IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/ijfiec/v22y2017i3p234-243.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Alphas in disguise: A new approach to uncovering them

Author

Listed:
  • Venkata Chinthalapati
  • Cesario Mateus
  • Natasa Todorovic

Abstract

Four‐factor Carhart alphas of passive indices should be zero, but recent empirical evidence shows otherwise. We propose an optimization algorithm that makes small (fixed) adjustments to the time series of the market, size, value, and momentum factors, which ensures a zero alpha for any (single) self‐designated benchmark index of a mutual fund. Our “adjusted factors” can then be used to estimate a mutual fund's “adjusted alpha.” We test this methodology on a sample of 1,281 active and 102 tracker U.S. equity mutual funds (reporting S&P 500 index as their prospectus benchmark). Our time series adjustment of the Carhart 4 factors leads to an increase (decrease) in a fund's “adjusted alpha” in periods of fund‐benchmark underperformance (outperformance). On the whole, our “adjusted alphas” of both active and tracker funds are statistically significantly negative. This is particularly pronounced for tracker funds.

Suggested Citation

  • Venkata Chinthalapati & Cesario Mateus & Natasa Todorovic, 2017. "Alphas in disguise: A new approach to uncovering them," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(3), pages 234-243, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:ijfiec:v:22:y:2017:i:3:p:234-243
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Golam Sarwar & Cesario Mateus & Natasa Todorovic, 2018. "US sector rotation with five-factor Fama–French alphas," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 19(2), pages 116-132, March.
    2. Irina Bezhentseva Mateus & Cesario Mateus & Natasa Todorovic, 2019. "Benchmark-adjusted performance of US equity mutual funds and the issue of prospectus benchmarks," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 20(1), pages 15-30, February.
    3. Cuthbertson, Keith & Nitzsche, Dirk & O'Sullivan, Niall, 2022. "Mutual fund performance persistence: Factor models and portfolio size," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    4. Kakran, Shubham & Sidhu, Arpit & Kumar, Ashish & Ben Youssef, Adel & Lohan, Sheenam, 2023. "Hydrogen energy in BRICS-US: A whirl succeeding fuel treasure," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 334(C).
    5. Cesario Mateus & Irina B. Mateus & Marco Soggiu, 2020. "Do smart beta ETFs deliver persistent performance?," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 21(5), pages 413-427, September.
    6. Cesario Mateus & Irina B. Mateus & Marco Soggiu, 0. "Do smart beta ETFs deliver persistent performance?," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 0, pages 1-15.
    7. Mateus, Irina B. & Mateus, Cesario & Todorovic, Natasa, 2019. "Review of new trends in the literature on factor models and mutual fund performance," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 344-354.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:ijfiec:v:22:y:2017:i:3:p:234-243. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/1076-9307/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.