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...

Some exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are specifically designed for harvesting factor premiums, such as the size, value, momentum and low-volatility effects. Other ETFs, however, may implicitly go against these factors. This paper analyzes the factor exposures of US equity ETFs and finds that,...

The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) has been the backbone of asset market finance even though many academic studies have revealed its limitations, both theoretical and empirical. This paper argues that including liability or benchmark considerations in investment decisions may provide a...

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...

This paper seeks to uncover the drivers of the idiosyncratic momentum anomaly. We show that: (I) idiosyncratic momentum is a distinct phenomenon that exists next to conventional momentum and is not explained by it; (ii) idiosyncratic momentum is priced in the cross-section of stock returns after...

The added value of smart beta indices is known to be explained by exposures to established factor premiums, but does that make these indices suitable for implementing a factor investing strategy? This paper finds that the amount of factor exposure provided by popular smart beta strategies...

Some exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are specifically designed for harvesting factor premiums, such as the size, value, momentum, and low-volatility effects. Other ETFs, however, may implicitly go against these factors. This paper analyzes the factor exposures of U.S. equity ETFs and finds that,...

Since the development of modern portfolio theory (MPT) in the late 1950s and early 1960s, academics have offered numerous competing theories. MPT's simplicity is appealing: The expected return on an asset is simply a function of the return of the market portfolio and the asset's beta to the...

We show that the performance of a fundamental index with annual rebalancing, as proposed by Arnott, Hsu and Moore (2005), can be highly sensitive to the subjective choice of when to rebalance. For the year 2009, for example, we find that a fundamental index rebalanced every March outperformed...

In this paper we examine a momentum strategy based on residual stock returns. We find that residual momentum exhibits risk-adjusted profits that are about twice as large as those associated with total return momentum. Moreover, we find that the main arguments that have been put forward in the...