Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 26 juin 2023) / Des recherches récentes sur les fonds communs de placement et les fonds spéculatifs montrent qu'il est important de tenir compte des transactions intérimaires, parce que les gestionnaires effectuent souvent des transactions au cours du mois en fonction de signaux d'information ou pour des raisons de liquidité. Cette thèse examine les effets du biais de transactions intérimaires sur la performance d'un large échantillon de fonds mutuels d'actions américaines gérés activement. Elle développe de nouvelles mesures ajustées pour le biais pour répondre à une série de questions dans le contexte de la performance des fonds communs de placement et du biais de transactions intérimaires. D'abord, en utilisant l'approche par facteur d'escompte stochastique (SDF), nous développons deux nouvelles mesures ajustées pour le biais de transactions intérimaires. Lorsque les rendements quotidiens des fonds sont disponibles, nous proposons une mesure basée sur la capitalisation d'alphas sous-périodiques quotidiens. Lorsque les rendements quotidiens des fonds ne sont pas disponibles, nous capturons les opportunités d'investissement intérimaires grâce aux données quotidiennes sur les facteurs de risque. Nous développons la mesure SDF capitalisée dans le temps, qui est une mesure alternative à l'approche basée sur l'agrégation des facteurs dans le temps, telle que proposée par la littérature. Nous démontrons la pertinence théorique et l'équivalence de la mesure basée sur la capitalisation temporelle des alphas et celle basée sur la capitalisation temporelle des SDFs dans la saisie des opportunités d'investissement intérimaires. Empiriquement, nous documentons l'importance du biais de transactions intérimaires en comparant les alphas estimés avec la mesure mensuelle non ajustée avec ceux estimés avec les mesures ajustées pour le biais. Nous montrons que le biais moyen à travers les fonds n'est pas différent de zéro. Cependant, plus de 25% des fonds observent des changements statistiquement significatifs de leur performance traditionnelle lorsque le biais est pris en compte. En comparaison, les deux mesures existantes détectent peu de biais significatifs. Deuxièmement, nous étudions la persistance du biais de transactions intérimaires dans la performance des fonds ainsi que sa relation avec divers attributs de fonds, styles d'investissement et indicateurs de marché. Nous examinons ces aspects non seulement pour le biais de transactions intérimaires, mais aussi pour la performance ajustée pour le biais. Nous constatons que le biais de transactions intérimaires est persistant à long terme uniquement pour les fonds ayant un biais positif. Lorsque nous examinons la persistance de l'alpha ajusté pour le biais, nous montrons que les fonds dont la performance passée est négative continuent à fournir un alpha négatif. Le résultat est inversé pour les fonds ayant des performances passées positives. Dans l'analyse des déterminants, nous utilisons à la fois une approche par portefeuille et une approche par régression. Dans l'ensemble, les résultats montrent que les petits fonds, les fonds jeunes et les fonds dont les gestionnaires ont peu d'expérience ont un biais de transactions intérimaires plus important. La rotation impliquée par les flux de liquidité et les avoirs liquides ont des relations positives, statistiquement et économiquement significatives, avec le biais de transactions intérimaires. Enfin, les fonds les plus actifs présentent un biais positif élevé. Lorsque nous étudions les déterminants de l'alpha ajusté du biais, nous obtenons des résultats qui sont généralement cohérents avec la littérature antérieure. Plus précisément, nous constatons que les fonds dont la volatilité, la sélectivité, le taux de rotation, le taux de rotation lié aux flux, les liquidités et les dépenses sont les plus élevés affichent une performance ajustée inférieure. La performance est légèrement améliorée pour les fonds qui sont matures, de grande taille et dont les gestionnaires sont expérimentés. Troisièmement, nous examinons la robustesse de nos conclusions sur le biais de transactions intérimaires. Nous nous concentrons principalement sur le pourcentage important de fonds dont la performance est significativement modifiée par les nouvelles mesures SDF capitalisées dans le temps, ainsi que sur la capacité supérieure des mesures capitalisée par rapport aux mesures agrégées à atténuer le problème du biais de transactions intérimaires. Nos tests confirment que ces résultats sont robustes aux spécifications alternatives, aux différents choix méthodologiques et aux problèmes d'échantillons finis. / Recent research on mutual funds and hedge funds documents the importance of accounting for interim trading, as managers often trade within each month based on information signals or for liquidity reasons. This thesis examines the effects of the interim trading bias on the performance of a large cross section of actively managed open-ended U.S. equity mutual funds. It develops new interim-trading-bias-adjusted measures to address a range of questions in the context of mutual fund performance and the interim trading bias. First, using the stochastic discount factor (SDF) approach, we develop two new interim-trading-bias-adjusted measures. When daily fund returns are available, we propose a measure based on the time-compounding of daily alphas. When daily fund returns are not available, we can instead capture the interim investment opportunities with daily factor data. We develop the time-compounded SDF measure, which is an alternative measure to the time-averaged factor approach proposed by the literature. We show the theoretical relevance and equivalence of our time-compounded alpha