We show analytically under quite general conditions that implied rates of return based on analysts' earnings forecasts are only a downward biased estimator for future expected one-period returns and therefore not suited for computing market risk premia. The extent of this bias is substantial as...

The estimation of expected security returns is one of the major tasks for the practical implementation of the Markowitz portfolio optimization. Against this background, in 1992 Black and Litterman developed an approach based on (theoretically established) expected equili-brium returns which...

We consider investors with mean-variance-skewness preferences who aim at selecting one out of F different funds and combining it optimally with the riskless asset and direct stock holdings. Direct stock holdings are either exogenously or endogenously determined. In our theoretical section, we...

Recent studies show that volatility-managed equity portfolios realize higher Sharpe ratios than portfolios with a constant notional exposure. We show that this result only holds for “risk assets”, such as equity and credit, and link this to the so-called leverage effect for those assets. In...