Does better performance lead to more assets? We examine nearly 30,000 mutual funds to determine the effect that a funds outperformance relative to its peers has on the funds later asset size. We find that a fund that earns ten percent more than the size-weighted average of its peers in its style...

We solve two "unsolvable" (teyku) problems from the Talmud that had remained unsolved for about one and a half thousand years. The Talmudic problems concern the implied decision-making of farmers who have left some scattered fruit behind, and the alleged impossibility of knowing whether they...

We show that any objective risk measurement algorithm mandated by central banks for regulated financial entities will result in more risk being taken on by those financial entities than would otherwise be the case. Furthermore, the risks taken on by the regulated financial entities are far more...

We introduce a new general framework for constructing the best trading strategy for a given historical indicator. We construct the unique trading strategy with the highest expected return. This optimal strategy may be implemented directly, or its expected return may be used as a benchmark to...

Drawing on and extending an estate allocation algorithm of 12th century philosopher Moses ben Maimon, we show how “Maimonides Risk Parity” can link together the equal weighted, market capitalization weighted, and risk parity portfolios in a unified, elegant, and concise theoretical...

The performance of the average investor in an asset class lags the average performance of the asset class itself by an average of one percent per year over the past fifteen years, based on net investor mutual fund cash flows. We present a model in which a representative behavioral investor...

We decompose consensus analyst long-term growth forecasts into a hard growth component that captures accounting information (asset and sales growth, profitability and equity dilution) and an orthogonal soft growth component. The soft component does not forecast future returns, and the hard...

A property's location is often considered to be the ultimate determinant of its investment performance. But how exactly does a property's location influence its risk and return? We focus on the effects of location density on the risk and return of commercial real estate investments. We do this...

We find that accounting ratios (asset and sales growth, profitability, and equity dilution) that predict stock returns are associated with errors in analyst long-term growth forecasts. Specifically, accounting information that is associated with favorable long-term growth forecasts tends to...

This paper considers several popular portfolio implementation techniques that maximize exposure to value and/or momentum stocks while taking into account transaction costs. Our analysis of long-only strategies illustrates how a strategy that simultaneously incorporates both value and momentum...