Hedge-fund managers that do the most research will post the best returns
&gt; <i>&quot;The fact that public information acquisition relates to performance is surprising. SEC filings are the very definition of &#x27;public&#x27; information, and therefore, usage of such information should not be profitable,&quot;</i><p>Honest question: isn&#x27;t that a contradiction in terms? Public information stands for &quot;stuff that everyone is presumed to know&quot;, right? Like, economists using an assumption of &quot;perfect knowledge of the market regarding public information&quot; (or something like that, I&#x27;m obviously not an economist) as an approximation in their knowledge. But the fact that some managers <i>do</i> look this up, and some <i>don&#x27;t</i>, means that this approximation does not hold. The premise of what is implied with &quot;public knowledge&quot; is undermined by the very thing being measured.<p>Assuming I understand this correctly, it looks to me like they essentially correct for the error caused by this assumption of perfect knowledge, which is the opposite of unexpected (but still a very neat finding!)