Target-date funds feature asset allocations that become increasingly conservative as investors approach retirement. An important shortcoming of this strategy is that it is suboptimal in terms of capital accumulation, which begs the question of why these funds are so popular. A possible answer is...

The standard deviation, arguably the most widely-used measure of risk, suffers from at least two limitations. First, the number itself offers little insight; after all, what is the intuition behind the square root of the average quadratic deviation from the arithmetic mean return? Second,...

Most investors agree that investing in emerging markets is risky, but not all of them agree on the best strategy to deal with this risk. Some investors view the high volatility of these markets as an opportunity to make large short-term profits and actively trade; others view it as a risk than can...

Do investors in the U.S. stock market obtain their long term returns smoothly and steadily over time, or is their long term performance largely determined by the return of just a few outliers? How likely are investors to successfully predict the best days to be in and out of the market? The...

Do investors obtain their long term returns smoothly and steadily over time, or is their long term performance largely determined by the return of just a few outliers? How likely are investors to successfully predict the best days to be in and out of the market? The evidence from 15...

Academics and practitioners optimize portfolios using far more often the mean-variance approach than the mean-semivariance approach, and that despite the fact that semivariance is often considered a more plausible measure of risk than variance. The popularity of the mean-variance approach...

The proper identification of the risk variables that explain the cross section of returns in emerging markets has many and far-reaching implications for both companies and investors. We examine this risk-return relationship by focusing on three families of models, over 25 years of data, and over...

As much as fundamental indexation is novel and controversial, international diversification is traditional and widely accepted. This article links both issues and evaluates a fundamental strategy of international diversification. Considering 16 country benchmarks that make up over 93% of the...

Forecasting returns is a mix of art and science, with a fair share of sorcery. In fact, the smaller the number of assets in the portfolio, and the shorter the period for which forecasts are made, the bigger the role played by this last factor. Sir William of Occam taught us to focus on the...

The negative relationship between stock market P/E ratios and government bond yields seems to have become conventional wisdom among practitioners. Both limited empirical evidence and a misleading suggestion that the model originated in the Fed are used to support the model's plausibility. This...