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The Performance of International Equity Portfolios

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Author Info
Charles P. Thomas
Francis E. Warnock
Jon Wongswan
Abstract

This paper evaluates the ability of U.S. investors to allocate their foreign equity portfolios across 44 countries over a 25-year period. We find that U.S. portfolios achieved a significantly higher Sharpe ratio than foreign benchmarks, especially since 1990. We test whether this strong performance owed to trading expertise or longer-term allocation expertise. The evidence is overwhelmingly against trading expertise. While U.S. investors did abstain from momentum trading and instead sold past winners, we find no evidence that these past winners subsequently underperformed. In addition, conditional performance measures, which directly test reallocating into (out of) markets that subsequently outperformed (underperformed), suggest no significant trading expertise. In contrast, we offer strong evidence of longer-term allocation expertise: If we fix portfolio weights at the end of 1989 and do not allow reallocations, we still find superior performance in the recent period.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 12346.

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Date of creation: Jul 2006
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12346

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing
F21 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Investment; Long-Term Capital Movements

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Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Hali J. Edison & Francis E. Warnock, 2006. "Cross-border Listings, Capital Controls, and Equity Flows To Emerging Markets," NBER Working Papers 12589, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. Ravi Balakrishnan & Volodymyr Tulin & Tamim Bayoumi, 2007. "Globalization, Gluts, Innovation or Irrationality: What Explains the Easy Financing of the U.S. Current Account Deficit?," IMF Working Papers 07/160, International Monetary Fund. [Downloadable!]
  3. Stephanie E. Curcuru & Tomas Dvorak & Francis E. Warnock, 2009. "Decomposing the U.S. External Returns Differential," NBER Working Papers 15077, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Ravi Balakrishnan & Volodymyr Tulin, 2006. "U.S. Dollar Risk Premiums and Capital Flows," IMF Working Papers 06/160, International Monetary Fund. [Downloadable!]
  5. Stephanie E. Curcuru & Tomas Dvorak & Francis Warnock, 2007. "Cross-border returns differentials," Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute Working Paper 04, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. [Downloadable!]
  6. Joshua Hausman & Jon Wongswan, 2006. "Global asset prices and FOMC announcements," International Finance Discussion Papers 886, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  7. Christian Thimann, 2009. "Global roles of currencies," Working Paper Series 1031, European Central Bank. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  8. Stephanie E. Curcuru & Tomas Dvorak & Francis E. Warnock, 2007. "The Stability of Large External Imbalances: The Role of Returns Differentials," NBER Working Papers 13074, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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