Evaluating Hedge Fund Performance

Abstract

A diverse set of measures allows investors to evaluate hedge fund portfolio managers’ performance across different dimensions. The various measures quantify the effectiveness of security selection, account for investor flows, operating risk, and worst-case investment scenarios, net out benchmark and peer-fund performance, and control for risk factors that are unique to hedge fund investment strategies. Hedge fund return information in published databases is usually self-reported, which is a conflict of interest that produces several reporting biases and inflated published average returns. After adjusting for these biases hedge fund average returns trail equity market returns and in fact almost exactly equal U.S. Treasury bill average returns between January 1994 and March 2016. Yet, after risk adjustment, the hedge fund performance picture brightens. In the aggregate, hedge funds have higher Sharpe ratios and multi-factor alphas, and lower maximum drawdown levels than equity market benchmarks.