One of the interesting puzzles in finance is that stocks with greater idiosyncratic volatility (IVOL) have produced lower returns (see an earlier post here). This is an anomaly because idiosyncratic volatility is viewed as a [...]
A large body of evidence demonstrates that investment strategies focused on buying stocks that are cheap relative to measures of fundamental value have achieved higher long-term returns than the broad market. Motivated by such legendary [...]
A large body of research demonstrates that “familiarity breeds investment.” For example, a study by Gur Huberman found that shortly after AT&T was broken up and shareholders were given shares in each of what were [...]
There is a substantial body of evidence linking various accounting ratios to expected stock returns. One explanation of the links is that they could be explained by the accounting ratios being associated with systematic sources [...]
Over the past decade academics and practitioners alike have argued that multi-factor portfolios offer significant benefits to investors looking for enhanced and more diversified solutions. Among the papers making this argument is “The Death of [...]
Editor's note: Earlier this week, Lu Zhang discussed his thoughts on the investment factor and expected returns. In this piece, Larry discusses a recent research piece that tells a different side of the story. We [...]
The collapse in interest rates, combined with historically high valuations (at least for U.S. stocks), have led many endowments, pension plans (especially those with large unfunded liabilities) and high net worth investors (such as those [...]
One of the big problems for the first formal asset pricing model developed by financial economists, the CAPM, was that it predicts a positive relation between risk and return. But empirical studies have found the [...]
One of the most well known and most beloved forms of literature is the fairy tale. Although most fairy tales are not about fairies, they are fictitious and highly fanciful tales of legendary deeds and [...]
The variance risk premium (VRP) refers to the fact that, over time, the option-implied volatility has tended to exceed the realized volatility of the same underlying asset. This has created a profit opportunity for volatility [...]
Because equities are much riskier than high-quality bonds, the vast majority of the risk of a conventional 60 percent equity/40 percent bond portfolio is equity risk. Here’s the simple math demonstrating the point. Well-diversified equity [...]
In “Your Complete Guide to Factor-Based Investing,” Andy Berkin and I presented the evidence demonstrating that momentum, both cross-sectional (or relative) momentum and time-series (or absolute, trend following) momentum, not only increases the explanatory power [...]
According to Christian mythology, the Holy Grail was the dish, plate or cup with miraculous powers that were used by Jesus at the Last Supper. Legend has it that the Grail was sent to Great [...]
We can define popularity as the condition of being admired, sought after, well-known, and/or accepted. One would think popularity is a good thing. However, when it comes to investing, the research shows that along with [...]
Research demonstrates that the investment factor has explanatory power for the cross-section of stock returns, with high-investment firms tending to underperform low-investment firms. For example, Kewei Hou, Chen Xue and Lu Zhang, authors of the [...]
There’s a large body of research, including the 2017 study “Tail Risk Mitigation with Managed Volatility Strategies” by Anna Dreyer and Stefan Hubrich, that demonstrates that, while past returns do not predict future returns, past [...]
Two of the more interesting puzzles in finance are related to volatility—stocks with greater idiosyncratic volatility (IVOL) have produced lower returns and stocks with high uncertainty about risk, as measured by the volatility of expected [...]
The financial equivalent of the famous Miller Lite, “tastes great, less filling” debate is the debate between traditional financial economics which uses risk theories to explain asset pricing and the newer behavioral finance field that [...]
In 1921, University of Chicago Professor Frank Knight wrote the classic book “Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit.” An article from the Library of Economics and Liberty described Knight’s definitions of risk and uncertainty as follows: Risk [...]
Since the development of the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) in the 1960s, hundreds of anomalies (what John Cochrane famously called a “zoo of new factors”) have been uncovered in the cross-section of stock returns. [...]
