Country v industry factors in equity returns: (When) do non-unit exposures matter?.

Country; Internationsal stock returns; Sector; World; Industry; Industries; Factors; Exposure; IT; Processes; Portfolio; Effects; Market; Event; Studies; Variance;

Management Science, Economics and Finance: A Connection

This paper provides a brief review of the connecting literature in management science, economics and finance, and discusses some research that is related to the three disciplines. Academics could develop theoretical models and subsequent econometric models to estimate the parameters in the associated models, and analyze some interesting issues in the three disciplines

International Equity Transactions and U.S. Portfolio Choice

This paper studies the cross-border transactions in equity by investors in Canada, Germany,Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. We find that investors from different countries make very different decisions about the allocation of their portfolio across markets. In contradiction to the notion that high variable transactions costs hinder international diversification, we find that the volume of gross equity flows vastly exceeds net equity flows and the turnover rate on foreign equity investments by some investors even exceeds domestic turnover rates. We also reject the hypothesis that U.S. investors follow the standard CAPM in allocating their global equity portfolio.

Building a Better Fund of Hedge Funds: A Fractal and Alpha - Stable Distribution Approach

Markowitz’s (1952) portfolio theory has permeated financial institutions over the past 50 years. Assuming that returns are normally distributed, Markowitz suggests that portfolio optimization should be performed in a mean-variance framework. With the emergence of hedge funds and their non-normally distributed returns, mean-variance portfolio optimization is no longer adequate. Here, hedge fund returns are modeled with the alpha-stable distribution and a mean-CVaR portfolio optimization is performed. Results indicate that by using the alpha- stable distribution, a more efficient fund of hedge funds portfolio can be created than would be by assuming a normal distribution. To further increase efficiency, the Hurst exponent is considered as a filtering tool and it is found that combining hedge fund strategies within a range of Hurst exponents leads to the creation of more efficient portfolios as characterized by higher risk-adjusted ratios. These findings open the door for the further study of econophysics tools in the analysis of hedge fund returns.hedge funds, fund of funds, portfolio optimization, conditional value at risk, alpha-stable distribution, Hurst exponent, fractals

Monte Carlo methods for the estimation of value-at-risk and related risk measures

Nested Monte Carlo is a computationally expensive exercise. The main contributions we present in this thesis are the formulation of efficient algorithms to perform nested Monte Carlo for the estimation of Value-at-Risk and Expected-Tail-Loss. The algorithms are designed to take advantage of multiprocessing computer architecture by performing computational tasks in parallel. Through numerical experiments we show that our algorithms can improve efficiency in the sense of reducing mean-squared error

Profitable Innovation Without Patent Protection: The Case of Derivatives.

Investment banks find it profitable to invest in the development of innovative derivative securities even without being able to preclude early competition from other investment banks using patents. To explain this, we assume that the developer can learn from the first issues of the innovative financial product and is able to become the expert issuer by the time imitation enters the market. We show how this becomes an informational first-mover advantage that turns innovators into the market leader. It is this advantage, and not the typical temporary monopoly position awarded to a patent holder, that provides the incentive to pay the development costs. In the aftermath, the innovator ends up with the largest share of the underwriting market and makes positive profits. Our model’s predictions are consistent with many stylized facts of financial innovations by investment banks.Financial innovation; first-mover advantages; asymmetric information; learning-by-doing

Understanding Mutual Fund and Hedge Fund Styles Using Return Based Style Analysis

We provide an introduction to the use of return based style analysis of Sharpe (1992) in practice. We demonstrate the importance of selecting the right style benchmarks and how the use of inappropriate style benchmarks may lead to wrong conclusions. When style analysis is applied to sector oriented funds such as healthcare, precious metals, energy, technology, etc., the set of benchmarks should include sector or industry indexes. Following Glosten and Jagannathan (1994), Fung and Hsieh (2001), and Agarwal and Naik (2001), we show how to analyze the investment style of hedge fund managers by including the returns on selected option based strategies as style benchmarks. In the examples we consider, return based style analysis provides insights not available through commonly used 'peer' evaluation alone.