Equity markets and the performance of hedge funds: how stable is persistence?

We investigate the performance of hedge funds in bull and bear equity markets. Covering the period from January 1994 to December 2008, we find that each bull and bear market period has its dominant independent variables. Furthermore, the level of performance persistence is not significantly related to equity market conditions. The analyses show that hedge fund performance persistence is stronger in more recent sub-periods than in earlier sub-periods. In bullish as well as in bearish equity markets, performance persistence is driven by both constant winners and losers. Moreover, both live and dead funds exhibit statistically significant levels of performance persistence.