Hedge Fund Returns Are Path Dependent - As 2011 Illustrates

One of the things that is attempted on this website is to look at market action to help explain, or comprehend hedge fund returns. For example, two years ago a commentary was distributed on the significance of the quality factor in explaining returns in 2009 (see this article), and the impact of high correlation this year was explored  (here) too. This year has been a very unusual year in the macro background and in how markets have moved - year three of a recovery does not normally look like this one in economics or markets. 

The market events of this year have been a slalom course for hedge fund managers to negotiate (risk on/risk off), and the hedge fund indices reflect that. The HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index was down 8.58% for the year up to Monday (the 5th of December), and directional funds have fared a lot worse than non-directional strategies (the former are down 18% on an index basis).

Manager letters can be a good source of market context for hedge fund returns. In particular managers taking a quantitative approach are risk aware by nature and typically have a numerically stronger way of expressing the market conditions, and the suitability of their own methodology for extracting value from them.The overview reproduced below comes from Quant Asset Management of Singapore, managers of a portfolio of global equities.

Dear Investor,

It is unusual for us to add any written text to our monthly email other than the standard text in the newsletter. Since we apply a consistent, systematic investment methodology, once familiar with the methodology, the newsletter is normally self-explanatory. But because we are currently witnessing the biggest draw-down since the inception of the QAM Global Equities fund, 71/2 years ago, we’d like to use this opportunity to share some of our thoughts on this.

We now had a period of seven consecutive negative months with the fund being down 22% for the year. The main reasons for the negative performance are:

1) We use mostly fundamental factors when selecting our stocks from a global universe of over 6000 stocks. Fundamentals haven’t been driving markets in the past seven months. Macro-economic factors were driving markets and correlations have been at an all time high.

2) We use a trend following methodology that adjust factor weightings each period for what worked well in a certain past period (dynamic) before. This didn’t work well in the past seven months due to volatility spikes and trend reversals.

3) We use a hedging methodology whereby we are either 0% or 50% net exposed mostly based on aggregate earnings revisions number and some price performance related techniques. This hasn’t added value in the past seven months.

So the question arises if our methodology is still valid and when will it work again?          

First of all; all good investment methodologies go through periods where they struggle but as long as they add value over time and make logical sense, it makes sense to stick with them in order to achieve above average returns.

Furthermore we believe that systematically picking a large number of stocks on the basis of fundamentals (valuations, earnings growth and earnings revisions) combined with a factor adaption methodology, whilst hedging out a large part of the market risk, does add lots of value. Remember that the fund is up 154% since inception. This compares to 16% for the MSCI World in the same period.

We have always allowed volatility in our funds (around 20%, which is much more than most of our peers) in order to achieve higher returns than our peers. These high returns have been achieved and we have a strong belief that they can be achieved again. In order for this to happen one has to allow certain periods of under-performance. Draw downs are pretty natural and frequent in fundamental factor adaptation systems and one should be reminded that they can create opportunities too.

Kind regards,
The QAM Team

The letter is reproduced here to give some insight to market drivers of return this year, not to point fingers at a style or a particular manager. The general point is that the vast majority of managers take a specific approach to markets that they hope works most of the time and for most market conditions. The marketing conceit of an "all weather" hedge fund or strategy died in 2008. The returns delivered by a manager are a function of their own style and the opportunity set available from the market over the period. It is very striking  that the gyrations of markets in 2010 and 2011 made it very difficult for equity hedge fund managers to make positive absolute returns except when the equity market letter was written by the Fed and other central banks through the mechanism of QE2 (from August 2010 to March 2011). 

Hedge fund returns are path dependent, not independent of the direction of markets, nor independent of changes to intra-market or inter-market correlation, nor unaffected by the extent to which markets trend. The specific sequence of ups and downs, step-wise shifts in volatility, and how long a market regime lasts impacts the ability of the manager to harvest alpha in the way they are set up to address markets. So, for example, it would not just be relevant that markets were down 5% over a six month period, but in understanding outcomes it is more relevant that they appreciated by 11% over six weeks before losing 15-16% over 4 months (with specific volatility and correlation conditions). 

It is up to the investor in hedge funds to put together portfolios of funds which take account of the various market conditions which may occur, in full knowledge of the manager style. Building such an efficient portfolio of funds can only be achieved when investors truly understand how their capital is being applied to markets by their managers. Provided the managers stick to their expressed style, there should be a limited number of surprises to investors in hedge funds given market conditions, and how market conditions change (the specific path markets follow). For any given market conditions and sequences the better investors in hedge funds will have a range of expected return per manager in which they are invested. As yet, the path dependency of hedge fund returns is not sufficiently well appreciated  - spread the word.



UCITS III Footnote - the offshore fund from QAM was down 23.49% over the period end Feb 2011 to the end of November. The onshore equivalent  - Quant Global Equities fund, a sub-fund of the Quant AM SICAV (a UCITS III type fund) - was down  27.77% over the same period. The onshore version launched in March this year.