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Working Paper
Credit Supply and Hedge Fund Performance: Evidence from Prime Broker Surveys
Constraints on the supply of credit by prime brokers affect hedge funds' leverage and performance. Using dealer surveys and hedge fund regulatory filings, we identify individual funds' credit supply from the availability of credit under agreements currently in place between a hedge fund and its prime brokers. We find that hedge funds connected to prime brokers that make more credit available to their hedge fund clients increase their borrowing and generate higher returns and alphas. These effects are more pronounced among hedge funds that rely on a small number of prime brokers, and those ...
Working Paper
Hedge Fund Treasury Trading and Funding Fragility: Evidence from the COVID-19 Crisis
Hedge fund gross U.S. Treasury (UST) exposures doubled from 2018 to February 2020 to $2.4 trillion, primarily driven by relative value arbitrage trading and supported by corresponding increases in repo borrowing. In March 2020, amid unprecedented UST market turmoil, the average UST trading hedge fund had a return of -7% and reduced its UST exposure by close to 20%, despite relatively unchanged bilateral repo volumes and haircuts. Analyzing hedge fund-creditor borrowing data, we find the large, more regulated dealers provided disproportionately more funding during the crisis than other ...
Discussion Paper
Hedge Fund Treasury Exposures, Repo, and Margining
Hedge funds have become among the most active participants in U.S. Treasury (UST) markets over the past decade. As a result, the financial stability vulnerabilities associated with their leveraged Treasury market exposures, which are facilitated by low or zero haircuts on their Treasury repo borrowing, have become more prominent.
Discussion Paper
Sizing hedge funds' Treasury market activities and holdings
Hedge funds play an increasingly important role in U.S. Treasury (UST) cash and futures markets, a role that has been widely discussed following the March 2020 U.S. Treasury sell-off. In this note, we analyze hedge funds' holdings of UST securities and their UST market activities in normal times and in times of financial market stress using regulatory data from the SEC Form PF.
Working Paper
Hidden Risk
Since 2013, large U.S. hedge fund advisers have been required to report risk exposures in their regulatory filings. Using these data, we first establish that managers’ perceptions of risk contain useful information that is not embedded in fund returns. Investor flows do not respond to this information when managers perceive higher risk than what their past returns would indicate, suggesting managers strategically communicate their risk assessments with investors. During market downturns, investors withdraw capital from funds whose managers perceive higher risk, suggesting they find the ...
Discussion Paper
Quantifying Treasury Cash-Futures Basis Trades
The Treasury cash-futures basis trade exploits the difference in prices between a Treasury security and a related Treasury futures contract – the so-called cash-futures basis – by purchasing the asset that is relatively undervalued and selling the other in a bet that the prices will converge. Basis traders support Treasury market functioning by keeping the prices of Treasury futures near their fair value relative to Treasury securities and by serving as an important source of demand for Treasury securities, including during the 2017-2019 period of quantitative tightening when basis ...