and time-compounded SDF measures in capturing interim investment opportunities. Empirically, we document the importance of the interim trading bias by comparing alphas estimated with an unadjusted monthly measure with those estimated with bias-adjusted measures. We show that the mean bias across funds is not different from zero. However, more that 25% of the funds have statistically significant changes in performance when controlling for the bias. By comparison, two existing measures detect few significant biases. Second, we study the persistence of the interim trading bias in fund performance and its relation with various fund attributes, investment styles and market indicators. We examine these aspects not only for the interim trading bias, but also for the performance adjusted for interim trading. We find that the interim trading bias is persistent in the long run only for funds with positive bias. When we look at the persistence of the bias-adjusted alpha, we show that funds with negative past performance continue to deliver negative alpha. The pattern is reversed for funds with positive past performance. In the determinant analysis, we use both a portfolio approach and a regression approach. Overall, the results show that small funds, young funds and funds with low manager tenure have larger interim trading bias. Flow-driven turnover and cash holdings have statistically and economically significant positive relations with the interim trading bias. Finally, funds that are the most active exhibit a high positive bias. When we investigate the determinants of the interim-trading-bias-adjusted alpha, we obtain results that are generally consistent with the prior literature. Specifically, we find that funds with the highest volatility, selectivity, turnover, flow-driven turnover, cash holdings and expenses exhibit lower adjusted performance. Performance is somewhat improved for funds that are mature, large and with experienced managers. Third, we examine the robustness of our findings on the interim trading bias. The main focuses are on the important percentage of funds that have their performance significantly changed by the new time-compounded SDF measures and on the superior ability of time-compounded measures over time-averaged measures in alleviating the problem of interim trading bias. Our checks confirm that these findings are robust to alternative specifications, various methodological choices and finite sample issues.

This thesis investigates the performance of hedge funds, funds of hedge funds and alternative Ucits together with the determinants of this performance by using new or well-suited econometric techniques. As such, it lies at the frontier of finance and financial econometrics and contributes to both fields. For the sake of clarity, we summarize the main contributions to each field separately. <p>The contribution of this thesis to the field of financial econometrics is the time-varying style analysis developed in the second chapter. This statistical tool combines the Sharpe analysis with a time-varying coefficient method; thereby, it is taking the best of both worlds. <p>Sharpe (1992) has developed the idea of “style analysis”, building on the conclusion that a regression taking into account the constraints faced by mutual funds should give a better picture of their holdings. To get an estimate of their holdings, he incorporates, in a standard regression, typical constraints related to the regulation of mutual funds, such as no short-selling and value preservation. He argues that this gives a more realistic picture of their investments and consequently better estimations of their future expected returns.<p>Unfortunately, in the style analysis, the weights are constrained to be constant. Even if, for funds of hedge funds the weights should also sum up to 1, given their dynamic nature, the constant weights seem more restrictive than for mutual funds. Hence, the econometric literature was lacking a method incorporating the constraints and the possibility for the weights to vary. Motivated by this gap, we develop a method that allows the weights to vary while being constrained to sum up to 1 by combining the Sharpe analysis with a time-varying coefficient model. As the style analysis has proven to be a valuable tool for mutual fund analysis, we believe our approach offers many potential fields of application both for funds of hedge funds and mutual funds.<p>The contributions of our thesis to the field of finance are numerous. <p>Firstly, we are the first to offer a comprehensive and exhaustive assessment of the world of FoHFs. Using both a bootstrap analysis and a method that allows dealing with multiple hypothesis tests straightforwardly, we show that after fees, the majority of FoHFs do not channel alpha from single-manager hedge funds and that only very few FoHFs deliver after-fee alpha per se, i.e. on top of the alpha of the hedge fund indices. We conclude that the added value of the vast majority of FoHFs should thus not be expected to come from the selection of the best HFs but from the risk management-monitoring skills and the easy access they provide to the HF universe.<p> <p> <p>Secondly, despite that the leverage is one of the key features of funds of hedge funds, there was a gap in the understanding of the impact it might have on the investor’s alpha. This was likely due to the quasi-absence of data about leverage and to the fact that literature was lacking a proper tool to implicitly estimate this leverage. <p>We fill this gap by proposing a theoretical model of fund of hedge fund leverage and alpha where the cost of borrowing is increasing with leverage. In the literature, this is the first model which integrates the rising cost of borrowing in the leverage decision of FoHFs. We use this model to determine the conditions under which the leverage has a negative or a positive impact on investor’s alpha and show that the manager has an incentive to take a leverage that hurts the investor’s alpha. Next, using estimates of the leverages of a sample of FoHFs obtained through the time-varying style analysis, we show that leverage has indeed a negative impact on alphas and appraisal ratios. We argue that this effect may be an explanation for the disappointing alphas delivered by funds of hedge funds and can be interpreted as a potential explanation for the “capacity constraints ” effect. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to report and explain this negative relationship between alpha and leverage in the industry. <p>Thirdly, we show the interest of the time-varying coefficient model in hedge fund performance assessment and selection. Since the literature underlines that manager skills are varying with macro-economic conditions, the alpha should be dynamic. Unfortunately, using ordinary least-squares regressions forces the estimate of the alpha to be constant over the estimation period. The alpha of an OLS regression is thus static whereas the alpha generation process is by nature varying. On the other hand, we argue that the time-varying alpha captures this dynamic behaviour. <p>As the literature shows that abnormal-return persistence is essentially short-term, we claim that using the quasi-instantaneous detection ability of the time-varying model to determine the abnormal-return should lead to outperforming portfolios. Using a persistence analysis, we check this conjecture and show that contrary to top performers in terms of OLS alpha, the top performers in terms of past time-varying alpha generate superior and significant ex-post performance. Additionally, we contribute to the literature on the topic by showing that persistence exists and can be as long as 3 years. Finally, we use the time-varying analysis to obtain estimates of the expected returns of hedge funds and show that using those estimates in a mean-variance framework leads to better ex-post performance. Therefore, we conclude that in terms of hedge fund performance detection, the time-varying model is superior to the OLS analysis.<p>Lastly, we investigate the funds that have chosen to adopt the “Alternative UCITS” framework. Contrary to the previous frameworks that were designed for mutual fund managers, this new set of European Union directives can be suited to hedge fund-like strategies. We show that for Ucits funds there is some evidence, although weak, of the added value of offshore experience. On the other hand, we find no evidence of added value in the case of non-offshore experienced managers. Motivated to further refine our results, we separate Ucits with offshore experienced managers into two groups: those with equivalent offshore hedge funds (replicas) and those without (new funds). This time, Ucits with no offshore equivalents show low volatility and a strongly positive alpha. Ucits with offshore equivalents on the other hand bring no added value and, not surprisingly, bear no substantial differences in their risk profile with their paired funds offshore. Therefore, we conclude that offshore experience plays a significant role in creating positive alpha, as long as it translates into real innovations. If the fund is a pure replica, the additional costs brought by the Ucits structure represent a handicap that is hardly compensated. As “Alternative Ucits” have only been scarcely investigated, this paper represents a contribution to the better understanding of those funds.<p>In summary, this thesis improves the knowledge of the distribution, detection and determinants of the performance in the industry of hedge funds. It also shows that a specific field such as the hedge fund industry can still tell us more about the sources of its performance as long as we can use methodologies in adequacy with their behaviour, uses, constraints and habits. We believe that both our results and the methods we use pave the way for future research questions in this field, and are of the greatest interest for professionals of the industry as well.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

La thèse se compose de deux parties, une première partie sur la question de la définition des fonds spéculatifs et une deuxième partie sur la question de la gouvernance en relation au risque systémique. La première partie se compose de deux sous-parties. Une première est vouée à l'analyse de certains problèmes liminaires, comme les questions de méthode et d'autres de questions liées à la fonction économique des hedge funds. Dans cette sous-partie est également traitée la question des différents éléments qui concourent à définir les hedge funds (notamment la stratégie d'investissements, la structure légale, des questions contractuelles, la structure de la compensation des managers). Dans une deuxième sous-partie la question de la définition amène à une analyse des différentes juridictions des principaux états membres, suivie d'une étude comparative entre le système américain et européen.La deuxième partie est également structurée en deux-sous parties. Dans la première sous-partie, sont analysées les questions liées à la relation entre les hedge funds et la crise financière, la définition du risque systémique et les possibles options de gouvernance de la régulation. Dans la deuxième sous-partie est analysée le modèle de gouvernance de fonds spéculatifs qui émerge de la directive AIFM et autres dispositions. la question principale étant de savoir si un modèle de gouvernance d'inspiration bancaire peut être efficient dans le contexte de la régulation des hedge funds. / No English summary available.