12.04.2023
Is China Guilty of Category Fraud?
With movie awards season around the corner, some entertainment pundits may use the term “category fraud” to describe races in…
Activist hedge fund managers seek to outperform the equity markets over a market cycle by first purchasing a large number of shares in publicly traded companies and then pushing these companies’ management teams to alter their approaches in an effort to unlock shareholder value. Some common practices include share buybacks, spinoffs, and strategic sales.
Asset flows into activist hedge funds have more than doubled since 2011 and grown six-fold over the last 10 years making this a highly embraced strategy among hedge fund investors. Latest Hedge Fund Research, Inc (HFR) data estimates assets under management to be over $120bn among activist hedge funds.
Unfortunately, this week’s chart illustrates that returns produced by activist hedge funds have been quite underwhelming, trailing the S&P 500 index over the most recent 1-, 3-, 5-, and 7-year annualized periods through December 31, 2015 (data for the HFRI Activist Index does not go back far enough for us to run a 10-year return comparison between the two indices). Out of the approximately 120 activist hedge funds in business today, there are many who do not report performance to HFR so the comparison is not perfect. However, the index does serve as a reasonable proxy for the industry.
We show activist index returns relative to S&P 500 index returns because activist strategies are marketed as an equities substitute and most institutional investors view them as such. Therefore, the opportunity cost for investors tends to be returns which they would have otherwise obtained through an investment in a long only equity fund benchmarked to a broad market index like the S&P 500. Thus, while most activist funds’ strategies are well-intentioned, returns have struggled to maintain pace with the broad U.S. equity market.
12.04.2023
With movie awards season around the corner, some entertainment pundits may use the term “category fraud” to describe races in…
11.30.2023
The holiday spending frenzy is well underway as some of the biggest shopping days of the year, including Black Friday…
11.16.2023
October proved tumultuous for investors as all major U.S. equity indices were negative and the CBOE VIX Index, which serves…
11.08.2023
Earlier this year, the regional banking crisis and eventual collapses of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, First Republic Bank, and…
11.01.2023
U.S. equities declined for the third consecutive month in October amid an environment of higher yields and underwhelming earnings reports…
10.13.2023
This video is a recording of a live webinar held on October 26 by Marquette’s research team, featuring in-depth analysis…
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