It is well documented in the literature that over the long term, low-investment firms have outperformed high-investment firms—with the negative relation between asset growth (AG) and future stock returns particularly featured by the overvaluation of high AG stocks.
Since the 1992 publication of “The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns” by Eugene Fama and Kenneth French factor-based strategies and products have become an integral part of the global asset management landscape. While “top-down” allocation to factor premiums (such as size, value, momentum, quality, and low volatility) has become mainstream, questions remain about how to efficiently gain exposure to these premiums. Today, many generic factor products, often labeled as “smart beta”, completely disregard the impact of other factors when constructing portfolios with high exposures to any single factor. However, recent research, such as 2019 study “The Characteristics of Factor Investing” by David Blitz and Milan Vidojevic, has shown that single-factor portfolios, which invest in stocks with high scores on one particular factor, can be suboptimal because they ignore the possibility that these stocks may be unattractive from the perspective of other factors that have demonstrated that they also have higher expected returns.
Investors care about more than just returns. They also care about risk. Thus, prudent investors include consideration of strategies that can provide at least some protection against adverse events that lead to left tail risk (portfolios crashing). The cost of that protection (the impact on expected returns) must play an important role in deciding whether to include them. For example, buying at-the-money puts, a strategy that eliminates downside risk, should have returns no better than the risk-free rate of return, making that a highly expensive strategy.
My October 29, 2020, article for Alpha Architect examined the research on the profitability factor. I then reviewed the findings of the June 2020 study “On the Conjoint Nature of Value and Profitability,” which analyzed [...]
Asset pricing models are important because they help us understand which factors explain the variation of returns across diversified portfolios. However, models are not like cameras that provide a perfect picture of the world. If [...]
The existence of a quality premium in stocks that has been persistent over time, pervasive around the globe, and robust to various definitions have been well documented by studies such as “Buffett’s Alpha,” “Global Return [...]
Investing is never easy, but some times are easier than others. Buying US government bonds at 10%+ yields when inflation was steadily decreasing in the 1980s was probably less worrying than buying them today at [...]
Robert Novy-Marx’s 2013 paper “ The Other Side of Value: The Gross Profitability Premium” not only provided investors with new insights into the cross-section of stock returns but also helped further explain some of Warren [...]
Trying to avoid value traps.
While the quality factor has been identified in the literature (including papers such as “Buffett’s Alpha,” “Global Return Premiums on Earnings Quality, Value, and Size,” and “The Excess Returns of ‘Quality’ Stocks: A Behavioral Anomaly”), [...]
What is Quality? Jason Hsu , Vitali Kalesnik , and Engin Kose Financial Analysts JournalA version of this paper can be found hereWant to read our summaries of academic finance papers? Check out our Academic Research [...]
The Best of Strategies for the Worst of Times: Can Portfolios Be Crisis Proofed? Campbell R. Harvey, Edward Hoyle, Sandy Rattray, Matthew Sargaison, Dan Taylor, and Otto Van HemertThe Journal of Portfolio ManagementA version of [...]
The Best of Strategies for the Worst of Times: Can Portfolios Be Crisis Proofed? Campbell R. Harvey, Edward Hoyle, Sandy Rattray, Matthew Sargaison, Dan Taylor, and Otto Van HemertThe Journal of Portfolio ManagementA version of [...]
Factor Premia and Factor Timing: A Century of Evidence Antti Ilmanen, Ronen Israel, Toby Moskowitz, Ashwin Thapar, and Franklin Wang Working paper A version of this paper can be found here What are the research questions? [...]
Robert Novy-Marx’s 2013 paper “The Other Side of Value: The Gross Profitability Premium” not only provided investors with new insights into the cross-section of stock returns, but also helped further explain some of Warren Buffett’s [...]
Every quarter, boards across America wrestle with the complex question of dividend policy. Perhaps the company has excess cash that should be paid out as a dividend? Or perhaps cash should be directed to high [...]