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Journal of Financial Economics Vol. 84 No. 1 2007

Do hedge funds deliver alpha? A Bayesian and bootstrap analysis☆

Robert Kosowski1; Narayan Y. Naik2; Melvyn Teo3

1 Imperial College London · 2 London Business School · 3 Singapore Management University

Abstract

Using a robust bootstrap procedure, we find that top hedge fund performance cannot be explained by luck, and hedge fund performance persists at annual horizons. Moreover, we show that Bayesian measures, which help overcome the short-sample problem inherent in hedge fund returns, lead to superior performance predictability. Sorting on Bayesian alphas, relative to OLS alphas, yields a 5.5% per year increase in the alpha of the spread between the top and bottom hedge fund deciles. Our results are robust and relevant to investors as they are neither confined to small funds, nor driven by incubation bias, backfill bias, or serial correlation.

DOI
10.1016/j.jfineco.2005.12.009
Volume
84
Issue
1
Pages
229-264
Language
en
Sources
openalex crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib

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