factorial asset pricing models using statistical anomalies," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    hedge funds; leverage; systemic risk; financial stability; low beta anomaly;
    All these keywords.

    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:ofr:wpaper:20-02. 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: Gregory Feldberg (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ofrgvus.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.