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Bonds versus stocks: Investors' age and risk taking

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  • Bali, Turan G.
  • Demirtas, K. Ozgur
  • Levy, Haim
  • Wolf, Avner

Abstract

It has become increasingly popular to advise investors to relocate their funds from a primarily stock portfolio to a primarily bond portfolio as they get older. However, the well-known decision rules such as mean-variance or stochastic dominance rules are unable to explain this common practice. Almost stochastic dominance (ASD) and almost mean-variance (AMV) approaches are used to examine the dominance of stock and bond portfolios. ASD and AMV rules unambiguously support the popular practice of advising higher stock to bond ratio for long investment horizons. Hence, we provide an explanation to the practitioners' recommendation within the expected utility paradigm.

Suggested Citation

  • Bali, Turan G. & Demirtas, K. Ozgur & Levy, Haim & Wolf, Avner, 2009. "Bonds versus stocks: Investors' age and risk taking," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(6), pages 817-830, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:moneco:v:56:y:2009:i:6:p:817-830
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    8. Guo, Xu & Post, Thierry & Wong, Wing-Keung & Zhu, Lixing, 2014. "Moment conditions for Almost Stochastic Dominance," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 124(2), pages 163-167.
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    13. Denuit, Michel M. & Huang, Rachel J. & Tzeng, Larry Y. & Wang, Christine W., 2014. "Almost marginal conditional stochastic dominance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 57-66.
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    15. Guo, Xu & Wong, Wing-Keung & Zhu, Lixing, 2013. "Almost Stochastic Dominance and Moments," MPRA Paper 49274, University Library of Munich, Germany.
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    22. Post, Thierry & Kopa, Miloš, 2013. "General linear formulations of stochastic dominance criteria," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 230(2), pages 321-332.
    23. Karthikeyan Shanmugam & Vijayabanu Chidambaram & Satyanarayana Parayitam, 2023. "Relationship Between Big-Five Personality Traits, Financial Literacy and Risk Propensity: Evidence from India," IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, , vol. 12(1), pages 85-101, January.
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