Work

Tail Risks Across Investment Funds

Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Managed portfolios are subject to tail risks, which can be either index level (systematic) or fund-specific. Examples of fund-specific extreme events include those due to big bets or fraud. This paper studies the two components in relation to compensation structure in managed portfolios. A simple model generates fund-specific tail risk and its asymmetric dependence on the market, and makes predictions for where such risks should be concentrated. The model predicts that systematic tail risks increase with an increased weight on systematic returns in compensation and idiosyncratic tail risks increase with the degree of convexity in contracts. The model predictions are supported with empirical results. Hedge funds are subject to higher idiosyncratic tail risks and Exchange Traded Funds exhibit higher systematic tail risks. In skewness and kurtosis decompositions, I find that coskewness is an important source for fund skewness, but fund kurtosis is driven by cokurtosis, as well as volatility comovement and residual kurtosis, with the importance of these components varying across fund types. Investors are subject to different sources of skewness and fat tail risks through delegated investments. Volatility based tail risk hedging is not effective for all fund styles and types.
Author: Jerchern Lin
Language: English
Subfield: Finance
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $46
OpenAlex ID: W4406934295
FWCI: 0.36
Cites: 74
Cited by: 3
Related to: 10