This paper investigates the performance and characteristics of survivor stocks in the S&P 500 index. Using both in-sample and out-of-sample comparisons, survivor stocks outperformed this market index by a considerable margin. Relative to other S&P 500 index companies, survivor stocks tend to be...

Passive investment strategies basically aim to replicate an underlying benchmark. Thereby, the management usually selects a subset of stocks being employed in the optimization procedure. Apart from the optimization procedure, the stock selection approach determines the stock portfolios's...