Using leverage to magnify performance is an idea that has enticed investors and traders throughout history. The critical question of when to employ leverage and when to reduce risk, though, is not often addressed. We establish that volatility is the enemy of leverage and that streaks in...

Numerous academic studies have shown that asset allocation is the single most important determinant of portfolio returns. We accept this premise but note that an optimal asset allocation strategy must still be determined based on dynamic conditions. Using the principles of intermarket analysis...

These days it's become convention (reinforced by the media's treatment of wealth) to assess our net worth by tallying up the market value of our financial assets, even though it's more natural and useful to think of our wealth as a stream of dollars over time given the nature of our income and...

In this work, we have found a risk model that improves the performance of Risk Targeting. Risk Targeting in portfolio construction is implemented to improve capital utilization in growing markets and systematically step away from risk scenarios. However, the performance of risk targeting varies...

In this paper, we show empirically that Active Risk Budgeting is a superior portfolio construction methodology to the tangency portfolio method postulated by Mean Variance Optimization. We compare the performance of Active Risk Budgeting and Tangency Portfolio in a series of systematic...

This study addresses real estate's riskiness from a distributional viewpoint. Several studies have found real estate returns to be best modeled with stable paretian distributions. Using NCREIF individual property returns this is confirmed, but the first application of stable distributions to...

The Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) has been the cornerstone of the asset allocation for over 40 years. In the past decade though, it led in a rather systematic way to bad investments decisions. One of MPT's main assumptions, investor risk aversion that translates into volatility aversion, biases...

This presentation reconsiders Knight's Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit of 1921 in light of the emergence of the World Wide Web in early-1990s, Emanuel Derman's pioneering work in Model Risk Management at Goldman Sachs in mid-1990s, backlash against quantitative models in aftermath of the Global...

In this paper, we analyze the impacts of joint energy and output prices uncertainties on the inputs demands in a mean-variance framework. We find that an increase in expected output price will surely cause the risk averse firm to increase the inputs’ demand, while an increase in expected...

This study provides formal theoretical evidence for nesting of probability measures that are generated by risk aversion in probability measures that are generated by risk seeking preferences. In presence of highlighted nesting, conditional on independent parameterization of expectations...