Third Quarter (2020)

Vol. 18, No. 3, 2020 Jose Menchero and Peng Li In this article, we study the impact of shrinking sample correlations toward zero. We find that while such shrinkage may be beneficial from a portfolio-construction perspective, there is virtually no benefit in terms of the accuracy of risk forecasts. In fact, we show that correlation… Read more

Vol. 18, No. 3, 2020 Roger K. Loh and René M. Stulz Little is known about whether the value of sell-side research is different in bad times compared to good times. Because uncertainty is high in bad times, investors find it harder to assess firm prospects and hence should value analyst output more. However, higher… Read more

Vol. 18, No. 3, 2020 Masahito Shimizu We propose to use an attribution formula that enables the ex-post realized Sharpe ratio to be decomposed into realized market conditions, ex-ante predictability of the returns, risk magnitude, and risk factors. We compare the predictability of the ex-ante return and ex-ante risk directly, quantitatively identifying the main source… Read more

Vol. 18, No. 3, 2020 Robert Snigaroff, David Wroblewski, and Sean Sehyun Yoo We compare three factor models and their ability to explain a set of portfolio anomalies. Two of these models are based on market capitalization which most of the industry currently uses to characterize stocks. We replace this line of thinking by utilizing… Read more

Vol. 18, No. 3, 2020 Andrew W. Lo, Alexander Remorov, and Zied Ben Chaouch We use a global survey of over 22,400 individual investors, 4,892 financial advisors, and 2,060 institutional investors between 2015 and 2017 to elicit their asset allocation behavior and risk preferences. We find substantially different behaviors among these three groups of market… Read more