The behavior of hedge funds during liquidity crises (original) (raw)
Related papers
Liquidity Management of Hedge Funds Around the 2008 Financial Crisis
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015
In this paper, we show that hedge funds repurchased a large amount of liquid stocks and continued to sell illiquid stocks as the 2008 financial crisis mitigated. It complements existing empirical evidence that institutional investors sold more liquid than illiquid assets during the crisis period. This new empirical evidence confirms the trade-off in theoretical literature between selling liquid assets to minimize contemporary trading costs and selling illiquid assets to keep a "liquidity cushion" (e.g. Scholes 2000; Duffie and Ziegler 2003; Brown, Carlin, and Lobo 2010). Consistently, hedge funds' portfolio composition shows a delayed "flight to liquidity": the proportion of hedge funds' liquid stock holdings decreased slightly at the peak of the crisis and then increased substantially to a highest level ever since 2007. For comparison, we show that pension funds have a nearly constant portfolio composition of liquid versus illiquid stocks through the entire crisis.
Hedge Fund Stock Trading in the Financial Crisis of 2007-2009
Review of Financial Studies, 2012
Hedge funds significantly reduced their equity holdings during the recent financial crisis. In 2008Q3-Q4, hedge funds sold about 29% of their aggregate portfolio. Redemptions and margin calls were the primary drivers of selloffs. Consistent with forced deleveraging, the selloffs took place in volatile and liquid stocks. In comparison, redemptions and stock sales for mutual funds were not as severe. We show that hedge fund investors withdraw capital three times as intensely as do mutual fund investors in response to poor returns. We relate this stronger sensitivity to losses to share liquidity restrictions and institutional ownership in hedge funds.
2008
We study the effect of financial crises on hedge fund risk. Using a regime-switching beta model, we separate systematic and idiosyncratic components of hedge fund exposure. The systematic exposure to various risk factors is conditional on market volatility conditions. We find that in the high-volatility regime (when the market is rolling-down and is likely to be in a crisis state) most strategies are negatively and significantly exposed to the Large-Small and Credit Spread risk factors. This suggests that liquidity risk and credit risk are potentially common factors for different hedge fund strategies in the down-state of the market, when volatility is high and returns are very low. We further explore the possibility that all hedge fund strategies exhibit a high volatility regime of the idiosyncratic risk, which could be attributed to contagion among hedge fund strategies. In our sample this event happened only during the Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) crisis of 1998. Other crises including the recent subprime mortgage crisis affected hedge funds only through systematic risk factors, and did not cause contagion among hedge funds.
Working Papers, 2008
We study the effect of financial crises on hedge fund risk. Using a regime-switching beta model, we separate systematic and idiosyncratic components of hedge fund exposure. The systematic exposure to various risk factors is conditional on market volatility conditions. We find that in the high-volatility regime (when the market is rolling-down and is likely to be in a crisis state) most strategies are negatively and significantly exposed to the Large-Small and Credit Spread risk factors. This suggests that liquidity risk and credit risk are potentially common factors for different hedge fund strategies in the downstate of the market, when volatility is high and returns are very low. We further explore the possibility that all hedge fund strategies exhibit a high volatility regime of the idiosyncratic risk, which could be attributed to contagion among hedge fund strategies. In our sample this event happened only during the Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) crisis of 1998. Other crises including the recent subprime mortgage crisis affected hedge funds only through systematic risk factors, and did not cause contagion among hedge funds.
Market Liquidity, Funding Liquidity, and Hedge Fund Performance
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014
This paper provides evidence on the interaction between hedge funds' performance and their market liquidity risk and funding liquidity risk. Using a 2-state Markov regime switching model we identify regimes with low and high market-wide liquidity. While funds with high market liquidity risk exposures earn a premium in the high liquidity regime, this premium vanishes in the low liquidity states. Moreover, funding liquidity risk, measured by the sensitivity of a hedge fund's return to the Treasury-Eurodollar (TED) spread, is an important determinant of fund performance. Hedge funds with high loadings on the TED spread underperform low-loading funds by about 2.44% (11.06%) annually in the high (low) liquidity regime, during 1994-2012. These results provide support for the Brunnermeier and Pedersen (2009) theoretical model that rationalizes the link between market liquidity and funding liquidity.
