Hedge Funds: Risk and Return

Constructing a data base that is relatively free of bias, this paper provides measures of the returns of hedge fund s as well as the distinctly non-normal characteristics of the data. We provide risk-adjusted measures of performance as well as tests of the degree to which hedge funds live up to their claim of market neutrality. We also examine the substantial attrition of hedge funds and analyze the determinants of hedge fund survival as well as perform tests of return persistence. Finally, we examine the claims of the managers of “funds of funds” that they can form portfolios of “the best” hedge funds and that such funds provide useful instruments for individual investors. We conclude that hedge funds are far riskier and provide much lower returns than is commonly supposed.

Why Do Hedge Funds Stop Reporting Their Performance?

It is well known that the voluntary reporting of hedge funds may cause biases in estimates of their investment returns. But wide disagreements exist in explaining why hedge funds stop reporting to the datagathering services. Academic studies have suggested that poor or failing funds stop reporting while industry analysts suggest that better performing funds cease reporting because they no longer need to attract new capital. Using the TASS dataset, we find that hedge funds’ returns are significantly worse at the end of their reporting live. We then use survival time analysis techniques to examine the funds’ time to failure and changes in the hazard rate (i.e., the probability of failure) over time. We also estimate the effects of funds’ performance, size, and other characteristics on the hazard rate. Consistent with the finding on funds’ returns at the end of their reporting lives, we find that better performing and larger hedge funds have lower hazard rates.

The Loss Causation Requirement for Rule 10B-5 Causes of Action: The Implications of Dura Pharmaceuticals v. Broudo

In order to have recoverable damages in a Rule 10b-5 action, plaintiffs must establish loss causation, i.e. that the actionable misconduct was the cause of economic losses to the plaintiffs. The requirement of loss causation has come to the fore as the result of the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Dura Pharmaceuticals v. Broudo. We address in this paper a number of loss causation issues in light of the Dura decision, including issues surrounding the proper use of event studies to establish recoverable damages, the requirement that there be a corrective disclosure, what types of disclosure should count as a corrective disclosure, post-corrective disclosure stock price movements, the distinction between the class period and the damage period, collateral damage caused by a corrective disclosure, and forward-casting estimates of recoverable damages

Clinicobiochemical and pathological correlation in alcoholic liver disease among Indian patients

Background: Alcohol is one of the leading causes of “preventable” morbidity and mortality worldwide. It is associated with liver damage. A gray area is temporal relation between clinico-biochemical severity and histological changes in liver, neither this issue has been widely studied.Methods: A hospital based cross sectional clinico-pathological pilot study was undertaken in a tertiary care hospital in West Bengal in patients with a history of alcohol intake who had been admitted in the inpatient department of medicine. Assessment of patients with history of alcohol intake with respect to clinical, biochemical and histopathological examination was performed. The correlation between clinico-biochemical severity and histopathological stages in cases of alcoholic liver disease was evaluated.Results: There was a significant correlation between clinico-biochemical severity and liver biopsy changes. The severity of histopathological changes of alcoholic liver disease was found to correlate significantly with the severity of abdominal parameters with Pearson correlation cofactor of 0.819.Conclusions: Both the clinic-biochemical severity and histological changes had no correlation with the duration of alcohol intake in contrast to earlier studies which had demonstrated a definite correlation of alcoholic liver disease (ALD) with both the amount and duration of alcohol intake. Larger studies will be required to substantiate the findings of this study.

Transition Metal Oxide-Based Nano-materials for Energy Storage Application

With improvement of global economy, the fatigue of energy becomes inevitable in twenty-first century. It is expected that the increase of world energy requirements will be triple at the end of this century. Thus, there is an imperative need for development of renewable energy sources and storage systems. Among various energy storage systems, supercapacitors are ascertained one of the most significant storage devices. But the development of supercapacitor devices with high power and energy density are the greatest challenges for modern research. In this article, transition metal oxides such as TiO2-V2O5, NiMn2O4 etc. with porous structure are considered as high performance supercapacitors electrode. The effects of its structural, morphological and electrochemical properties have been studied extensively. A TiO2-V2O5 and NiMn2O4 based electrode delivered specific capacitance of 310 and 875 F g−1, respectively at a scan rate 2 mV s−1. This TiO2-V2O5 based asymmetric supercapacitor also exhibits excellent device performance with specific energy 20.18 W h kg−1 at specific power 5.94 kW kg−1, and retained 88.0% specific capacitance at current density of 10 A g−1 after 5000 cycles

