New Insight on the Performance of Equity Long/short Investment Styles

peer reviewedLong-short equity strategies have recently generated exceptional performance raising a set of concerns about the strategies’ propensity to deliver alpha or beta. This paper revisits the performance of equity long-short hedge funds across investments styles. We first categorize individual hedge funds with regard to their size and/or value factor investing along the generalization of Sharpe (1992) style analysis. Style weights on size and value factors are used to split the equity long-short universe in 5x5 hedge fund style portfolios. To analyze the performance of each style, we consider two sets of innovative factors. First, we apply sequential Fama-French model of Lambert, Fays and Hübner (2015). Besides, to captures downside and extreme risk embedded in hedge fund strategies we augment the model with the co-skewness and co-kurtosis factors developed by Lambert and Hübner (2013). Under this framework, we perform cross-sectional performance analyses of individual hedge funds as well as time-series analysis on the hedge fund style broad category. Our contributions are threefold; first, our alternative framework significantly improves the explanatory power of the multi-factor model in the context of long-short equity funds, second, considering higher-moment factors aim to capture part of the abnormal return of the downside and extreme risk exposures taken by a fund manager, and finally, long-short equity hedge funds are, to some extent, less exposed to small capitalisation stocks than expected and instead rather prefer higher momentum levels in their strategies.Hedge funds special editio

Search for gravitational-lensing signatures in the full third observing run of the LIGO-Virgo network

Gravitational lensing by massive objects along the line of sight to the source causes distortions of gravitational wave-signals; such distortions may reveal information about fundamental physics, cosmology and astrophysics. In this work, we have extended the search for lensing signatures to all binary black hole events from the third observing run of the LIGO--Virgo network. We search for repeated signals from strong lensing by 1) performing targeted searches for subthreshold signals, 2) calculating the degree of overlap amongst the intrinsic parameters and sky location of pairs of signals, 3) comparing the similarities of the spectrograms amongst pairs of signals, and 4) performing dual-signal Bayesian analysis that takes into account selection effects and astrophysical knowledge. We also search for distortions to the gravitational waveform caused by 1) frequency-independent phase shifts in strongly lensed images, and 2) frequency-dependent modulation of the amplitude and phase due to point masses. None of these searches yields significant evidence for lensing. Finally, we use the non-detection of gravitational-wave lensing to constrain the lensing rate based on the latest merger-rate estimates and the fraction of dark matter composed of compact objects

Search for eccentric black hole coalescences during the third observing run of LIGO and Virgo

Despite the growing number of confident binary black hole coalescences observed through gravitational waves so far, the astrophysical origin of these binaries remains uncertain. Orbital eccentricity is one of the clearest tracers of binary formation channels. Identifying binary eccentricity, however, remains challenging due to the limited availability of gravitational waveforms that include effects of eccentricity. Here, we present observational results for a waveform-independent search sensitive to eccentric black hole coalescences, covering the third observing run (O3) of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. We identified no new high-significance candidates beyond those that were already identified with searches focusing on quasi-circular binaries. We determine the sensitivity of our search to high-mass (total mass M>70 M⊙) binaries covering eccentricities up to 0.3 at 15 Hz orbital frequency, and use this to compare model predictions to search results. Assuming all detections are indeed quasi-circular, for our fiducial population model, we place an upper limit for the merger rate density of high-mass binaries with eccentricities 0<e≤0.3 at 0.33 Gpc−3 yr−1 at 90\% confidence level