Liquidity shocks, size and the relative performance of hedge fund strategies
Journal of Banking & Finance, 2009
We examine whether the increase in the flow of capital to hedge funds over the period 1994-2005 had a negative impact on performance. More specifically, we study the relative performance of small versus large funds for each of the hedge fund strategies. Our results indicate that on an absolute return basis, small funds outperform large funds. On a risk-adjusted return basis, however, we find that large funds outperform small funds, and that large funds are also shown to hold less liquid assets and take on less systematic and idiosyncratic risk than small funds. Further, funds that experience positive liquidity shocks generally outperform those that experience negative liquidity shocks. We also find evidence that hedge fund managers that are aggressive in dealing with liquidity shocks perform better than hedge fund managers that are conservative in dealing with liquidity shocks.
2010
Using the hedge fund industry as our laboratory setting, we examine whether bank bailout programs initiated in seven countries during the 2007-2009 global financial crisis reduced counterparty risk in the financial system. Hedge funds have extensive and economically significant ties to banking institutions and these links spurred fears of systemic risk among regulators and investors. We find that the rescue of financial institutions offering prime brokerage, custodial and investment advisory services to hedge funds was followed by a reduced probability of hedge fund liquidation in the short term (up to six months). However, only the rescue of custodians reduced hedge fund illiquidity or the ability of funds to meet clients" redemption requests.
The primacy of hedge funds in the subprime crisis
Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, 2011
When the subprime crisis broke out in the summer of 2007, the hedge funds avoided blame by disassociating from those that supplied the subprimebacked products and by disappearing among those that bought these products. This twofold defense strategy has worked to perfection because almost everyone who has studied the crisis is convinced that it is the banks and not the hedge funds that were chiefly responsible for causing it. This article puts forward a different interpretation of events. Its central argument is that had it not been for the hedge funds' intermediary position between the investors seeking yield on the one hand and the banks that created the high yield bearing securities on the other, the supply of these securities would never have reached the proportions that were critical in precipitating the near collapse of the whole financial system. Take away hedge funds and a general financial crisis could still have occurred in 2007-8, but it is only because of the hedge funds that the crisis that actually occurred initially took on the form of a subprime crisis. The policy implication of this analysis is that regulatory controls on hedge fund activities must be far tighter than those currently proposed.
Hedge Funds Development and their Role in Economic Crises
Annals of the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University - Economics, 2013
The rapid development of hedge funds and their emanating critical role in the financial markets and the financial system globally, combined with the increased frequency of economic crises during the last 25 years, brought them to the centre of discussions concerning the following issue: «To what extent the operation of hedge funds can affect the birth, peak and even geographic expansion of economic crises?». In this context, the present paper aims to contribute to the limited and sporadic discussion of whether the hedge funds could be held responsible for economic crises. To this extend the growth and the impact of hedge funds on financial crises is analysed and evaluated using the HFR database -in their birth, aggravation or even geographic expansion-both from a historical perspective and in relation to the 2007-today crisis. Based on the evidence presented in this paper, hedge funds cannot be blamed for the birth of the crises of the last 25 years. Comparing the data across the different crises, it becomes obvious that, with the exception of the 2007 subprime crisis, where almost all hedge fund strategies suffered considerable losses, in all other crises studied in the present paper, the hedge fund strategies with a negative return were the ones that had an exposure to the specific sector and/or region that was in the centre of the crisis i.e. Emerging market strategy presented substantial negative monthly performance over the Asian crisis, Convertible arbitrage strategy was affected by the dot-com crisis, etc.
The Risks of Financial Institutions, 2007
Systemic risk is commonly used to describe the possibility of a series of correlated defaults among financial institutions-typically banks-that occur over a short period of time, often caused by a single major event. However, since the collapse of Long Term Capital Management in 1998, it has become clear that hedge funds are also involved in systemic risk exposures. The hedge-fund industry has a symbiotic relationship with the banking sector, and many banks now operate proprietary trading units that are organized much like hedge funds. As a result, the risk exposures of the hedge-fund industry may have a material impact on the banking sector, resulting in new sources of systemic risks. In this paper, we attempt to quantify the potential impact of hedge funds on systemic risk by developing a number of new risk measures for hedge funds and applying them to individual and aggregate hedge-fund returns data. These measures include: illiquidity risk exposure, nonlinear factor models for hedge-fund and banking-sector indexes, logistic regression analysis of hedge-fund liquidation probabilities, and aggregate measures of volatility and distress based on regime-switching models. Our preliminary findings suggest that the hedge-fund industry may be heading into a challenging period of lower expected returns, and that systemic risk is currently on the rise.