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Working Paper
Fundamental Arbitrage under the Microscope: Evidence from Detailed Hedge Fund Transaction Data
We exploit detailed transaction and position data for a sample of long-short equity hedge funds to study the trading activity of fundamental investors. We find that hedge funds exhibit skill in opening positions, but that they close their positions too early, thereby forgoing about a third of the trades’ potential profitability. We explain this behavior with the limits of arbitrage: hedge funds close positions early in order to reallocate their capital to more profitable investments and/or to accommodate tightened financial constraints. Consistent with this view, we document that hedge ...
Working Paper
Biased Shorts: Short sellers’ Disposition Effect and Limits to Arbitrage
We investigate whether short sellers are subject to the disposition effect using a novel dataset that allows to identify the closing of short positions. Consistent with the disposition effect, short sellers are more likely to close a position the higher their capital gains. Furthermore, stocks with high short sale capital gains experience negative returns, suggesting that their disposition effect has an effect on stock prices. A trading strategy based on this finding achieves significant three-factor alphas. Overall, short sellers? behavioral biases limit their ability to arbitrage away the ...