Several theoretical studies suggest that coordination problems can cause arbitrageur crowding to push asset prices beyond fundamental value as investors feedback trade on each others' demands. Using this logic we develop a crowding model for momentum returns that predicts tail risk when...

Betting-against-risk (BAR) anomaly portfolios formed on past beta and idiosyncratic / total volatility produce large CAPM alphas. But these return spreads are well explained by the Fama--French six-factor model (FF6). Operating profitability, investment, and momentum factors subsume the low-risk...

There is an annuity puzzle in that the actual allocation by individuals to annuities is low. Longevity bonds, to hedge overall economy-wide mortality risk, have been proposed, but these bonds have challenges and the proponents have not shown how governments are hedged. This paper recommends that...

There is an annuity puzzle in that despite the welfare gains to individuals and society from consumers purchasing annuities, the actual allocation to these instruments by individuals is very low. Many explanations have been provided including adverse selection, complexity and inflexibility of...

Investors live in a multi-period, volatile world and base their decisions on theories of asset pricing, and asset allocation, often derived from a single period model. They make assumptions about asset returns and volatilities and use optimizers to set their long term allocations, and often...

A direct measure of the cyclicality of momentum at a given point in time, its bottom-up beta with respect to the market, forecasts both the returns and the risk of the strategy. Challenging a potential risk-based explanation, a highly cyclical momentum portfolio forecasts both higher risk and...

We test the relevance of technical and fundamental variables in forming currency portfolios. Carry, momentum and reversal all contribute to portfolio performance, whereas the real exchange rate and the current account do not. The resulting optimal portfolio outperforms the carry trade and other...

The primary purpose of this research is to empirically test a new asset pricing model, the Relative Asset Pricing Model (RAPM), and to confirm whether hedge portfolios on two new risk factors highlighted in that model, and embedded in all portfolios, have negative and significant risk premia. In...

This paper makes a simple but bold argument that because mean-variance optimization (MVO) and the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) were derived from a theoretical construct rather than reality, they represent a specialized case of a more general theory. We suggest a theory based on the...

Dynamic beta is a program that dynamically allocates to beta assets based on formal rules. It contrasts with standard mean-variance optimization and static risk-parity approaches, which are static. Dynamic beta lowers the overall risk of the fund — where risk includes volatility of returns...