Jose Menchero and Jyh-Huei Lee Volume 13, Number 4, 2015 In this article, we examine the question of efficiently combining multiple sources of alpha. We begin with a comparison of the various methods used by practitioners for constructing portfolios that capture a single alpha signal. These methods are broadly categorized as either: (a) simple factor… Read more
Articles
Investing in the Asset Growth Anomaly Across the Globe
Xi Li and Rodney N. Sullivan Volume 13, Number 4, 2015 We document the existence of an anomalous asset growth effect globally and find that it comprises some combination of a market mispricing and some pervasive global systematic risk. To support our findings, we explore a battery of tests to include how country-level governance and… Read more
Is U.S. Insider Trading Still Relevant? A Quantitative Portfolio Approach
Carr Bettis, John B. Guerard and Daniel McAuley Volume 13, Number 4, 2015 For 40 years academic literature has reported statistically significant excess returns to selected insiders trading in their firms’ shares, and similar evidence for outsiders who selectively mimic insider trading decisions spans three decades. However, constructing tradable signals leveraging insider trading data is… Read more
Funding Translational Medicine via Public Markets: The Business Development Company
Sandra M. Forman, Andrew W. Lo, Monica Shilling and Grace K. Sweeney Volume 13, Number 4, Fourth Quarter 2015 A business development company (BDC) is a type of closed-end investment fund with certain relaxed requirements that allow it to raise money in the public equity and debt markets, and can be used to fund multiple… Read more
Retirement Readiness and Behavioral Finance
Volume 13, Number 3,(2015 Burton G. Malkiel More than 10,000 Baby Boomers will be reaching retirement age every year from now through 2030. Inadequate savings, high cost and poorly designed retirement plans as well as investor behavioral mistakes combine to level most of them woefully unprepared for retirement. The paper suggests a number of possible… Read more
Decentralization in Pension Fund Management
Volume 13, Number 3, (2015) David Blake, Alberto Rossi, Allan Timmermann, Ian Tonks and Russ Wermers The past few decades have seen a major shift from centralized to decentralized investment management by pension fund sponsors, despite the increased coordination problems that this brings. Using a unique, proprietary dataset of pension sponsors and managers, we identify… Read more
Augmented Risk Models to Mitigate Factor Alignment Problems
Volume 13, Number 3, (2015) Anureet Saxena and Robert A. Stubbs Construction of optimized portfolios entails a complex interaction between three key entities, namely, the risk factors, the alpha factors and the constraints. The problems that arise due to mutual misalignment between these three entities are collectively referred to as Factor Alignment Problems (FAP). Examples… Read more
Beware of Children Trading
Volume 13, Number 3, 2015 Henk Berkman, Paul D. Koch and P. Joakim Westerholm Guardians behind underaged accounts are successful at picking stocks. These informed traders tend to channel their best trades through the accounts of children, especially when they trade just before major earnings announcements, large price changes, and takeover announcements. Building on these… Read more
The Value of Active Investing
Craig William French Volume 13, Number 3, Third Quarter 2015 We examine whether the value of active investment management can exceed its cost, and find that it can, by a substantial margin. We consider the 0.67% average cost estimate in French (2008), comparing it with the expected value of a known active investment strategy. For… Read more
Valuing High Yield Bonds: A Business Modeling Approach
Thomas S. Y. Ho and Sang Bin Lee Volume 2, Number 2, Second Quarter 2004 This paper proposes a valuation model of a bond with default risk. Extending from the Brennan and Schwartz real option model of a firm, the paper treats the firm as a contingent claim on the business risk. This paper introduces… Read more