We propose a fund allocation strategy for a highly risk-averse investor based on pessimistic decision making to construct portfolios of four major asset classes. Using US data (indexes of stocks, bonds, real estate, and commodities) from January 1990 to December 2010, we find that the proposed...

Over the period 1975 to 2005, the US dollar (particularly in relation to the Canadian dollar) and the euro and Swiss franc (particularly in the second half of the period) have moved against world equity markets. Thus these currencies should be attractive to risk-minimizing global equity...

Utilizing the recently developed measure of global risk aversion by Xu (2017), we show that global risk aversion is a significant determinant of international equity correlations, consistently across all emerging markets examined. The positive effect of risk aversion on emerging market...

This note ranks the sensitivities of emerging market economies' (EMEs') bond fund flows to changes in the US monetary stance and global risk aversion. Based on the sensitivities, we draw heat maps to indicate the economies that are more likely to suffer large outflows. We find that bond fund...

Extant literature consistently documents that investors tilt their domestic equity portfolios towards regionally close stocks (local bias). We hypothesize that individual investors’ local bias is not limited to the domestic sphere but instead also determines their international investment...