Portfolio optimization should provide large benefits to investors, but standard mean-variance optimization (MVO) works so poorly in practice that optimization is often abandoned. The approaches developed to address this issue are often surrounded by mystique regarding how, why, and whether they...

We propose a new asset-pricing framework in which all securities' signals are used to predict each individual return. While the literature focuses on each security's own- signal predictability, assuming an equal strength across securities, our framework is flexible and includes...

This paper provides a novel five-component decomposition of optimal dynamic portfolio choice. It reveals the simultaneous impacts from market incompleteness and wealth-dependent utilities. The decomposition leads to implementation via either closed-form solutions or Monte Carlo simulations. With...

We propose that investment strategies should be evaluated based on their net-of-trading-cost return for each level of risk, which we term the "implementable efficient frontier." While numerous studies use machine learning return forecasts to generate portfolios, their agnosticism toward trading...

This paper develops a simple technique that controls for ldquo;false discoveries,rdquo; or mutual funds that exhibit significant alphas by luck alone. Our approach precisely separates funds into (1) unskilled, (2) zero-alpha, and (3) skilled funds, even with dependencies in cross-fund estimated...

This paper develops a simple technique that controls for "false discoveries", or mutual funds that exhibit significant alphas by luck alone. Our approach precisely separates funds into (1) unskilled, (2) zero-alpha, and (3) skilled funds, even with dependencies in cross-fund estimated alphas. We...

Hedge funds' extensive use of derivatives, short-selling, and leverage and their dynamic trading strategies create significant non-normalities in their return distributions. Hence, the traditional performance measures fail to provide an accurate characterization of the relative strength of hedge...

Hedge funds' extensive use of derivatives, short-selling, and leverage and their dynamic trading strategies create significant non-normalities in their return distributions. Hence, the traditional performance measures fail to provide an accurate characterization of the relative strength of hedge...

Existing studies of household stock trading using administrative data offer conflicting results: Discount brokerage accounts exhibit excessive trading, while retirement accounts show inactivity. This paper uses population-wide data from PSID and SCF to examine the overall extent of household...

Many financial instruments are designed with embedded leverage such as options and leveraged exchange traded funds (ETFs). Embedded leverage alleviates investors' leverage constraints and, therefore, we hypothesize that embedded leverage lowers required returns. Consistent with this hypothesis,...