Performance measures such as alpha and the Sharpe ratio are typically based on sample returns net of fees. This implies the same weighing to sample returns and to fees. However, sample return parameters are noisy estimates of true parameters, while fees are known with certainty. Thus, intuition...

Asness et. al. (2018) recently resurrect the size effect, concluding that it “…should be restored as one of the central cross-sectional empirical anomalies for asset pricing theory to explain”. We suggest a theoretical explanation for the size effect, based on the observation that many...

Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: Criteria for Mutual Fund Selection -- Chapter 3: Investment for Intermediate and Long Horizons -- Chapter 4: Estimating Future Performance – The Shrinkage Adjusted Sharpe Ratio -- Chapter 5: Active Versus Passive Investment -- Chapter 6: Target Date Funds,...

The Black-Scholes model and many of its extensions imply a log-normal distribution of stock returns. However, for holding periods of up to a year, the empirical return distribution (both conditional and unconditional) is not log-normal, but rather much closer to the logistic distribution. This...