Direction-Dependent Lateral Domain Walls in Ferroelectric Hafnium Zirconium Oxide and their Gradient Energy Coefficients: A First Principles Study

To understand and harness the physical mechanisms of ferroelectric Hafnium Zirconium Oxide (HZO)-based devices, there is a need for a clear understanding of the domain interactions, domain density, nucleation, domain wall motion, negative capacitance effects, and other multi-domain characteristics. All these crucial attributes strongly depend on the coupling between neighboring domains in HZO which is quantified by gradient energy coefficient (g). Furthermore, HZO has unique orientation-dependent lateral multidomain configurations, which plays a key role for directional dependence of g. To develop an in-depth understanding of these effects, there is a need for a thorough analysis of g in HZO, including its orientation and strain-dependence. In this work, we analyze the energetics of multidomain configurations, domain growth mechanism and gradient energy coefficients of HZO corresponding to lateral domain walls using first-principle Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations. The dependence of g on domain width and strain is also analyzed to provide a comprehensive understanding of this crucial parameter. Our results indicate that one lateral direction exhibits the following characteristics: (i) domain growth occurs unit-cell-by-unit-cell, (ii) the value of g is negative and in the order of $10^{-12} Vm^{3}C^{-1}$, and (iii) g is much sensitive to strain. In contrast, in the other lateral direction, the following attributes are observed: (i) domain growth occurs in quanta of half-unit-cell, (ii) g is positive and in the order of $10^{-10} Vm^{3}C^{-1}$ and (iii) g shows negligible sensitivity to strain (up to the 1% strain limit considered in this work)

Securities Litigation and the Housing Market Downturn

This paper addresses one of the key issues – the foreseeability of the housing market downturn that began in September of 2007 and intensified in the fourth quarter of 2007 – that must be addressed in assessing the extensive securities class action litigation that has been filed against financial institutions (and others) seeking to recover damages for investor losses arising out of the credit market crisis. We begin our analysis of this issue by first discussing the legal centrality of this issue to much of this litigation. We then turn to answer the question of when the housing market downturn became foreseeable by analyzing housing prices (regional and nationwide), housing sales, housing future contracts, and various market spreads such as the ABX triple A indexes. We conclude that these data are consistent with the view that the housing market downturn was in fact not foreseen by the market prior to the fourth quarter of 2007

ISOLATION, PURIFICATION AND STRUCTURAL ELUCIDATION OF BIOACTIVE POLYPHENOLIC COMPOUND (CATECHIN) FROM CRATAEVA NURVALA BUCH- HAM STEM BARK CHLOROFORM FRACTION

Abstract: 2-(3,4-dihydroxyphenyl)-3,4-dihydro-2h-chromene-3,5,7-triol (Catechin), a bioactive polyphenolic compound acts as free radical scavenger in both plant and animals possibly via antioxidant activity. Literature reveals that majority of the herbs containing high level of polyphenolic compounds are traditionally being used to treat neurodegenerative disorders mediated through reactive oxygen species (ROS). With this background, current study was undertaken to isolate bioactive polyphenolic compounds from Crataeva nurvala, a well explored traditional Indian medicinal plant with historical evidence of efficacy in the treatment of neurological and antioxidant deficiency related disorders. In this study, chloroform fraction of ethanolic extract of Crataeva nurvala stem bark was purified by column chromatography (gradient elution technique) to isolate bioactive polyphenolic compound. The structure of the isolated compound was determined by various spectrophotometric analysis like UV, IR, 13 C and 1 H NMR and mass spectroscopy. Mass spectrum of isolated compound showed a parent molecular ion (M + ) peak at m/z 289.0 gm/mol correspond to the molecular formula C 15 H 14 O 6 . In the 1 H NMR spectrum, multiplet (m) at δ H 5.7769-7.9909 correspond to 5H of aromatic ring; another multiplet (m) appearing at δ H 3.8645 correspond to 1H at H-2; multiplet (m) appearing at δ H 4.5351 depicted 1H at H-3, the multiplet (m) appearing at δ H 8.5715-8.9525 clearly indicated presence of 4H of Ar. -OH; another multiplet (m) appearing at δ H 2.5633 & 2.7871 were accounted for 2H at H-4α & H-4β respectively; the multiplet appearing at 2.4021 accounting for 1 H can be assigned to aliphatic -OH. Moreover, 13 C NMR spectrum showed presence of total 15 carbon atom in the isolated compound. Based on physical and spectral characteristics, the isolated compound was identified and reported (Catechin)