Frontmatter -- Contents -- Streetwise -- Introduction -- PART ONE: Market Behavior -- Challenge to Judgment (Fall 1974) -- The Dividend Puzzle (Winter 1976) -- The Capital Asset Pricing Model and the Market Model (Winter 1981) -- Factors in New York Stock Exchange Security Returns, 1931-1979...

We document that leverage-adjusted returns on S&P 500 index call and put portfolios are decreasing in their strike-to-price ratio over 1986-2010, contrary to the prediction of the Black-Scholes-Merton model. We test a large number of plausible unconditional factor models and find that only...

Pension funds only explored alternative assets quite recently, prodded by financial crises which devastated equity returns and led to low bond returns. We assess the addition of alternative assets to pension fund portfolios in terms of the total benefit derived from diversification, addition of...