Georges Hübner

Hedge fund performance and persistence in bull and bear markets

Abstract This paper tests the performance of 2894 hedge funds in a time period that encompasses unambiguously bullish and bearish trends whose pivot is commonly set at March 2000. The database proves to be fairly trustable with respect to the most important biases in hedge funds studies, despite the high attrition rate of funds observed in the down market. An original ten-factor composite performance model is applied that achieves very high significance levels. The analysis of performance indicates that most hedge funds significantly outperformed the market during the whole test period, mostly thanks to the bullish subperiod. In contrast, no significant underperformance of individual hedge funds strategies is observed when markets headed south. The analysis of persistence yields very similar results, with most of the predictability being found among middle performers during the bullish period. However, the ‘Market Neutral’ strategy represents a remarkable exception, as abnormal performance is sustained throughout and significant persistence can be found between the 20% and 69% best performers in this category, probably thanks to an extreme adaptability and a very active investment behaviour.

Basel II and Operational Risk: Implications for Risk Measurement and Management in the Financial Sector

This paper proposes a methodology to analyze the implications of the Advanced Measurement Approach (AMA) for the assessment of operational risk put forward by the Basel II Accord. The methodology relies on an integrated procedure for the construction of the distribution of aggregate losses, using internal and external loss data. It is illustrated on a 2x2 matrix of two selected business lines and two event types, drawn from a database of 3000 losses obtained from a large European banking institution. For each cell, the method calibrates three truncated distributions functions for the body of internal data, the tail of internal data, and external data. When the dependence structure between aggregate losses and the non-linear adjustment of external data are explicitly taken into account, the regulatory capital computed with the AMA method proves to be substantially lower than with less sophisticated approaches allowed by the Basel II Accord, although the effect is not uniform for all business lines and event types. In a second phase, our models are used to estimate the effects of operational risk management actions on bank profitability, through a measure of RAROC adapted to operational risk. The results suggest that substantial savings can be achieved through active management techniques, although the estimated effect of a reduction of the number, frequency or severity of operational losses crucially depends on the calibration of the aggregate loss distributions.

Development Path and Capital Structure of Belgian Biotechnology Firms

This study investigates the relationship between the evolution of real options values and associated financing policies for Belgian companies in the sector of bio-industries. Each firms situation regarding the relevant types of real options is stylistically represented through a scenario tree. The consumption of a time-to-build or a growth option is respectively considered as a success or a failure in company development. Empirically, several variables enable us to locate each company along the tree at any time. The study of transitions leads us to discover that failures tend to trigger higher leverage, unlike in the trade-off theory. Yet, the increases in debt maturity, in lease and in convertible financing confirm our predictions. Overall, we emphasize evidence of undercapitalization and of proper, yet insufficient, use of hybrid financing by biotech companies.

How Do Performance Measures Perform

The relevance of the information ratio and the alpha, two leading performance measures for multi-index models, depends on the type of portfolio that investors hold. Comparison of these measures and the generalized Treynor ratio on the quality of the rankings they produce reveals that a precise measure yields similar rankings using alternative benchmarks. A stable measure produces the same rankings even with different model specifications. The outcome indicates the types of skills portfolio managers value. The generalized Treynor ratio provides better results for a sample of mutual funds, suggesting that managerial skills relate to the ability to generate alpha while controlling for systematic risk.

The Analytic Pricing of Asymmetric Defaultable Swaps

Swaps where both parties are exposed to credit risk still lack convincing pricing mechanisms. This article presents a reduced-form model where the event of default is related to structural characteristics of each party. The cash flows submitted to credit risk are identified before the swap is priced. Analytical pricing formulas for interest rate and currency swaps are computed using a Gaussian model for risky bonds. Currency swaps exhibit additional correlation risk. The benefits from netting depend on the balance between exposures and market conditions in valuation. We show that sources of credit risk asymmetries are also likely to impact on credit spreads.

