Hedge Funds

J. J. Caslin

British Actuarial Journal, 2004, vol. 10, issue 3, 441-521

Abstract: The paper opens by showing how certain types of hedge funds can reduce the risk and increase the return on a traditional balanced managed fund. One of the key characteristics of such a hedge fund is that it has a low correlation with the balanced managed fund. The paper puts forward a new way of explaining correlation so that it can be more readily understood, and suggests methods of analysis for dealing with the fact that correlation is unstable. Volatility correlation is also examined because of its importance in reducing the risk of a portfolio. An outline of the characteristics and risks of three types of hedge funds, namely, long/short equity, convertible arbitrage and merger arbitrage, together with some questions investors might put to prospective hedge fund managers is given in Section 5. Some of the very basic statistical analysis techniques used in assessing the past performance of hedge funds are given in Section 6. Considerable emphasis is put on the need to examine daily return data as an insight into the quality of the manager's IT systems, his risk management, evidence of smoothing of returns, and to gain access to a higher number of data points for assessing the repeatability of performance. An entire section of the paper is devoted to gaining a clear understanding of a prospective hedge fund manager's volatility management strategy because of its importance in the context of the fee structure of hedge funds and its importance for assessing the ability of a hedge fund to reduce the risk and increase the returns of a balanced managed fund. Funds of hedge funds are examined in the final section, and the section concludes that large sophisticated institutional investors may wish to create a portfolio of hedge funds rather than invest in a fund of hedge funds.

Date: 2004
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