Prior research indicates a link between investment horizon and informativeness of institutional investors’ trades, but this study finds advantages that exist only for hedge funds but not for other institutions with a short investment horizon.
Abstract
We examine whether being a hedge fund has any differential effect on the previously documented empirical relation between investment horizon and informativeness of institutional investors’ trades. We find that the positive and significant relation between short-term institutional demand and future stock returns exists only among hedge funds, while such relation does not exist for non–hedge fund institutions with short investment horizons. We also provide evidence that our results are not driven by (false) presumptions that hedge funds represent the majority of short-term institutional investors or that hedge fund demand constitute the lion’s share of the short-term institutional demand.