The Optimal Interaction between a Hedge Fund Manager and Investor

ABSTRACT

This study explores hedge funds from the perspective of investors and the motivation behind their investments. We model a typical hedge fund contract between an investor and a manager, which includes the manager’s special reward scheme, i.e., partial ownership, incentives and early closure conditions. We present a continuous stochastic control problem for the manager’s wealth on a hedge fund comprising one risky asset and one riskless bond as a basis to calculate the investors’ wealth. Then we derive partial differential equations (PDEs) for each agent and numerically obtain the unique viscosity solution for these problems. Our model shows that the manager’s incentives are very high and therefore investors are not receiving profit compared to a riskless investment. We investigate a new type of hedge fund contract where the investor has the option to deposit additional money to the fund at half maturity time. Results show that investors’ inflow increases proportionally with the expected rate of return of the risky asset, but even in low rates of return, investors inflow money to keep the fund open. Finally, comparing the contracts with and without the option, we spot that investors are sometimes better off without the option to inflow money, thus creating a negative value of the option.