IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/upf/upfgen/894.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Portable alphas from pension mispricing

Author

Listed:
  • José M. Marín
  • Francesco Franzoni

Abstract

We introduce a new dynamic trading strategy based on the systematic misspricing of U.S. companies sponsoring Defined Benefit pension plans. This portfolio produces an average return of 1.51% monthly between 1989 and 2004, with a Sharpe Ratio of 0.26. The returns of the strategy are not explained by those of primary assets. These returns are not related to those of benchmarks in the alternative investments industry either. Hence, we are in the presence of a "pure alpha" strategy that can be ported into a large variety of portfolios to significantly enhance their performance.

Suggested Citation

  • José M. Marín & Francesco Franzoni, 2005. "Portable alphas from pension mispricing," Economics Working Papers 894, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    • Handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:894
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econ-papers.upf.edu/papers/894.pdf
    File Function: Whole Paper
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brown, Stephen J. & Goetzmann, William N., 1997. "Mutual fund styles," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 373-399, March.
    2. Francesco Franzoni & José M. Marín, 2006. "Pension Plan Funding and Stock Market Efficiency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(2), pages 921-956, April.
    3. William Goetzmann & Jonathan Ingersoll & Matthew I. Spiegel & Ivo Welch, 2002. "Sharpening Sharpe Ratios," NBER Working Papers 9116, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Allen, Polly Reynolds & Stein, Jerome L., 1990. "Capital market integration," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(5), pages 909-928, November.
    5. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    6. William Fung & David A. Hsieh, 2005. "Extracting Portable Alphas From Equity Long/Short Hedge Funds," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: H Gifford Fong (ed.), The World Of Hedge Funds Characteristics and Analysis, chapter 8, pages 161-180, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    7. Daniel Bergstresser & Mihir Desai & Joshua Rauh, 2006. "Earnings Manipulation, Pension Assumptions, and Managerial Investment Decisions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(1), pages 157-195.
    8. Fung, William & Hsieh, David A, 1997. "Empirical Characteristics of Dynamic Trading Strategies: The Case of Hedge Funds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(2), pages 275-302.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Coronado, Julia & Mitchell, Olivia S. & Sharpe, Steven A. & Blake Nesbitt, S., 2008. "Footnotes aren't enough: the impact of pension accounting on stock values," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(3), pages 257-276, November.
    2. Nakajima, Kan & Sasaki, Takafumi, 2010. "Unfunded pension liabilities and stock returns," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 47-63, January.
    3. Atanasova, Christina & Hrazdil, Karel, 2010. "Why do healthy firms freeze their defined-benefit pension plans?," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 293-303.
    4. Franzoni, Francesco, 2009. "Underinvestment vs. overinvestment: Evidence from price reactions to pension contributions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3), pages 491-518, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hsieh, Su-Jane & Liu, Shuming, 2021. "The cost-of-equity implications of off-balance sheet pension liabilities," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1).
    2. Tao, Qizhi & Chen, Carl & Lu, Rui & Zhang, Ting, 2017. "Underfunding or distress? An analysis of corporate pension underfunding and the cross-section of expected stock returns," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 116-133.
    3. Franzoni, Francesco, 2009. "Underinvestment vs. overinvestment: Evidence from price reactions to pension contributions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3), pages 491-518, June.
    4. Renneboog, L.D.R. & Ter Horst, J.R. & Zhang, C., 2007. "Socially Responsible Investments : Methodology, Risk Exposure and Performance," Other publications TiSEM 1ff75080-22db-4909-9f13-a, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    5. Renneboog, L.D.R. & Ter Horst, J.R. & Zhang, C., 2007. "Socially Responsible Investments : Methodology, Risk and Performance," Other publications TiSEM 684d2aba-7b82-4306-b6a0-d, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    6. F. Wang & Ting Zhang, 2014. "The effect of unfunded pension liabilities on corporate bond ratings, default risk, and recovery rate," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 43(4), pages 781-802, November.
    7. Horst, Jenke ter & Salganik, Galla, 2014. "Style chasing by hedge fund investors," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 29-42.
    8. Nakajima, Kan & Sasaki, Takafumi, 2010. "Unfunded pension liabilities and stock returns," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 47-63, January.
    9. Hieu V. Phan & Shantaram P. Hegde, 2013. "Pension Contributions and Firm Performance: Evidence from Frozen Defined Benefit Plans," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 42(2), pages 373-411, June.
    10. Broman, Markus S., 2016. "Liquidity, style investing and excess comovement of exchange-traded fund returns," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 27-53.
    11. El Kalak, Izidin & Azevedo, Alcino & Hudson, Robert, 2016. "Reviewing the hedge funds literature II: Hedge funds' returns and risk management characteristics," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 55-66.
    12. Agarwal, Vikas & Fung, William H. & Loon, Yee Cheng & Naik, Narayan Y., 2004. "Risk and return in convertible arbitrage: Evidence from the convertible bond market," CFR Working Papers 04-03, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    13. John M.R. Chalmers & Roger M. Edelen & Gregory B. Kadlec, 1999. "Transaction-cost Expenditures and the Relative Performance of Mutual Funds," Center for Financial Institutions Working Papers 00-02, Wharton School Center for Financial Institutions, University of Pennsylvania.
    14. Bali, Turan G. & Brown, Stephen J. & Caglayan, Mustafa O., 2019. "Upside potential of hedge funds as a predictor of future performance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 212-229.
    15. François-Éric Racicot & Raymond Théoret, 2022. "Tracking market and non-traditional sources of risks in procyclical and countercyclical hedge fund strategies under extreme scenarios: a nonlinear VAR approach," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 8(1), pages 1-56, December.
    16. Geertsema, Paul & Lu, Helen, 2020. "The correlation structure of anomaly strategies," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    17. Kusano, Masaki, 2023. "Does recognition versus disclosure of pension liabilities affect credit ratings? Evidence from Japan," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    18. John Y. Campbell & Jens Hilscher & Jan Szilagyi, 2008. "In Search of Distress Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2899-2939, December.
    19. Jank, Stephan & Roling, Christoph & Smajlbegovic, Esad, 2021. "Flying under the radar: The effects of short-sale disclosure rules on investor behavior and stock prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(1), pages 209-233.
    20. Perez Katarzyna, 2014. "Polish Absolute Return Funds And Stock Funds. Short And Long Term Performance Comparison," Folia Oeconomica Stetinensia, Sciendo, vol. 14(2), pages 179-197, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Defined Benefit Plans; Portable Alpha; Enhanced Indexing; Pension Contributions; Pricing Anomaly;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:upf:upfgen:894. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.econ.upf.edu/ .

    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.