(HedgeCo.Net) Essentia Analytics (Essentia), a leading provider of behavioral data analytics and consulting for professional investors, today made available in-depth analysis of how active equity portfolio managers (PMs) behave when experiencing a Winning or Losing Streak and the impact any behavioral change has on performance. Revealing that half of PMs change behavior during either type of Streak, the results of the study are captured in a white paper titled “Holding the Line,” which Essentia presented at its second annual Behavioral Alphasummit last week.

Leveraging anonymized data from its client base, Essentia analyzed trade and holdings data from 29 active equity portfolios across 21 different firms, including five hedge funds, located in North America, Europe, and Asia, spanning 2008 to the present. The data equates to 250,000 trades and 3.5 million individual data points, overall. Drawing from behavioral research, particularly in the areas of sports and gambling, Essentia defines a Winning Streak as any sequence of five days in which fund profit was positive on each day and a Losing Streak as any sequence of five days in which fund profit was negative on each day.