We show that benchmark-linked convex incentives can lead risk-averse money managers aware of mispricing to over-invest in overpriced securities. In the model, the managers' risk-seeking behavior varies in response to the interaction of mispricing with convexity and benchmarking concerns....

Our evidence suggest that estimation error in the required statistics is an important factor inhibiting investors' ability to rely on mean/variance analysis. We compare the returns reported by mutual funds to the returns obtained from a mean/variance optimized portfolio of fund holdings. The...

Market capitalization weighted indices have historically been the most widely used strategies to achieve a passive exposure to equities markets, or capture equities beta. However, we have seen a surge of strategies called alternative betas (or sometimes “smart betas”) that, using different...

Recent empirical work documents large liquidity risk premiums in stock markets. We calculate the liquidity risk premiums demanded by large investors by solving a dynamic portfolio choice problem with stochastic price impact of trading, CRRA utility and a time-varying investment opportunity set....

Mutual funds' exposure to corporate bonds has brought concerns about risks arising from liquidity transformation back to the fore. With a focus on fund asset liquidity and investors, this paper explores the flow-performance relationship and the liquidity management of funds in the presence of...

We study portfolio selection in a model with both temporary and transient price impact introduced by Garleanu and Pedersen (2016). In the large-liquidity limit where both frictions are small, we derive explicit formulas for the asymptotically optimal trading rate and the corresponding minimal...

We study the joint portfolio and information choice problem of institutional investors who are concerned about their performance relative to a benchmark. Benchmarking influences information choices through two distinct economic mechanisms. First, benchmarking reduces the number of shares in...

Our study examines mutual fund demand for a newly designed security, exchange-traded notes (ETNs). We find strong evidence that mutual fund long positions in ETNs significantly underperform and that the motivations to hold ETNs lie outside of maximizing returns. Mutual funds hold ETNs to hedge...

Many investors assign part of their funds to asset managers of mutual funds who are given the task of beating a benchmark. Asset managers usually face a constraint on maximum Tracking Error Volatility (TEV), imposed by the risk management office to keep the risk of the portfolio close to that of...

Many anomalies are based on firm characteristics and are rebalanced yearly, ignoring any information during the year. In this paper, we provide dynamic trading strategies to rebalance the anomaly portfolios monthly. For eight major anomalies, we find that these dynamic trading strategies...