[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/9571.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An Econometric Model of Serial Correlation and Illiquidity in Hedge Fund Returns

Author

Listed:
  • Mila Getmansky
  • Andrew W. Lo
  • Igor Makarov
Abstract
The returns to hedge funds and other alternative investments are often highly serially correlated in sharp contrast to the returns of more traditional investment vehicles such as long-only equity portfolios and mutual funds. In this paper, we explore several sources of such serial correlation and show that the most likely explanation is illiquidity exposure, i.e., investments in securities that are not actively traded and for which market prices are not always readily available. For portfolios of illiquid securities, reported returns will tend to be smoother than true economic returns, which will understate volatility and increase risk-adjusted performance measures such as the Sharpe ratio. We propose an econometric model of illiquidity exposure and develop estimators for the smoothing profile as well as a smoothing-adjusted Sharpe ratio. For a sample of 908 hedge funds drawn from the TASS database, we show that our estimated smoothing coefficients vary considerably across hedge-fund style categories and may be a useful proxy for quantifying illiquidity exposure.

Suggested Citation

  • Mila Getmansky & Andrew W. Lo & Igor Makarov, 2003. "An Econometric Model of Serial Correlation and Illiquidity in Hedge Fund Returns," NBER Working Papers 9571, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9571
    Note: AP
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w9571.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cecchetti, Stephen G & Mark, Nelson C, 1990. "Evaluating Empirical Tests of Asset Pricing Models: Alternative Interpretations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 48-51, May.
    2. Hansen, Lars Peter, 1982. "Large Sample Properties of Generalized Method of Moments Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 1029-1054, July.
    3. Scholes, Myron & Williams, Joseph, 1977. "Estimating betas from nonsynchronous data," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 309-327, December.
    4. Stephen J. Brown & William N. Goetzmann & James M. Park, 1998. "Hedge Funds and the Asian Currency Crisis of 1997," New York University, Leonard N. Stern School Finance Department Working Paper Seires 98-014, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business-.
    5. Turner, Christopher M. & Startz, Richard & Nelson, Charles R., 1989. "A Markov model of heteroskedasticity, risk, and learning in the stock market," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 3-22, November.
    6. Tarun Chordia & Richard Roll & Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, 2001. "Market Liquidity and Trading Activity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 501-530, April.
    7. Stephen J. Brown & William N. Goetzmann & Bing Liang, 2005. "Fees On Fees In Funds Of Funds," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: H Gifford Fong (ed.), The World Of Hedge Funds Characteristics and Analysis, chapter 7, pages 141-160, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    8. Jeffrey Fisher & Dean Gatzlaff & David Geltner & Donald Haurin, 2003. "Controlling for the Impact of Variable Liquidity in Commercial Real Estate Price Indices," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 31(2), pages 269-303, June.
    9. Grossman, Sanford J & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1980. "On the Impossibility of Informationally Efficient Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 393-408, June.
    10. Eric Zitzewitz, 2003. "Who Cares About Shareholders? Arbitrage-Proofing Mutual Funds," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(2), pages 245-280, October.
    11. Edwin J. Elton & Martin J. Gruber & Christopher R. Blake, 2003. "Incentive Fees and Mutual Funds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(2), pages 779-804, April.
    12. Pastor, Lubos & Stambaugh, Robert F., 2003. "Liquidity Risk and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(3), pages 642-685, June.
    13. Kandel, Shmuel & Stambaugh, Robert F., 1991. "Asset returns and intertemporal preferences," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 39-71, February.
    14. Stephen Brown & William Goetzmann & James Park, 1998. "Conditions for Survival: Changing Risk and the Performance of Hedge Fund Managers and CTAs," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm83, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Apr 2008.
    15. Cohen, Kalman J, et al, 1978. "The Returns Generation Process, Returns Variance, and the Effect of Thinness in Securities Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 33(1), pages 149-167, March.
    16. Chordia, Tarun & Roll, Richard & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2002. "Order imbalance, liquidity, and market returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 111-130, July.
    17. Fung, William & Hsieh, David A., 1999. "A primer on hedge funds," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 309-331, September.
    18. William N. Goetzmann & Jonathan Ingersoll, Jr. & Stephen A. Ross, 1998. "High Water Marks," NBER Working Papers 6413, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Hamilton, James D, 1989. "A New Approach to the Economic Analysis of Nonstationary Time Series and the Business Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 357-384, March.
    20. J. Doyne Farmer, 2002. "Market force, ecology and evolution," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 11(5), pages 895-953, November.
