Investors have traditionally relied on mean-variance analysis to determine a portfolio’s optimal asset mix, but they have struggled to incorporate private equity into this framework because they do not know how to estimate its risk. The observed volatility of private equity returns is...

We discuss how to build ETF risk models. Our approach anchors on i) first building a multilevel (non-)binary classification/taxonomy for ETFs, which is utilized in order to define the risk factors, and ii) then building the risk models based on these risk factors by utilizing the heterotic risk...

The 27th SUERF Colloquium in Munich in June 2008: New Trends in Asset Management: Exploring the Implications was already topical in the Summer of 2008. The subsequent dramatic events in the Autumn of 2008 made the presentations in Munich even more relevant to investors and bankers that want to...

We find that hedge funds’ ETF option positions predict cross-sectional differences in the future volatility of underlying ETFs. The predictive power is strongest for straddle positions and non-equity ETFs. A tracking portfolio of straddles based on funds’ straddle positions earns quarterly...

Three concepts: stochastic discount factors, multi-beta pricing and mean-variance efficiency, are at the core of modern empirical asset pricing. This chapter reviews these paradigms and the relations among them, concentrating on conditional asset-pricing models where lagged variables serve as...