Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a generalization of the familiar two‐sample t ‐test for equality of means to the case where the sample values are to be given unequal weights. This is a natural situation in financial risk modeling when some samples are considered more...

This paper describes an empirical study of shortfall optimization with Barra Extreme Risk. We compare minimum shortfall to minimum variance portfolios in the US, UK, and Japanese equity markets using Barra Style Factors (Value, Growth, Momentum, etc.). We show that minimizing shortfall generally...

We explore the cost of implicit leverage associated with an S&P 500 Index futures contract and derive an implied financing rate. While this implicit financing rate has often been attractive relative to market rates on explicit financing, the relationship between the implicit and explicit...

Endowments, foundations and individual investors considering the divestment of carbon industries need to know the potential impact on risk and return. In this paper, we analyze the cost of divesting from broad market indices. Our key findings are:• Optimized carbon-free portfolios closely...

Factor analysis of security returns aims to decompose a return covariance matrix into systematic and specific risk components. To date, most commercially successful factor analysis has been based on fundamental models, although there is a large academic literature on statistical models. While...