Alternative Investment Funds Implications for Financial Stability in Lithuania

The rapid growth of the AIF assets under management and increasing relative share of these assets in the overall investment fund assets, indicate that AIF successfully established their position in the Lithuanian investment funds market. Due to the specific investment activity AIF are different from other investment funds, they also could be associated with additional threats to the economy and financial system. Private equity and real estate funds invest in the real sector and their impact on the financial system are more indirect, through linkages to the financial market participants. Hedge funds are actively involved in the capital markets, therefore they might have not only indirect but also direct impact on the financial system due to the use of leverage, derivatives or potential occur of crowded trades. Research results has shown that due to the still relatively small volumes of assets under management and high engagement in foreign capital markets (especially hedge funds case), AIF connections with other financial market participants are very low. AIF do not use excess leverage and trading in derivatives is not widespread – only hedge funds use such financial instruments. The high pairwise correlations between hedge funds returns suggest that there is a potential threat to the Lithuanian financial market stability. However because of the small relative share of the hedge funds and their concentration in foreign capital markets, such a threat is only theoretical. Moreover, high level of pairwise correlation coefficients between hedge funds and other investment funds do not determine the growth of the weighted average correlation. It could be added, that AIF in general did not increase values of the weighted average correlation, which could reflect potential crowding in the investment funds market. Bearing in mind small size of the AIF assets under management and fairly conservative type of their activities, it could be concluded, that Lithuanian AIF do not pose a threat to the financial stability.