    21. Hamilton, James D., 1996. "Specification testing in Markov-switching time-series models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 127-157, January.
    22. 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.
    23. Schwert, G. William, 1977. "Stock exchange seats as capital assets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 51-78, January.
    24. Goetzmann, William N. & Ivković, Zoran & Rouwenhorst, K. Geert, 2001. "Day Trading International Mutual Funds: Evidence and Policy Solutions," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 36(3), pages 287-309, September.
    25. Clive W. J. Granger, 1988. "Aggregation of time series variables-a survey," Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics 1, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    26. Richardson, Matthew & Stock, James H., 1989. "Drawing inferences from statistics based on multiyear asset returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 323-348, December.
    27. Ross, Stephen A & Zisler, Randall C, 1991. "Risk and Return in Real Estate," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 175-190, June.
    28. Chordia, Tarun & Roll, Richard & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2000. "Commonality in liquidity," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 3-28, April.
    29. Kalman J. Cohen & Gabriel A. Hawawini & Steven F. Maier & Robert A. Schwartz & David K. Whitcomb, 1983. "Estimating and Adjusting for the Intervalling-Effect Bias in Beta," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(1), pages 135-148, January.
    30. Carl Ackermann & Richard McEnally & David Ravenscraft, 1999. "The Performance of Hedge Funds: Risk, Return, and Incentives," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(3), pages 833-874, June.
    31. Dimson, Elroy, 1979. "Risk measurement when shares are subject to infrequent trading," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 197-226, June.
    32. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    33. Hamilton, James D., 1990. "Analysis of time series subject to changes in regime," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1-2), pages 39-70.
    34. Brown, Stephen J, et al, 1992. "Survivorship Bias in Performance Studies," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 5(4), pages 553-580.
    35. Fama, Eugene F, 1970. "Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 383-417, May.
    36. Joseph Gyourko & Donald B. Keim, "undated". "What Does the Stock Market Tell Us About Real Estate Returns? (Revision of 18-91) (Reprint 030)," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 11-92, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    37. Nandini Chandar & Robert Bricker, 2002. "Incentives, Discretion, and Asset Valuation in Closed–End Mutual Funds," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(4), pages 1037-1070, September.
    38. Andrew W. Lo, A. Craig MacKinlay, 1988. "Stock Market Prices do not Follow Random Walks: Evidence from a Simple Specification Test," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 1(1), pages 41-66.
    39. Lo, Andrew W. & Craig MacKinlay, A., 1990. "An econometric analysis of nonsynchronous trading," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1-2), pages 181-211.
    40. 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.
    41. Jobson, J D & Korkie, Bob M, 1981. "Performance Hypothesis Testing with the Sharpe and Treynor Measures," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 36(4), pages 889-908, September.
    42. 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.
    43. ter Horst, Jenke R. & Nijman, Theo E. & Verbeek, Marno, 2001. "Eliminating look-ahead bias in evaluating persistence in mutual fund performance," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 345-373, September.
    44. Jennifer N. Carpenter, 2000. "Does Option Compensation Increase Managerial Risk Appetite?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(5), pages 2311-2331, October.
    45. Granger, C. W. J., 1980. "Long memory relationships and the aggregation of dynamic models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 227-238, October.
    46. Stephen Brown & William Goetzmann, 2001. "Hedge Funds With Style," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm21, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Apr 2008.
    47. Bhattacharya, Sudipto & Pfleiderer, Paul, 1985. "Delegated portfolio management," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 1-25, June.
    48. Philip H. Dybvig & Heber K. Farnsworth & Jennifer N. Carpenter, 2010. "Portfolio Performance and Agency," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(1), pages 1-23, January.
    49. Jennifer Carpenter, 1999. "Does Option Compensation Increase Managerial Risk Appetite?," New York University, Leonard N. Stern School Finance Department Working Paper Seires 99-076, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business-.
    50. William Goetzmann & Jonathan Ingersoll & Matthew I. Spiegel & Ivo Welch, 2002. "Sharpening Sharpe Ratios," NBER Working Papers 9116, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    51. 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.
    52. 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.
    53. Kadlec, Gregory B & Patterson, Douglas M, 1999. "A Transactions Data Analysis of Nonsynchronous Trading," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(3), pages 609-630.
    54. Agarwal, Vikas & Naik, Narayan Y., 2000. "Multi-Period Performance Persistence Analysis of Hedge Funds," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 35(3), pages 327-342, September.
