This article examines the risk and return characteristics of U.S. mutual funds. We employ an equilibrium version of the Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) and a principal-components-based statistical technique to identify performance benchmarks. We also consider the Capital Asset Pricing Model...

Investors are natural risk bearers, in part due to the vast array of risk management tools available to them. These tools allow a risk budgeting process that de-couples the asset allocation and active bets taken in the portfolio. The risk of non-traded assets in the portfolio can be reduced by...

This paper develops a two-step semiparametric methodology for portfolio weight selection for characteristics- based factor-tilt and factor-timing investment strategies. We build upon the expected utility maximization framework of Brandt (1999) and Aït-sahalia and Brandt (2001). We assume that...