IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/rfinst/v19y2006i4p1191-1239.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Downside Risk

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Ang
  • Joseph Chen
  • Yuhang Xing

Abstract

Economists have long recognized that investors care differently about downside losses versus upside gains. Agents who place greater weight on downside risk demand additional compensation for holding stocks with high sensitivities to downside market movements. We show that the cross section of stock returns reflects a downside risk premium of approximately 6% per annum. Stocks that covary strongly with the market during market declines have high average returns. The reward for beasring downside risk is not simply compensation for regular market beta, nor is it explained by coskewness or liquidity risk, or by size, value, and momentum characteristics. (JEL C12, C15, C32, G12) Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Ang & Joseph Chen & Yuhang Xing, 2006. "Downside Risk," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(4), pages 1191-1239.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:19:y:2006:i:4:p:1191-1239
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rfs/hhj035
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

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

    Other versions of this item:

    • Andrew Ang & Joseph Chen & Yuhang Xing, 2005. "Downside risk," Proceedings, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).

    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. Bekaert, Geert & Hodrick, Robert J. & Marshall, David A., 1997. "The implications of first-order risk aversion for asset market risk premiums," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 3-39, September.
    3. Scholes, Myron & Williams, Joseph, 1977. "Estimating betas from nonsynchronous data," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 309-327, December.
    4. Jagannathan, Ravi & Wang, Zhenyu, 1996. "The Conditional CAPM and the Cross-Section of Expected Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(1), pages 3-53, March.
    5. Harrison Hong & Jeremy C. Stein, 2003. "Differences of Opinion, Short-Sales Constraints, and Market Crashes," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(2), pages 487-525.
    6. Basu, Sanjoy, 1983. "The relationship between earnings' yield, market value and return for NYSE common stocks : Further evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 129-156, June.
    7. Epstein, Larry G. & Zin, Stanley E., 1990. "'First-order' risk aversion and the equity premium puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 387-407, December.
    8. Newey, Whitney K & West, Kenneth D, 1987. "Hypothesis Testing with Efficient Method of Moments Estimation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 28(3), pages 777-787, October.
    9. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1997. "Industry costs of equity," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 153-193, February.
    10. Chen, Joseph & Hong, Harrison & Stein, Jeremy C., 2001. "Forecasting crashes: trading volume, past returns, and conditional skewness in stock prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 345-381, September.
    11. Ferson, Wayne E & Harvey, Campbell R, 1991. "The Variation of Economic Risk Premiums," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(2), pages 385-415, April.
    12. 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.
    13. Harvey, Campbell R. & Siddique, Akhtar, 1999. "Autoregressive Conditional Skewness," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 34(4), pages 465-487, December.
    14. Pastor, Lubos & Stambaugh, Robert F., 2003. "Liquidity Risk and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(3), pages 642-685, June.
    15. Daniel, Kent, et al, 1997. "Measuring Mutual Fund Performance with Characteristic-Based Benchmarks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(3), pages 1035-1058, July.
    16. Nicholas Barberis & Ming Huang, 2001. "Mental Accounting, Loss Aversion, and Individual Stock Returns," NBER Working Papers 8190, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Scott, Robert C & Horvath, Philip A, 1980. "On the Direction of Preference for Moments of Higher Order Than the Variance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 35(4), pages 915-919, September.
    18. Epstein, Larry G. & Zin, Stanley E., 2001. "The independence axiom and asset returns," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 8(5), pages 537-572, December.
    19. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    20. 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.
    21. Robert F. Dittmar, 2002. "Nonlinear Pricing Kernels, Kurtosis Preference, and Evidence from the Cross Section of Equity Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 369-403, February.
