Measuring risk in the hedge fund sector

Recent high correlations among hedge fund returns could suggest concentrations of risk comparable to those preceding the hedge fund crisis of 1998. A comparison of the current rise in correlations with the elevation before the 1998 event, however, reveals a key difference. The current increase stems mainly from a decline in the volatility of returns, while the earlier rise was driven by high covariances - an alternative measure of comovement in dollar terms. Because volatility and covariances are lower today, the current hedge fund environment differs from the 1998 environment.>Hedge funds ; Rate of return ; Corporations - Finance ; Financial institutions

Learning about Beta: time-varying factor loadings, expected returns and the conditional CAPM

This paper explores the theoretical and empirical implications of time-varying and unobservable beta. Investors infer factor loadings from the history of returns via the Kalman filter. Due to learning, the history of beta matters. Even though the conditional CAPM holds, standard OLS tests can reject the model if the evolution of investor's expectations is not properly modelled. The authors use their methodology to explain returns on the twenty-five size and book-to-market sorted portfolios. Their learning version of the conditional CAPM produces pricing errors that are significantly smaller than standard conditional or unconditional CAPM and the model is not rejected by the data.Capital Asset Pricing Model; CAPM; investments

The Shadow Banking System: Implications for Financial Regulation

The current financial crisis has highlighted the growing importance of the 'shadow banking system,' which grew out of the securitization of assets and the integration of banking with capital market developments. This trend has been most pronounced in the United States, but it has had a profound influence on the global financial system. In a market-based financial system, banking and capital market developments are inseparable: Funding conditions are closely tied to fluctuations in the leverage of market-based financial intermediaries. Growth in the balance sheets of these intermediaries provides a sense of the availability of credit, while contractions of their balance sheets have tended to precede the onset of financial crises. Securitization was intended as a way to transfer credit risk to those better able to absorb losses, but instead it increased the fragility of the entire financial system by allowing banks and other intermediaries to 'leverage up' by buying one another's securities. In the new, post-crisis financial system, the role of securitization will likely be held in check by more stringent financial regulation and by the recognition that it is important to prevent excessive leverage and maturity mismatch, both of which can undermine financial stability

Liquidity, monetary policy, and financial cycles

A close look at how financial intermediaries manage their balance sheets suggests that these institutions raise their leverage during asset price booms and lower it during downturns - pro-cyclical actions that tend to exaggerate the fluctuations of the financial cycle. The authors of this study argue that the growth rate of aggregate balance sheets may be the most fitting measure of liquidity in a market-based financial system. Moreover, the authors show a strong correlation between balance sheet growth and the easing and tightening of monetary policy.Intermediation (Finance) ; Liquidity (Economics) ; Monetary policy ; Business cycles ; Asset pricing

What financing data reveal about dealer leverage

The Federal Reserve collects data on the financing activities of the primary government securities dealers. Some market analysts argue that the data show a considerable rise in dealer leverage in recent years. However, a close reading of the data suggests that dealer borrowing involving fixed-income securities has grown only modestly. Moreover, the increase that has occurred is not clearly associated with greater risk taking.Government securities ; Interest rates ; Risk

Discussion of an integrated framework for multiple financial regulations

A 2012 paper by Goodhart, Kashyap, Tsomocos, and Vardoulakis (GKTV) proposes a dynamic general equilibrium framework that provides a conceptual - and to some extent quantitative - framework for the analysis of macroprudential policies. The distinguishing feature of GKTV's paper relative to any other on macroprudential policy is its study of a setting with multiple financial frictions that permits the analysis of multiple macroprudential policy tools at the same time. The modeling approach includes various market failures such as incomplete markets with heterogeneous agents, fire-sale externalities, and margin spirals, all of which provide rationales for policies designed to improve welfare. In GKTV's model, liquidity ratios are found to be more efficient preemptive tools than capital ratios or loan-to-value ratios. However, these liquidity ratios need to be relaxed in times of crises in order to reduce adverse effects from fire-sale externalities. It remains to be seen how robust these findings are in alternative, fully dynamic settings. Furthermore, GKTV's approach does not address the tension between micro- and macroprudential objectives, and the timing of the buildup and release of policies is not specified precisely

Inference, arbitrage, and asset price volatility

Does the presence of arbitrageurs decrease equilibrium asset price volatility? I study an economy with arbitrageurs, informed investors, and noise traders. Arbitrageurs face a trade-off between arbitrage and inference: they would like to buy assets in response to temporary price declines (the arbitrage effect) but sell when prices decline permanently (the inference effect). In equilibrium, the presence of arbitrageurs increases volatility when the inference effect dominates the arbitrage effect. From a technical point of view, this paper offers closed-form solutions to a dynamic equilibrium model with asymmetric information and non-Gaussian priors

Dodd-Frank one year on: Implications for shadow banking

One year after passage of the Dodd-Frank Act (DFA), regulators proposed several of the rules required for its implementation. In this paper, I discuss some aspects of proposed DFA rules in light of shadow banking. The topics are risk-retention rules for securitized products and the impact of capital reforms on asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) conduits. While the reform of securitization is resulting primarily from DFA, changes in accounting standards, together with the Basel capital reforms, have had important impacts on the economics of ABCP conduits

The Federal Reserve's Primary Dealer Credit Facility

As liquidity conditions in the "repo market"--the market where broker-dealers obtain financing for their securities--deteriorated following the near-bankruptcy of Bear Stearns in March 2008, the Federal Reserve took the step of creating a special facility to provide overnight loans to dealers that have a trading relationship with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Six months later, in the wake of new strains in the repo market, the Fed expanded the facility by broadening the types of collateral accepted for loans. Both initiatives were designed to help restore the orderly functioning of the market and to prevent the spillover of distress to other financial firms.Federal Reserve Bank of New York ; Loans ; Financial crises ; Brokers