    55. Mark Rubinstein, 1976. "The Valuation of Uncertain Income Streams and the Pricing of Options," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 7(2), pages 407-425, Autumn.
    56. Shanken, Jay, 1987. "Nonsynchronous Data and the Covariance-Factor Structure of Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(2), pages 221-231, June.
    57. Joseph Gyourko & Donald B. Keim, 1992. "What Does the Stock Market Tell Us About Real Estate Returns?," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 20(3), pages 457-485, September.
    58. 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.
    59. Grossman, Sanford J, 1976. "On the Efficiency of Competitive Stock Markets Where Trades Have Diverse Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 31(2), pages 573-585, May.
    60. Fisher, Jeffrey D & Geltner, David M & Webb, R Brian, 1994. "Value Indices of Commercial Real Estate: A Comparison of Index Construction Methods," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 9(2), pages 137-164, September.
    61. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1978. "Asset Prices in an Exchange Economy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(6), pages 1429-1445, November.
    62. 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.
    63. Darryll Hendricks & Jayendu Patel & Richard Zeckhauser, 1997. "The J-Shape Of Performance Persistence Given Survivorship Bias," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(2), pages 161-166, May.
    64. Rahul Bhargava & Ann Bose & David A. Dubofsky, 1998. "Exploiting International Stock Market Correlations with Open-end International Mutual Funds," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(5&6), pages 765-773.
    65. Goodwin, Thomas H, 1993. "Business-Cycle Analysis with a Markov-Switching Model," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 11(3), pages 331-339, July.
    66. Black, Fischer, 1986. "Noise," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(3), pages 529-543, July.
    67. Fung, William & Hsieh, David A, 1997. "Empirical Characteristics of Dynamic Trading Strategies: The Case of Hedge Funds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(2), pages 275-302.
    68. Rahul Bhargava & Ann Bose & David A. Dubofsky, 1998. "Exploiting International Stock Market Correlations with Open‐end International Mutual Funds," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(5‐6), pages 765-773, June.
    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. 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.
    2. Gregory Connor & Lisa R. Goldberg & Robert A. Korajczyk, 2010. "Portfolio Risk Analysis," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9224.
    3. 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.
    4. Agarwal, Vikas & Boyson, Nicole M. & Naik, Narayan Y., 2007. "Hedge funds for retail investors? An examination of hedged mutual funds," CFR Working Papers 07-04, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    5. 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.
    6. Degiannakis, Stavros & Xekalaki, Evdokia, 2004. "Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (ARCH) Models: A Review," MPRA Paper 80487, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Stephen J. Brown & William N. Goetzmann & Bing Liang, 2005. "Fees On Fees In Funds Of Funds," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: H Gifford Fong (ed.), The World Of Hedge Funds Characteristics and Analysis, chapter 7, pages 141-160, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    8. Amit Goyal, 2012. "Empirical cross-sectional asset pricing: a survey," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 26(1), pages 3-38, March.
    9. Benoît Dewaele, 2013. "Portfolio Optimization for Hedge Funds through Time-Varying Coefficients," Working Papers CEB 13-032, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    10. 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.
    11. Benoît Dewaele, 2013. "Leverage and Alpha: The Case of Funds of Hedge Funds," Working Papers CEB 13-033, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    12. Eling, Martin & Faust, Roger, 2010. "The performance of hedge funds and mutual funds in emerging markets," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 1993-2009, August.
    13. Henn Overbeck, Jacqueline & Meier, Iwan, 2005. "Performance Analysis of Hedge Fonds," Working papers 2005/06, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    14. Burton G. Malkiel & Atanu Saha, 2004. "Hedge Funds: Risk and Return," Working Papers 98, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    15. Capocci, Daniel & Hubner, Georges, 2004. "Analysis of hedge fund performance," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 55-89, January.
    16. 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.
    17. Jenke Ter Horst & Marno Verbeek, 2007. "Fund Liquidation, Self-selection, and Look-ahead Bias in the Hedge Fund Industry," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 11(4), pages 605-632.
    18. Bali, Turan G. & Brown, Stephen J. & Caglayan, Mustafa Onur, 2012. "Systematic risk and the cross section of hedge fund returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(1), pages 114-131.
    19. Burton G. Malkiel & Atanu Saha, 2004. "Hedge Funds: Risk and Return," Working Papers 98, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E0 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General
    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit

    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:nbr:nberwo:9571. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.