Consistent with the argument that portfolio disclosure reveals trade secrets, a difference-in-differences estimation suggests a drop in fund performance after a hedge fund begins filing Form 13F as well as an increase in return correlations with other funds in the same investment style. The drop in performance is concentrated among funds with larger expected proprietary costs of disclosure, for instance, funds that disclose a greater fraction of their assets or hold more illiquid stocks. The drop in performance cannot be fully explained by alternative explanations such as decreasing returns to scale or mean reversion in fund returns.

We use a unique data set of hedge fund long equity and equity option positions to investigate a significant lockup-related premium earned during the tech bubble (1999–2001) and financial crisis (2007–2009). Net fund flows are significantly greater among lockup funds during crisis and noncrisis periods. Managers of hedge funds with locked-up capital trade opportunistically against flow-motivated trades of non-lockup managers, consistent with a hypothesis of rent extraction in providing crisis era liquidity. The success of this opportunistic trading is concentrated during periods of high borrowing costs, in less liquid stock markets, and is enhanced by hedging in the equity option market.