Multifactor funds, which offer factor diversification neatly packaged in one product, have a rather short but poor track record; these funds have largely underperformed widely-available broad market funds. This article evaluates the performance of multifactor funds relative to two homemade factor...

Academics, practitioners, and investors at large typically have a preference for making decisions based on a single variable that is supposed to be maximized or minimized. This approach is usually appropriate but it may also be misleading. When selecting an optimal retirement strategy a retiree...

For over 30 years academics and practitioners have been debating the merits of the CAPM. One of the characteristics of this model is that it measures risk by beta, which follows from an equilibrium in which investors display mean-variance behavior. In that framework, risk is assessed by the...

Beta as a measure of risk has been under fire for many years. Although practitioners still widely use the CAPM to estimate the cost of equity of companies, they are aware of its problems and are looking for alternatives. One possible alternative is to estimate the cost of equity based on the...