Conventional financial theory considers ex-ante that risk, generally measured by the volatility, has to be appropriately rewarded by expected returns. In modern financial markets, there are countless quantitative and systematic strategies which may test and eventually lead to excess returns when...

We analyze the economic benefits of several covariance estimation approaches on a tactical asset-allocation problem in the presence of high-frequency return data. Our analysis confirms that the use of robust-to-noise and asynchronicity estimators not only gives statistically more accurate...

The return dynamics of Argentina's main stock index, the SP Mer.Val., show a high level of volatility, signaling a higher degree of downside risk. To hedge against that specific risk, investors could buy put options. However, the Argentinean capital market slacks variety of hedging contracts....

Empirical evidence suggests that asset returns correlate more strongly in bear markets than conventional correlation estimates imply. We propose a method for determining complete tail-correlation matrices based on Value-at-Risk (VaR) estimates. We demonstrate how to obtain more effi cient...

Unlike passive management, where investors almost do not buy and sell securities, active management involves a set of trading rules that govern investment decisions regarding mainly market timing. In this paper, we take the basics of active management and the two fund separation approach, to...

A value investing strategy consists of purchasing stocks relatively undervalued to their funda-mental values and selling those relatively overvalued. Finding this kind of companies has been one of the most challenging goals for investors throughout the history. The main objective of this paper...

It is well known that estimation issues severely impact the performances of investment strategies. This is particularly problematic when accounting for higher moments as the number of parameters to estimate quickly explodes with the number of assets. In this paper, we address this issue by...

We study the annual growth rates of six macroeconomic variables: public debt, public health expenditures, exports of goods, government consumption expenditures, total exports of goods and services, and total imports of goods and services. For each variable, we find (i) that the distribution of...

Futures contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange are the most liquid instruments for trading crude oil, which is the world’s most actively traded physical commodity. Under normal market conditions, traders can easily find counterparties for their trades, resulting in an efficient market...

Case studies across the social sciences have established a positive relationship between social status and happiness. In observational data, however, identification challenges remain severe. This study exploits the fact that in India people are assigned a caste from birth. In data on 1000...