American hedge funds industry, market timing and COVID-19 crisis

This paper addresses two key issues relating to the interactions among the North American hedge funds industry, the equity and treasury bond markets during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, we examine the market-timing ability of North America hedge fund managers using eight strategies as well as the composite hedge fund index. Secondly, we analyze both the short- and long-term effects of both the North American equity and bond markets on the performance of the regional hedge funds industry while accounting for the effects of COVID-19 pandemic. Our results show no significant evidence of market return-timing ability of hedge fund managers across all the funds strategies during the pandemic. However, we document a strong evidence of the effects of the pandemic on the performance of fund managers, except for the Managed Futures and the Relative Value funds strategies. Secondly, we demonstrate that the COVID-19 pandemic may have significantly altered the long-term effects of the North American equity market on the performance of the hedge fund industry while the effects of the bond market is only significant in the short-term. We outlined some crucial implications of these findings for the decision-making process of hedge fund managers, investors as well as market makers during a health crisis-induced financial market turbulence.