Do Hedge Funds Arbitrage on Asset Growth, Earnings Momentum and Equity Financing Anomalies?

Abstract

This paper analyzes the risk-adjusted performance of hedge funds and their overall ability to arbitrage on known market anomalies. This is done by testing three anomaly factors capturing total asset growth, equity financing, and earnings momentum in addition to the traditional Fama and French (1993) and Carhart (1997) four-factor model and Fung and Hsieh (2001) risk factors. Our results suggest that the average hedge fund employs a strategy consistent with the total asset growth and earnings momentum anomalies but contradictory to the equity financing anomaly of Hirshleifer and Jiang (2007). Multi-factor alpha generation does seem to persist over longer periods of time which suggests the use of other untested, return-generating arbitrage methods.