Downside Risk

Economists have long recognized that investors care differently about downside losses versus upside gains. Agents who place greater weight on downside risk demand additional compensation for holding stocks with high sensitivities to downside market movements. We show that the cross-section of stock returns reflects a premium for downside risk. Specifically, stocks that covary strongly with the market when the market declines have high average returns. We estimate that the downside risk premium is approximately 6% per annum. The reward for bearing downside risk is not simply compensation for regular market beta, nor is it explained by coskewness or liquidity risk, or size, book-to-market, and momentum characteristics.

Downside Risk and the Momentum Effect

Stocks with greater downside risk, which is measured by higher correlations conditional on downside moves of the market, have higher returns. After controlling for the market beta, the size effect and the book-to-market effect, the average rate of return on stocks with the greatest downside risk exceeds the average rate of return on stocks with the least downside risk by 6.55% per annum. Downside risk is important for explaining the cross-section of expected returns. In particular of the profitability of investing in momentum strategies can be explained as compensation for bearing high exposure to downside risk.

The convexity-cone approach to comparative risk and downside risk.

Based on Jewitt (1986) we try to find a characterization of comparative downside risk aversion and love. The desired characterizations involve the decomposition of the dual of the intersection of two convexity cones. The decomposition holds in the case of downside risk love, but not in the case of downside risk aversion. A counterexample is provided.Convexity cones; risk; downside risk; risk aversion; dual cones

Revisiting the Home Bias Puzzle. Downside Equity Risk

Deviations from normality in financial return series have led to the development of alternative portfolio selection models. One such model is the downside risk model, whereby the investor maximizes his return given a downside risk constraint. In this paper we empirically observe the international equity allocation for the downside risk investor using 9 international markets’ returns over the last 34 years. The results are stable for various robustness checks. Investors may think globally, but instead act locally, due to greater downside risk. The results provide an alternative view of the home bias phenomenon, documented in international financial markets.Asset Pricing, Home Bias, Downside Risk, Prospect Theory

A note on greater downside risk aversion

This paper characterizes downside risk aversion in a simple and intuitive manner. It is shown that using this characterization one can simplify considerably a theorem by Jindapon (2010) relating to greater downside risk aversion as measured by the prudence probability premium. The comparative statics of downside risk aversion in risk-free wealth are also considered.downside risk aversion, prudence

Measures of downside risk

The paper characterizes a family of downside risk measures. They depend on a target value and a parameter reflecting the attitude towards downside risk. The indicators are probability weighted -order means of possible shortfalls. They form a subclass of the measures intro¬duced by Stone (1973) and are related to the measures proposed by Fishburn (1977). The axiomatization is based on some properties which are desirable and appropriate for the measurement of risk.

The Use of Downside Risk Measures in Portfolio Construction and Evaluation

One of the challenges of using downside risk measures as an alternative constructor of portfolios and diagnostic devise is in their computational intensity. This paper outlines how to use downside risk measures to construct efficient portfolios and to evaluate portfolio performance in light of investor loss aversiondownside risk, portfolios, performance measure

A Note on the Intensity of Downside Risk Aversion

In this note we show that the measure of intensity of downside risk aversion proposed recently by Crainich and Eeckhoudt (2007) cannot be guaranteed to exist. We do this by means of an example in which the existence of the measure depends upon the values of the parameters in the problem.risk aversion, prudence, downside risk

Portfolio selection in euro area with CAPM and Lower Partial Moments models

This article selects portfolios using estimates given by CAPM and three Lower Partial Moments models (LPM). The CAPM assumption about investors’ behaviour towards risk is that they are equally concerned with upside and downside risk. The LPM models, however, are based on the assumption that investors’ utility functions weight downside risk more heavily than upside risk. The major difference between LPM models is their definition of upside and downside risk. The asset pricing models estimations and the corresponding portfolio selection were conducted on several euro area domestic stock indexes and the European Monetary Union stock market index (EMU). A pairwise comparison of portfolio performance is conducted through Sharpe ratios calculated sepa- rately for upside and downside market conditions. The results of this comparative analysis of different pricing models provide evidence that CAPM and one LPM model offer better protection against adverse market conditions than the other two LPM models studied.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio