Abstract This doctoral thesis aims to contribute to the literature on hedge fund performance and risk by conducting four interrelated essays. The first two essays measure and predict hedge fund performance using novel methodologies based on recent development in portfolio choice techniques. This new way to evaluate fund performance relies on economic theory and robust econometric principles. The first essay exploits hedge fund characteristics in order to pick right funds into a portfolio, whereas the second essay predicts hedge fund performance using conditional information that is contained in macroeconomic variables. The empirical analysis shows that the proposed conditional real-time portfolio strategies deliver significant outperformance over the unconditional benchmark strategy which does not utilize conditional information. The third essay investigates whether a particular hedge fund with specific fund characteristics contributes to systemic risk and how hedge funds with a high systemic risk contribution perform during the times of financial distress. The findings suggest that the fund’s capital structure is related to its systemic risk contribution, and, furthermore, that hedge funds with a high systemic risk contribution tend to deliver extremely poor performance during the times of financial distress. The fourth essay examines the impact of share restrictions on hedge fund performance and risk-taking. The essay finds that hedge funds with a lockup period tend to take excess risk that is not compensated when performance is measured as a unit of risk taken by the hedge fund. In addition, the length of notice periods increases along with the illiquidity level of fund investments. Finally, hedge funds with a long notice period seem to be able to earn an illiquidity premium.

Previous research has analyzed the relationship of several fund characteristics to fund return, whether a higher fund fee results in a higher fund and if fund characteristics such as active management style, fund risk and fund size are contributing factors to a higher fund return. As previous empirical research has reported mixed results and has mainly studied the American fund market. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate whether there was a statical and significant relationship between the fund's return, annual fee, risk, size and management style for equity funds in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark over a five and ten-year period. The study is based on a quantitative method with a deductive approach which involves the collection of numeric and secondary data from Morningstar's database. The data has then been processed in a correlation- and regression analysis to analyze the relationship between fund return and the fund characteristics. Based on the results the study found a statistically significant relationship between the fund's return and funds risk for five years, the fund's size,the annual fee for five and ten years. The fund's risk for five years was insignificant as was the management style for five and ten years.

Fund investments are very popular in Sweden. However, we have the impression that despite this popularity, the average fund investor in Sweden does not pay much attention to the importance and possible link of fund’s asset composition features (e.g. Asset class, Holdings, and Geo-exposure) to fund’s performance. Instead, S/he relies on factors such as fees, risk levels, historical performance, etc. in her/his investment decisions. Similarly, academic studies mainly focus on attributes such as funds fees, size, and manager’s skill to explain fund’s performance. Thus there are limited premier academic studies on the relationship between fund’s performance and its asset composition features. The main purpose of this study is to investigate possible causal relationship between the performances of funds with their assets composition features. We study the whole population of 346 Swedish listed mutual funds older than five years for the period 2009-2013. The results of the study provides the investors and analysts with additional decision-making and investment-analysis tools to assist them in making more informed judgment on funds and their expected returns. The results are also useful for fund managers to improve their strategies by refining the combinations of their funds’ asset composition attributes in order to improve the absolute risk-adjusted performance of their funds. Our research philosophy has been based on positivism and objectivism along with functionalist paradigm and we have applied deductive approach to test the theories. We have used quantitative method and collected the funds’ data from public business databases and chosen Jensen’s alpha and Treynor ratio as funds’ risk-adjusted performance measures. We performed Correlation tests and Regression with robust techniques on our data to answer the research question from three aspects, namely asset class (equity, bond, and mixed assets); geo-exposures (Sweden, Global, Europe, and Nordic) and Top-ten holdings’ measures (asset concentration and Treynor of each fund’s passive top-ten sub-portfolio). We conclude that correlations between funds’ risk-adjusted performance and assets composition features are likely to exist. Stronger correlations are observed between the explanatory measures and fund’s relative risk-adjusted performance (fund’s Treynor) as compared to fund’s absolute risk adjusted performance (fund’s Jensen’s alpha). Asset concentration in top-ten holdings and bond asset class are more likely to be in casual relationship with fund’s risk-adjusted performance, whereas Treynor ratio of top-ten holdings’ passive sub-portfolio as well as fund’s geo-exposure do not seem to have strong explanatory power for funds’ absolute performance.