The aim of financial institutions and regulators is to find an effective way to measure the risk profile of different segments of investors. Both economists and psychologists developed several methodologies to elicit and assess individual risk attitude, but these are not perfect and show several...

What is the optimal weight of gold in an investment portfolio? Suggestions range from 0% to more than 20%, but there is no study that systematically investigates this issue. We analyze the gold holdings (gold ETFs) of institutional investors based on 13-F filings and find that 30% of all...

Institutional funds have concentrated ownership by a few institutional investors, infrequent outflows and essentially no leverage. Yet using unique granular data on the bond holdings of institutional funds, we show that their trading behavior is strongly procyclical: they actively move into...

We use unique institutional securities holdings data to examine the trading behaviour of delegated institutional capital and its impact on bond risk premia. We show that institutional fund managers trade strongly procyclically: they actively move into higher yielding, longer duration and lower...

Warren Buffett has consistently advised investors to follow a simple approach, diversifying broadly and minimizing costs. In fact, he recommended the trustee that will manage his wife's bequest to stick to a simple 90-10 stock-bond portfolio. Is this a sensible strategy for retirees in general?...

We investigate the new reality of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). We show that many ETFs are active investments in form (designed to generate alpha) or function (serve as building blocks of active portfolios). The median ETF has an Activeness Index of 93.1%. Active-in-form ETFs have positive...

The proposition that a prudent investor should be diversified is widely accepted if not incontrovertible for ordinary investors – investors who have no reasonable expectation of influencing company management or business policy. Indeed, fiduciary duty requires that trustees and other...

Gold is the world’s oldest international currency and an important element of global monetary reserves. Gold ETF (GETF) is one of the smart way of buying the gold in paper form. The study is an attempt to explore the concept of GETF with primary and secondary information. As a part of the...