    22. Kothari, S P & Shanken, Jay & Sloan, Richard G, 1995. "Another Look at the Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(1), pages 185-224, March.
    23. Jahankhani, Ali, 1976. "E-V and E-S Capital Asset Pricing Models: Some Empirical Tests," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(4), pages 513-528, November.
    24. Bansal, Ravi & Viswanathan, S, 1993. "No Arbitrage and Arbitrage Pricing: A New Approach," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(4), pages 1231-1262, September.
    25. Pettengill, Glenn N. & Sundaram, Sridhar & Mathur, Ike, 1995. "The Conditional Relation between Beta and Returns," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 30(1), pages 101-116, March.
    26. Lewellen, Jonathan & Nagel, Stefan, 2006. "The conditional CAPM does not explain asset-pricing anomalies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 289-314, November.
    27. Bryan R. Routledge & Stanley E. Zin, 2010. "Generalized Disappointment Aversion and Asset Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(4), pages 1303-1332, August.
    28. Ravi Bansal & Robert F. Dittmar & Christian T. Lundblad, 2005. "Consumption, Dividends, and the Cross Section of Equity Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(4), pages 1639-1672, August.
    29. Ang, Andrew & Bekaert, Geert & Liu, Jun, 2005. "Why stocks may disappoint," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 471-508, June.
    30. Gul, Faruk, 1991. "A Theory of Disappointment Aversion," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(3), pages 667-686, May.
    31. Andrew Ang & Joseph Chen & Yuhang Xing, 2001. "Downside Risk and the Momentum Effect," NBER Working Papers 8643, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    32. Martin Lettau & Sydney Ludvigson, 2001. "Resurrecting the (C)CAPM: A Cross-Sectional Test When Risk Premia Are Time-Varying," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(6), pages 1238-1287, December.
    33. Andrew Ang & Robert J. Hodrick & Yuhang Xing & Xiaoyan Zhang, 2006. "The Cross‐Section of Volatility and Expected Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(1), pages 259-299, February.
    34. Daniel, Kent & Titman, Sheridan, 1997. "Evidence on the Characteristics of Cross Sectional Variation in Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 1-33, March.
    35. 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.
    36. Dusan Isakov, 1999. "Is beta still alive? Conclusive evidence from the Swiss stock market," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(3), pages 202-212.
    37. Bansal, Ravi & Hsieh, David A & Viswanathan, S, 1993. "A New Approach to International Arbitrage Pricing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(5), pages 1719-1747, December.
    38. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    39. Gibbons, Michael R., 1982. "Multivariate tests of financial models : A new approach," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 3-27, March.
    40. Harlow, W. V. & Rao, Ramesh K. S., 1989. "Asset Pricing in a Generalized Mean-Lower Partial Moment Framework: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(3), pages 285-311, September.
    41. Bawa, Vijay S. & Lindenberg, Eric B., 1977. "Capital market equilibrium in a mean-lower partial moment framework," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 189-200, November.
    42. Nicholas Barberis & Ming Huang, 2001. "Mental Accounting, Loss Aversion, and Individual Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(4), pages 1247-1292, August.
    43. Kraus, Alan & Litzenberger, Robert, 1983. "On the Distributional Conditions for a Consumption-Oriented Three Moment CAPM," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 38(5), pages 1381-1391, December.
    44. Knez, Peter J & Ready, Mark J, 1997. "On the Robustness of Size and Book-to-Market in Cross-Sectional Regressions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(4), pages 1355-1382, September.
    45. Fama, Eugene F & MacBeth, James D, 1973. "Risk, Return, and Equilibrium: Empirical Tests," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 607-636, May-June.
    46. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:1:p:267-284 is not listed on IDEAS
    47. Campbell Harvey & John Liechty & Merrill Liechty & Peter Muller, 2010. "Portfolio selection with higher moments," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(5), pages 469-485.
    48. Campbell R. Harvey & Akhtar Siddique, 2000. "Conditional Skewness in Asset Pricing Tests," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(3), pages 1263-1295, June.
    49. Kraus, Alan & Litzenberger, Robert H, 1976. "Skewness Preference and the Valuation of Risk Assets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 31(4), pages 1085-1100, September.
