Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 October 2020
This paper investigates hedge funds’ ability to time industry-specific returns and shows that funds’ timing ability in the manufacturing industry improves their future performance, probability of survival, and ability to attract more capital. The results indicate that the best industry-timing hedge funds in the manufacturing sector have the highest return exposure to earnings surprises. This, together with persistently sticky earnings surprises, transparent information environment in regards to earnings releases, and large post-earnings-announcement drift in the manufacturing industry, explain to a great extent why best-timing hedge funds can generate significantly larger future returns compared to worst-timing hedge funds.
We thank an anonymous referee, Vikas Agarwal, George Aragon, Yong Chen, Jarrad Harford (the editor), Bing Liang, and Tim Simin (a referee) for their constructive comments and suggestions. We also benefited from discussions with Michael Gallmeyer, Shahid Hamid, Qiping Huang, Qiang Kang, Edward Lawrance, Ozde Oztekin, Gokhan Sonaer, Quan Wen, and seminar participants at Florida International University and Georgetown University. We thank Kenneth French and David Hsieh for making a large amount of data publicly available in their online data library. We thank Vikas Agarwal for sharing data on options factors. All errors remain our responsibility.