IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pri/cepsud/104.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Hedge Funds: Risk and Return

Author

Listed:
  • Burton G. Malkiel

    (Princeton University)

  • Atanu Saha

    (Analysis Group)

Abstract

Constructing a data base that is relatively free of bias, this paper provides measures of the returns of hedge fund s as well as the distinctly non-normal characteristics of the data. We provide risk-adjusted measures of performance as well as tests of the degree to which hedge funds live up to their claim of market neutrality. We also examine the substantial attrition of hedge funds and analyze the determinants of hedge fund survival as well as perform tests of return persistence. Finally, we examine the claims of the managers of funds of funds that they can form portfolios of the best hedge funds and that such funds provide useful instruments for individual investors. We conclude that hedge funds are far riskier and provide much lower returns than is commonly supposed.

Suggested Citation

  • Burton G. Malkiel & Atanu Saha, 2004. "Hedge Funds: Risk and Return," Working Papers 98, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    • Handle: RePEc:pri:cepsud:104
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://gceps.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/104malkiel.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kiefer, Nicholas M, 1988. "Economic Duration Data and Hazard Functions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 26(2), pages 646-679, June.
    2. 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.
    3. Donald Haurin, 1988. "The Duration of Marketing Time of Residential Housing," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 16(4), pages 396-410, December.
    4. Dimson, Elroy, 1979. "Risk measurement when shares are subject to infrequent trading," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 197-226, June.
    5. Blank, Rebecca M., 1989. "Analyzing the length of welfare spells," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 245-273, August.
    6. Cohen, Kalman J. & Hawawini, Gabriel A. & Maier, Steven F. & Schwartz, Robert A. & Whitcomb, David K., 1983. "Friction in the trading process and the estimation of systematic risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 263-278, August.
    7. Lancaster, Tony, 1979. "Econometric Methods for the Duration of Unemployment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(4), pages 939-956, July.
    8. Carpenter, Jennifer N. & Lynch, Anthony W., 1999. "Survivorship bias and attrition effects in measures of performance persistence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 337-374, December.
    9. Atchison, Michael D & Butler, Kirt C & Simonds, Richard R, 1987. "Nonsynchronous Security Trading and Market Index Autocorrelation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(1), pages 111-118, March.
    10. Timothy J. Gronberg & W. Robert Reed, 1994. "Estimating Workers' Marginal Willingness to Pay for Job Attributes Using Duration Data," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 29(3), pages 911-931.
    11. Stephen J. Brown & William N. Goetzmann & James Park, 2001. "Careers and Survival: Competition and Risk in the Hedge Fund and CTA Industry," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(5), pages 1869-1886, October.
    12. Liang, Bing, 2000. "Hedge Funds: The Living and the Dead," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 35(3), pages 309-326, September.
    13. Fung, William & Hsieh, David A., 2000. "Performance Characteristics of Hedge Funds and Commodity Funds: Natural vs. Spurious Biases," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 35(3), pages 291-307, September.
    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. 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.
    2. Henn Overbeck, Jacqueline & Meier, Iwan, 2005. "Performance Analysis of Hedge Fonds," Working papers 2005/06, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    3. Willi Semmler & Raphaële Chappe, 2011. "The Operation of Hedge Funds: Econometric Evidence, Dynamic Modeling, and Regulatory Perspectives," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Greg N. Gregoriou & Razvan Pascalau (ed.), Financial Econometrics Modeling: Derivatives Pricing, Hedge Funds and Term Structure Models, chapter 1, pages 3-34, Palgrave Macmillan.
    4. Willi Semmler & Raphaele Chappe, 2012. "Ponzi Finance And The Hedge Fund Industry," Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 15(supp0), pages 1-25.

    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. Burton G. Malkiel & Atanu Saha, 2004. "Hedge Funds: Risk and Return," Working Papers 98, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    2. repec:pri:cepsud:104malkiel is not listed on IDEAS
    3. 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.
    4. Alex Grecu & Burton G. Malkiel & Atanu Saha, 2006. "Why Do Hedge Funds Stop Reporting Their Performance?," Working Papers 78, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    5. repec:pri:cepsud:124malkiel is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Alex Grecu & Burton G. Malkiel & Atanu Saha, 2006. "Why Do Hedge Funds Stop Reporting Their Performance?," Working Papers 78, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    7. Bill Ding & Hany A. Shawky, 2007. "The Performance of Hedge Fund Strategies and the Asymmetry of Return Distributions," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 13(2), pages 309-331, March.
    8. Saha, Atanu & Hilton, Lynette, 1997. "Expo-power: A flexible hazard function for duration data models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 227-233, July.
    9. Guillermo Baquero & Marno Verbeek, 2022. "Hedge Fund Flows and Performance Streaks: How Investors Weigh Information," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(6), pages 4151-4172, June.
    10. Atanu Saha & Lynette Hilton, 2000. "A New Approach to Estimating Damages in Mass Torts," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(1), pages 27-46.
    11. 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.
    12. Benoît Dewaele, 2013. "Leverage and Alpha: The Case of Funds of Hedge Funds," Working Papers CEB 13-033, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    13. Hwang, Inchang & Xu, Simon & In, Francis & Kim, Tong Suk, 2017. "Systemic risk and cross-sectional hedge fund returns," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 109-130.
    14. Douglas Cumming & Na Dai, 2010. "A Law and Finance Analysis of Hedge Funds," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 39(3), pages 997-1026, September.
    15. Ravi Jagannathan & Alexey Malakhov & Dmitry Novikov, 2010. "Do Hot Hands Exist among Hedge Fund Managers? An Empirical Evaluation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(1), pages 217-255, February.
    16. Capocci, Daniel & Hubner, Georges, 2004. "Analysis of hedge fund performance," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 55-89, January.
    17. Nicholas Chan & Mila Getmansky & Shane M. Haas & Andrew W. Lo, 2007. "Systemic Risk and Hedge Funds," NBER Chapters, in: The Risks of Financial Institutions, pages 235-330, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Benoît Dewaele, 2013. "Portfolio Optimization for Hedge Funds through Time-Varying Coefficients," Working Papers CEB 13-032, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    19. Martin Eling, 2009. "Does Hedge Fund Performance Persist? Overview and New Empirical Evidence," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 15(2), pages 362-401, March.
    20. Ewelina Sokołowska, 2017. "Does growing wealth influence hedge funds’ development? An empirical analysis," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(8), pages 756-768, February.
    21. Mark C. Hutchinson & Liam A. Gallagher, 2010. "Convertible Bond Arbitrage: Risk and Return," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(1‐2), pages 206-241, January.
    22. Mark Hutchinson & Liam Gallagher, 2008. "Simulating convertible bond arbitrage portfolios," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(15), pages 1247-1262.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    hedge funds;

    JEL classification:

    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors

    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:pri:cepsud:104. 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: Bobray Bordelon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ceprius.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.