    50. Price, Kelly & Price, Barbara & Nantell, Timothy J, 1982. "Variance and Lower Partial Moment Measures of Systematic Risk: Some Analytical and Empirical Results," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 37(3), pages 843-855, June.
    51. Friend, Irwin & Westerfield, Randolph, 1980. "Co-Skewness and Capital Asset Pricing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 35(4), pages 897-913, September.
    52. Massimo Guidolin & Allan Timmerman, 2005. "Optimal portfolio choice under regime switching, skew and kurtosis preferences," Working Papers 2005-006, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    53. 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.
    54. Albert S. Kyle & Wei Xiong, 2001. "Contagion as a Wealth Effect," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(4), pages 1401-1440, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Chabi-Yo, Fousseni & Ruenzi, Stefan & Weigert, Florian, 2018. "Crash Sensitivity and the Cross Section of Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 53(3), pages 1059-1100, June.
    2. Liu, Jinjing, 2023. "A novel downside beta and expected stock returns," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    3. Andrew Ang & Joseph Chen & Yuhang Xing, 2001. "Downside Risk and the Momentum Effect," NBER Working Papers 8643, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Bollerslev, Tim & Patton, Andrew J. & Quaedvlieg, Rogier, 2022. "Realized semibetas: Disentangling “good” and “bad” downside risks," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(1), pages 227-246.
    5. Ang, Andrew & Chen, Joseph, 2007. "CAPM over the long run: 1926-2001," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 1-40, January.
    6. David Hirshleifer, 2001. "Investor Psychology and Asset Pricing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(4), pages 1533-1597, August.
    7. Adam Zaremba & Jacob Koby Shemer, 2018. "Price-Based Investment Strategies," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-319-91530-2, January.
    8. Tim Bollerslev & Sophia Zhengzi Li & Viktor Todorov, 2014. "Roughing up Beta: Continuous vs. Discontinuous Betas, and the Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns," CREATES Research Papers 2014-48, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    9. Amit Goyal, 2012. "Empirical cross-sectional asset pricing: a survey," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 26(1), pages 3-38, March.
    10. Ruenzi, Stefan & Ungeheuer, Michael & Weigert, Florian, 2013. "Extreme Downside Liquidity Risk," Working Papers on Finance 1326, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance, revised Jul 2015.
    11. Da, Zhi & Guo, Re-Jin & Jagannathan, Ravi, 2012. "CAPM for estimating the cost of equity capital: Interpreting the empirical evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(1), pages 204-220.
    12. van Dijk, Mathijs A., 2011. "Is size dead? A review of the size effect in equity returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 3263-3274.
    13. De Giorgi, Enrico G. & Post, Thierry & Yalçın, Atakan, 2019. "A concave security market line," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 65-81.
    14. Vendrame, Vasco & Tucker, Jon & Guermat, Cherif, 2016. "Some extensions of the CAPM for individual assets," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 78-85.
    15. Jang, Jeewon & Kang, Jangkoo, 2017. "An intertemporal CAPM with higher-order moments," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 314-337.
    16. Hollstein, Fabian & Prokopczuk, Marcel & Wese Simen, Chardin, 2020. "Beta uncertainty," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    17. Turan G. Bali & Robert F. Engle & Yi Tang, 2017. "Dynamic Conditional Beta Is Alive and Well in the Cross Section of Daily Stock Returns," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(11), pages 3760-3779, November.
    18. Stefan Nagel, 2013. "Empirical Cross-Sectional Asset Pricing," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 5(1), pages 167-199, November.
    19. Chang, Bo Young & Christoffersen, Peter & Jacobs, Kris, 2013. "Market skewness risk and the cross section of stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(1), pages 46-68.
    20. Fernando Rubio, 2005. "Eficiencia De Mercado, Administracion De Carteras De Fondos Y Behavioural Finance," Finance 0503028, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 23 Jul 2005.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C12 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Hypothesis Testing: General
    • C15 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Statistical Simulation Methods: General
    • C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models
    • 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:oup:rfinst:v:19:y:2006:i:4:p:1191-1239. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfsssea.html .

    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.