Momentum is one of the largest and most pervasive market anomalies. However, despite a high mean and Sharpe ratio, momentum suffers from large negative skewness that comes from momentum crash periods. These crashes occur in times of both market stress and market rebound and thus variables that...

We provide empirical evidence that the returns on US equity momentum exhibit a time-varying skewness which deepens during dramatic losses (crashes). As a result, the dynamics of the strategy expected returns reflects the time variation in both conditional volatility and skewness. This has first...

In the context of modern portfolio theory, we compare the out-of-sample performance of 8 investment strategies which are based on statistical methods with the out-of-sample performance of a family of trivial strategies. A wide range of approaches is considered in this work, including the...

We re-examined the seasonal pattern in the excess returns of highly visible American firms. In contrast to the seasonality for risky, less visible firms, we found that highly visible stocks display return seasonality that shows the opposite trend. Fund managers are prone to gamesmanship, putting...

A single macroeconomic factor based on growth in the capital share of aggregate income exhibits significant explanatory power for expected returns across a range of equity characteristic portfolios and non-equity asset classes, with risk price estimates that are of the same sign and similar in...

By allowing for imperfectly informed markets and the role of private information, we offer newinsights about observed deviations of portfolio concentrations in domestic relative to foreignrisky assets, or “home bias”, from what standard finance models predict. Our model ascribesthe...

This paper analyzes the effects that uncertainty about economic fundamentalshas on aggregate trading volume. First, the trading volume of an investor facinga standard consumption portfolio choice problem is derived. It is found that if theparameters describing the investment opportunity set...

The paper examines a dynamic model of a financial market with endogenous asset prices determined by short run equilibrium of supply and demand. Assets pay dividends that are partially consumed and partially reinvested. The traders use fixed-mix investment strategies (portfolio rules),...

Assessments of investors’ risk appetite/aversion stance via indicators often yields resultswhich seem unsatisfactory (see e.g. Illing and Aaron (2005)). Understanding howsuch indicators work therefore seems essential for further improvements. The presentpaper seeks to contribute to this...

It is well known that asset allocation policy is the major determinant of fundperformance. However, there is substantial disagreement about the exactmagnitude of the contribution of asset allocation. Following the approach inIbbotson and Kaplan (2000), we use German and Swiss balanced mutualfund...