Ultralight vector dark matter search using data from the KAGRA O3GK run

Among the various candidates for dark matter (DM), ultralight vector DM can be probed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors through the measurement of oscillating length changes in the arm cavities. In this context, KAGRA has a unique feature due to differing compositions of its mirrors, enhancing the signal of vector DM in the length change in the auxiliary channels. Here we present the result of a search for U(1)B−L gauge boson DM using the KAGRA data from auxiliary length channels during the first joint observation run together with GEO600. By applying our search pipeline, which takes into account the stochastic nature of ultralight DM, upper bounds on the coupling strength between the U(1)B−L gauge boson and ordinary matter are obtained for a range of DM masses. While our constraints are less stringent than those derived from previous experiments, this study demonstrates the applicability of our method to the lower-mass vector DM search, which is made difficult in this measurement by the short observation time compared to the auto-correlation time scale of DM

Gamma Trading Skills in Hedge Funds

This paper explores the gamma trading, timing and managerial skills of individual hedge funds across categories. We replicate the non-linear payoffs of hedge funds with traded options, with the option features being endogenously defined in our replication model. On top of providing a flexible tool to create individual benchmarks for the payoff curvature of hedge fund, the model helps assigning hedge fund styles into three categories: directional with market timing skills, non-directional and market timers. Overall, our empirical results show that, on 30% of replicated funds in our sample (10,958 funds), there is no evidence of the presence of selection skills once a fund performance is adjusted with respect to the option-based benchmark and the traditional option-based factors of Agarwal and Naik (2004). This research has an incremental potential to stimulate additional research in the field of hedge funds performance replication through passive strategies

Smart Equity Investing: Implementing Risk Optimization Techniques on Strategic Beta Portfolios

We examine the performance of risk-optimization techniques on equity style portfolios. To form these portfolios, also called Strategic Beta factors by practitioners and data providers, we group stocks based on size, value and momentum characteristics through either independent or dependent sorting. Overall, performing risk-oriented strategies on style portfolios constructed with a dependent sort deliver greater abnormal returns. On average, we observe these strategies to significantly outperform 42% of the risk-oriented ETFs listed on US exchanges, compared to 31% when the risk-oriented strategies are performed on portfolios formed with an independent sort. We attribute the outperformance yielded by dependent sorting to the fact that it provides a better stratification of the set of stocks’ opportunity and diversification properties

Seeking the Best Fundamental Risk Factors: A Clinical Approach to Fama-French Portfolio Decomposition

This paper performs a thorough analysis of competing construction methods for the design of size (SMB) and value (HML) spread portfolios à la Fama-French. This quasi-clinical investigation of methodological choices uncovers substantial differences in the capacity of estimated premiums to translate stock characteristics into returns. A sequential sort of stocks into long and short portfolios conditioned on control variables (“pre-conditioning”) produces factors that best reflect the corresponding fundamental attributes. Our results are stronger when using the whole firm sample to define breakpoints and a triple sort, which ensures the same diversification (in terms of number of firms) across the characteristic-sorted portfolios forming the long and short legs of the factor. Our results are robust to the inclusion of the momentum dimension in the multiple sorting. The best method produces a volatile and insignificant size premium, but a high and stable value premium

Factoring Characteristics into Returns: A Clinical Approach to Fama-French Portfolio Decomposition

This paper thoroughly analyzes competing construction methods for factoring characteristics into returns. We show the importance of ensuring a proper diversification of the factor's portfolio constituents for producing relevant and unbiased risk factors or benchmark portfolios. This is an important issue to be solved for asset pricing and performance models defined as a function of characteristics. As a practical case, the paper works on the design of size and value spread portfolios à la Fama-French. This quasi- clinical investigation examines three methodological choices that have an impact on portfolio diversification: the (in)dependence and the (a)symmetry of the stock sorting procedure, and the sorting breakpoints. A sequential and symmetric sort of stocks into long and short portfolios conditioned on control variables produces unbiased factors. Our results are stronger when whole firm samples are used to define breakpoints and are also robust to the inclusion of a third dimension in the multiple sorting

Le droit des États membres à la différence en matière pharmaceutique – Des règles étatiques restreignant la propriété, l'exploitation des officines pharmaceutiques et l'e-commerce du médicament

Master [120] en droit, Université catholique de Louvain, 201