The Impact of Illiquidity and Higher Moments of Hedge Fund Returns on Their Risk-Adjusted Performance and Diversification Potential

This article studies the joint impact of smoothing and fat tails on the risk–return properties of hedge fund strategies. First, the authors adjust risk and performance measures for illiquidity and the non-Gaussian distribution of hedge funds returns. They use two risk metrics: the Modified Value-at-Risk and a preference-based measure retrieved from the linear exponential utility function. Second, they revisit the hedge fund diversification effect with these adjustments for illiquidity. Their results report similar fund performance rankings and optimal hedge fund strategy allocations for both adjusted metrics. They also show that the benefits of hedge funds in portfolio diversification persist but tend to weaken after adjustments for illiquidity are made.

Higher-Moment Risk Exposures in Hedge Funds

The paper singles out the key roles of US equity skewness and kurtosis in the determination of the market premia embedded in Hedge Fund returns. We propose a conditional higher-moment asset pricing model with location, trading and higher-moment factors in order to describe the dynamics of the Equity Hedge (Market Neutral, Short Selling and Long/Short strategies), Event Driven, Relative Value, and Funds of Hedge Funds styles. The volatility, skewness and kurtosis implied in the US options markets are used by Hedge Fund managers as instruments to anticipate market movements. Managers should adjust their market exposure in response to variations in the implied higher moments. We show that higher-moment premia improve a conditional asset pricing model both in terms of explanatory power (R-squares and Schwarz criterion) and specification errors across all Hedge Fund styles.

Measuring operational risk in financial institutions

The scarcity of internal loss databases tends to hinder the use of the advanced approaches for operational risk measurement (Advanced Measurement Approaches (AMA)) in financial institutions. As there is a greater variety in credit risk modelling, this article explores the applicability of a modified version of CreditRisk+ to operational loss data. Our adapted model, OpRisk+, works out very satisfying Values-at-Risk (VaR) at 95% level as compared with estimates drawn from sophisticated AMA models. OpRisk+ proves to be especially worthy in the case of small samples, where more complex methods cannot be applied. OpRisk+ could therefore be used to fit the body of the distribution of operational losses up to the 95%-percentile, while Extreme Value Theory (EVT), external databases or scenario analysis should be used beyond this quantile.

The Market Timing Skills of Hedge Funds during the Financial Crisis

The performance of a market timer can be measured through the Treynor and Mazuy (1966) model, provided the regression alpha is properly adjusted by using the cost of an option-based replicating portfolio, as shown by Hübner (2010). We adapt this approach to the case of multi-factor models with positive, negative or neutral betas. This new approach is applied on a sample of hedge funds whose managers are likely to exhibit market timing skills. We stick to funds that post weekly returns, and analyze three hedge funds strategies in particular: long-short equity, managed futures, and funds of hedge funds. We analyze a particular period during which the managers of these funds are likely to magnify their presumed skills, namely around the financial and banking crisis of 2008. Some funds adopt a positive convexity as a response to the US market index, while others have a concave sensitivity to the returns of an emerging market index. Thus, we identify “positive�?, “mixed�? and “negative�? market timers. A number of signs indicate that only positive market timers manage to acquire options below their cost, and deliver economic significant performance, even in the midst of the financial crisis. Negative market timers, by contrast, behave as if they were forced to sell options without getting the associated premium. We interpret this behavior as a possible result of fire sales, leading them to liquidate positions under the pressure of redemption orders, and inducing negative performance adjusted for market timing.

Corporate International Diversification and the Cost of Equity: European Evidence

This study aims at characterizing the bene...ts of corporate international diversi...cation on stock values by introducing the notion of psychic distance in the analysis. In order to capture this crucial dimension, we construct a new internationalization index. Our ...ndings display evidence that this dimension signi...cantly in‡uences international exposure of ...rms belonging to the same industry provided that the sector is homogeneous. The paper shows that domestic and international exposures tend to decrease as ...rms expand their activities among psychically distant countries. Interestingly, the opposite is observed for ...rms belonging to industries in which the degree of di¤erentiation and entry barriers are weak.