Lotto, How to Win? Skew Timing Strategies

In this paper, we investigate whether the “lotto investor” can benefit from the time-varying skewness of market portfolio and how to capture the gain using skew timing strategies. We find that empirically applying the mean-variance-skewness (M-V-S) rule of Mitton and Vorkink (2007) generates similar performance as that of traditional mean-variance rule, because the optimal weight of M-V-S still mainly depends on the mean and variance unless the forecasted skewness is extremely large. To improve the M-V-S, we suggest combining two constrained versions of M-V-S, namely the mean-variance (M-V) and mean-skewness (M-S). Discarding the variance, the M-S fully considers the usefulness of skewness and the optimal weight solely depends on mean and skewness. However, M-S investor probably suffers huge loss due to forecasting errors. Combining the M-V with M-S should theoretically perform better than individual rules, and hence better than the M-V-S rule. Empirically, we find that the combination rule indeed generates superior performance, in terms of certainty equivalent returns, Sharpe ratios, and skewness of portfolio returns distribution