Option-Implied Tail Risk, Timing by Hedge Funds, and Performance

Book excerpt: This paper focuses on an unexplored dimension of fund managers' timing ability: market-wide tail risk implied by information in options markets. We investigate whether hedge fund managers can strategically time market tail risk implied by options through adjusting their portfolios' market exposure to changes in market tail risk. Using an extensive sample of 6,147 equity-oriented hedge funds over the period 1996 to 2012, we find strong evidence of tail risk timing ability of hedge fund managers. We conduct bootstrap analysis and confirm that our tail risk timing ability is not attributed to pure luck. Furthermore, tail risk timing ability brings significant economic value to investors. Specifically, in out-of-sample tests, top-ranked hedge funds outperform bottom-ranked funds by 5-7% annually after adjusting for common risk factors. Also, we find that managers' tail risk timing skill persists over time, suggesting that hedge fund managers' tail risk timing ability reflects true managerial skill. Our overall results are robust to various hedge fund characteristics, subsample or sub-period analysis, the use of alternative timing abilities, and other hedge funds' managerial skills. Our empirical examination emphasizes the role of market-wide option-implied tail risk in hedge fund managers' skill and their performance.