IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finlet/v41y2021ics1544612320316688.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Factor Investing and Risk Management: Is Smart-Beta Diversification Smart?

Author

Listed:
  • Nazaire, Gregory
  • Pacurar, Maria
  • Sy, Oumar

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the diversification benefits associated with factor investing in U.S. stock markets, using the dummy-variable framework for asset allocation. We find that beta-based investment strategies are primarily driven by beta-specific sources of return variation. At the same time, both betas and characteristics explain the variance of characteristic-based strategies, indicating that beta diversification is a more effective risk management tool than characteristic diversification. We also find that the correlations between the pure premiums of the 14 factor-based strategies considered are small, which suggests that diversification across smart-beta funds is beneficial. Monte Carlo simulations confirm these results.

Suggested Citation

  • Nazaire, Gregory & Pacurar, Maria & Sy, Oumar, 2021. "Factor Investing and Risk Management: Is Smart-Beta Diversification Smart?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 41(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:41:y:2021:i:c:s1544612320316688
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2020.101854
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612320316688
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.frl.2020.101854?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1992. "The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 427-465, June.
    2. Novy-Marx, Robert, 2013. "The other side of value: The gross profitability premium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 1-28.
    3. Brooks, Robin & Del Negro, Marco, 2004. "The rise in comovement across national stock markets: market integration or IT bubble?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 11(5), pages 659-680, December.
    4. Kent Daniel & David Hirshleifer & Lin Sun, 2020. "Short- and Long-Horizon Behavioral Factors," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 33(4), pages 1673-1736.
    5. James L. Davis & Eugene F. Fama & Kenneth R. French, 2000. "Characteristics, Covariances, and Average Returns: 1929 to 1997," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(1), pages 389-406, February.
    6. Eugene F. Fama & Kenneth R. French, 2008. "Dissecting Anomalies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(4), pages 1653-1678, August.
    7. Shanken, Jay, 1992. "On the Estimation of Beta-Pricing Models," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 5(1), pages 1-33.
    8. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan, 1990. "Evidence of Predictable Behavior of Security Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(3), pages 881-898, July.
    9. Frazzini, Andrea & Pedersen, Lasse Heje, 2014. "Betting against beta," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(1), pages 1-25.
    10. Michael J. Cooper & Huseyin Gulen & Michael J. Schill, 2008. "Asset Growth and the Cross‐Section of Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(4), pages 1609-1651, August.
    11. Banz, Rolf W., 1981. "The relationship between return and market value of common stocks," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 3-18, March.
    12. Kent Daniel & David Hirshleifer & Lin Sun, 2020. "Short- and Long-Horizon Behavioral Factors," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 33(4), pages 1673-1736.
    13. Gregory Nazaire & Maria Pacurar & Oumar Sy, 2020. "Betas versus characteristics: A practical perspective," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 26(5), pages 1385-1413, November.
    14. Loughran, Tim & Ritter, Jay R, 1995. "The New Issues Puzzle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(1), pages 23-51, March.
    15. François Longin & Bruno Solnik, 2001. "Extreme Correlation of International Equity Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 649-676, April.
    16. Kewei Hou & Chen Xue & Lu Zhang, 2015. "Editor's Choice Digesting Anomalies: An Investment Approach," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(3), pages 650-705.
    17. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 2015. "A five-factor asset pricing model," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 1-22.
    18. De Bondt, Werner F M & Thaler, Richard, 1985. "Does the Stock Market Overreact?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(3), pages 793-805, July.
    19. Barroso, Pedro & Santa-Clara, Pedro, 2015. "Momentum has its moments," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 111-120.
    20. Philippe Artzner & Freddy Delbaen & Jean‐Marc Eber & David Heath, 1999. "Coherent Measures of Risk," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(3), pages 203-228, July.
    21. Clifford S. Asness & Tobias J. Moskowitz & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2013. "Value and Momentum Everywhere," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(3), pages 929-985, June.
    22. Petkova, Ralitsa & Zhang, Lu, 2005. "Is value riskier than growth?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 187-202, October.
    23. Jeffrey Pontiff & Artemiza Woodgate, 2008. "Share Issuance and Cross‐sectional Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(2), pages 921-945, April.
    24. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Titman, Sheridan, 1993. "Returns to Buying Winners and Selling Losers: Implications for Stock Market Efficiency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(1), pages 65-91, March.
    25. Heston, Steven L. & Rouwenhorst, K. Geert, 1994. "Does industrial structure explain the benefits of international diversification?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 3-27, August.
    26. Tobias J. Moskowitz, 2003. "An Analysis of Covariance Risk and Pricing Anomalies," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(2), pages 417-457.
    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. Mbengue, Mohamed Lamine & Ndiaye, Bara & Sy, Oumar, 2023. "Which factors explain African stock returns?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).

