The paper addresses flaws in the traditional application of Modern Portfolio Theory related to Strategic Asset Allocation. Estimates of parameters for portfolio optimization based on long-term observed average values are shown to be inferior to alternative estimates based on observations over...

We utilize seventeen years of comprehensive daily portfolio and trading data identified at the individual investor level, to analyze the relative trading performance of the entire universe of households, all domestic financial institutions and all foreign institutions in the Finnish market. We...

Behavioral biases like disposition effect and over-confidence have received much attention as a potential driver of numerous anomalies observed in the markets. Also, it has been argued that information uncertainty tends to exacerbate these biases and induce stronger irrational behavior among...

We test whether asymmetric preferences for losses versus gains as in Ang, Chen, and Xing (2006) also affect the pricing of cash flow versus discount rate news as in Campbell and Vuolteenaho (2004). We construct a new four-fold beta decomposition, distinguishing cash flow and discount rate betas...

This paper compares several investment strategies designed to exploit the low-beta anomaly. Although the notion of buying low-beta stocks and selling high-beta stocks is natural, a choice is necessary with respect to the relative weighting of high-beta stocks and low-beta stocks in the...

There has been considerable research into dynamic global tactical asset allocation (GTAA) strategies driven by simple measures of Valuation and Momentum applied to a baseline balanced portfolio of equities and fixed income (see Blitz and van Vliet 2008, Wang and Kochard 2011, Gnedenko and Yelnik...

Behavioral biases like disposition effect and overconfidence have received much attention as a potential driver of numerous anomalies observed in the markets. Also, it has been argued that information uncertainty tends to exacerbate these biases and induce stronger irrational behavior among...

This chapter provides a perspective on the rapidly developing literature on investment performance evaluation. I use the stochastic discount factor approach to present and critique current performance measurement techniques in a unified setting. I offer a number of suggestions to improve...

We derive and interpret the mathematical principles for portfolio selection. We show these principles not only guarantee efficiency and value-adding, but also ideally address Treynor and Black (1973)’s long-standing normative call for reconciling subjective analyst views with objective...

American university and college endowments now hold close to one-third of their portfolios in private equity and hedge funds. We estimate the implied beliefs of endowments about alternative assets' returns relative to equities and bonds. At the end of 2012, the typical endowment believes that...