Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

12-2016

Abstract

The existing literature treats the short side (i.e., short selling) and the long side of hedge fund trading (i.e., fund holdings) independently. The two sides, however, complement each other: opposite changes in the two are likely to be driven by information, whereas simultaneous increases (decreases) of the two may be motivated by hedging (unwinding) considerations. We use this intuition to identify informed demand and document that it exhibits highly significant predictive power over returns (approximately 10% per year). We also find that informed demand forecasts future firm fundamentals, suggesting that hedge funds play an important role in information discovery. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Short selling, Hedge funds, 13F, Informed demand, Hedging

Discipline

Finance | Finance and Financial Management

Research Areas

Finance

Publication

Journal of Financial Economics

Volume

122

Issue

3

First Page

544

Last Page

567

ISSN

0304-405X

Identifier

10.1016/j.jfineco.2016.09.001

Publisher

Elsevier

External URL

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2016.09.001

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