    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. Kewei Hou & Haitao Mo & Chen Xue & Lu Zhang, 2019. "Which Factors?," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 23(1), pages 1-35.
    2. Doron Avramov & Guy Kaplanski & Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, 2022. "Postfundamentals Price Drift in Capital Markets: A Regression Regularization Perspective," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(10), pages 7658-7681, October.
    3. Kewei Hou & Chen Xue & Lu Zhang, 2017. "Replicating Anomalies," NBER Working Papers 23394, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Joachim Freyberger & Andreas Neuhierl & Michael Weber, 2020. "Dissecting Characteristics Nonparametrically," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 33(5), pages 2326-2377.
    5. Adam Zaremba & Jacob Koby Shemer, 2018. "Price-Based Investment Strategies," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-319-91530-2, September.
    6. Virk, Nader Shahzad & Butt, Hilal Anwar, 2022. "Asset pricing anomalies: Liquidity risk hedgers or liquidity risk spreaders?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    7. Stephen A. Gorman & Frank J. Fabozzi, 2021. "The ABC’s of the alternative risk premium: academic roots," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 22(6), pages 405-436, October.
    8. Maio, Paulo & Silva, André C., 2020. "Asset pricing implications of money: New evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    9. Cakici, Nusret & Zaremba, Adam, 2022. "Salience theory and the cross-section of stock returns: International and further evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(2), pages 689-725.
    10. Cederburg, Scott & O’Doherty, Michael S. & Wang, Feifei & Yan, Xuemin (Sterling), 2020. "On the performance of volatility-managed portfolios," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 95-117.
    11. Clarke, Charles, 2022. "The level, slope, and curve factor model for stocks," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 159-187.
    12. Tobek, Ondrej & Hronec, Martin, 2021. "Does it pay to follow anomalies research? Machine learning approach with international evidence," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    13. Nettayanun, Sampan, 2023. "Asset pricing in bull and bear markets," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    14. Mbengue, Mohamed Lamine & Ndiaye, Bara & Sy, Oumar, 2023. "Which factors explain African stock returns?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    15. Wang, Feifei & Yan, Xuemin Sterling, 2021. "Downside risk and the performance of volatility-managed portfolios," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    16. Geertsema, Paul & Lu, Helen, 2020. "The correlation structure of anomaly strategies," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    17. Flögel, Volker & Schlag, Christian & Zunft, Claudia, 2022. "Momentum-Managed Equity Factors," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    18. Lu Zhang, 2017. "The Investment CAPM," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 23(4), pages 545-603, September.
    19. Marie Brière & Ariane Szafarz, 2021. "When it rains, it pours: Multifactor asset management in good and bad times," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 44(3), pages 641-669, September.
    20. Sina Ehsani & Juhani T. Linnainmaa, 2019. "Factor Momentum and the Momentum Factor," NBER Working Papers 25551, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Betas; Characteristics; Factor investing; Risk management;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    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:eee:finlet:v:41:y:2021:i:c:s1544612320316688. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/frl .

    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.