Solvency II has one standard equity solvency capital requirement for type 1 or developed market stocks (39 percent) and one for type 2 or emerging market stocks (49 percent). As such, differences in financial economic risk of stock portfolios within developed or emerging markets do not influence...

This paper shows that low-risk stocks significantly outperform high-risk stocks in the local China A-share market. The main driver of this low-risk anomaly is volatility, and not beta. A Fama–French style VOL factor is not explained by the Fama–French–Carhart factors, and has the strongest...

Conventional short-term reversal strategies exhibit dynamic exposures to the Fama and French (1993) factors. We develop a novel reversal strategy based on residual stock returns that does not exhibit these exposures and consequently earns risk-adjusted returns that are twice as large as those of...

We examine the empirical relation between risk and return in emerging equity markets and find that this relation is flat, or even negative. This is inconsistent with theoretical models such as the CAPM, which predict a positive relation, but consistent with the results of studies for developed...

This paper shows that low-risk stocks significantly outperform high-risk stocks in the local China A shares market. The main driver of this low-risk anomaly is volatility, and not beta. A Fama-French style VOL factor is not explained by the Fama-French-Carhart factors, and has the strongest...

The evidence for the existence of a distinct low-volatility effect is mounting. However, implicit exposures to the Fama-French value factor (HML) seem to explain the performance of straightforward U.S. low-volatility strategies since 1963. In this paper I show that the value effect can neither...

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 low-volatility anomaly is often attributed to limits to arbitrage, such as leverage, short-selling and benchmark constraints. One would therefore expect hedge funds, which are typically not hindered by these constraints, to be the smart money that is able to benefit from the anomaly. This...

Low-risk stocks exhibit higher returns than predicted by established asset pricing models, but this anomaly seems to be explained by the new Fama-French five-factor model, which includes a profitability factor. We argue that this conclusion is premature given the lack of empirical evidence for a...

This paper takes another look at the recommendation of Blitz [2012] to allocate strategically to the value, momentum and low-volatility factor premiums in the equity market. Five years of fresh data shows that such a factor investing strategy continued to deliver out-of-sample. The potential...