IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/1510.03385.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal ETF Selection for Passive Investing

Author

Listed:
  • David Puelz
  • Carlos M. Carvalho
  • P. Richard Hahn

Abstract

This paper considers the problem of isolating a small number of exchange traded funds (ETFs) that suffice to capture the fundamental dimensions of variation in U.S. financial markets. First, the data is fit to a vector-valued Bayesian regression model, which is a matrix-variate generalization of the well known stochastic search variable selection (SSVS) of George and McCulloch (1993). ETF selection is then performed using the decoupled shrinkage and selection (DSS) procedure described in Hahn and Carvalho (2015), adapted in two ways: to the vector-response setting and to incorporate stochastic covariates. The selected set of ETFs is obtained under a number of different penalty and modeling choices. Optimal portfolios are constructed from selected ETFs by maximizing the Sharpe ratio posterior mean, and they are compared to the (unknown) optimal portfolio based on the full Bayesian model. We compare our selection results to popular ETF advisor Wealthfront.com. Additionally, we consider selecting ETFs by modeling a large set of mutual funds.

Suggested Citation

  • David Puelz & Carlos M. Carvalho & P. Richard Hahn, 2015. "Optimal ETF Selection for Passive Investing," Papers 1510.03385, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2015.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1510.03385
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.03385
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. P. Richard Hahn & Carlos M. Carvalho, 2015. "Decoupling Shrinkage and Selection in Bayesian Linear Models: A Posterior Summary Perspective," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 110(509), pages 435-448, March.
    2. Lubos Pastor & Pietro Veronesi, 2009. "Learning in Financial Markets," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 361-381, November.
    3. Beasley, J. E. & Meade, N. & Chang, T. -J., 2003. "An evolutionary heuristic for the index tracking problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 148(3), pages 621-643, August.
    4. Stephen A. Ross, 2013. "The Arbitrage Theory of Capital Asset Pricing," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 1, pages 11-30, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. B. Fastrich & S. Paterlini & P. Winker, 2015. "Constructing optimal sparse portfolios using regularization methods," Computational Management Science, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 417-434, July.
    6. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 2015. "A five-factor asset pricing model," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 1-22.
    7. Agapova, Anna, 2011. "Conventional mutual index funds versus exchange-traded funds," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 323-343, May.
    8. James M. Poterba & John B. Shoven, 2002. "Exchange-Traded Funds: A New Investment Option for Taxable Investors," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 422-427, May.
    9. Liang, Feng & Paulo, Rui & Molina, German & Clyde, Merlise A. & Berger, Jim O., 2008. "Mixtures of g Priors for Bayesian Variable Selection," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 103, pages 410-423, March.
    10. Wu, Lan & Yang, Yuehan & Liu, Hanzhong, 2014. "Nonnegative-lasso and application in index tracking," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 116-126.
    11. 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.
    12. Huang, Mei-Yueh & Lin, Jun-Biao, 2011. "Do ETFs provide effective international diversification?," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 335-344, September.
    13. 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.
    14. Anita K. Pennathur & Natalya Delcoure & Dwight Anderson, 2002. "Diversification Benefits of iShares and Closed‐End Country Funds," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 25(4), pages 541-557, December.
    15. P. J. Brown & M. Vannucci & T. Fearn, 1998. "Multivariate Bayesian variable selection and prediction," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 60(3), pages 627-641.
    16. Shin, Sangheon & Soydemir, Gökçe, 2010. "Exchange-traded funds, persistence in tracking errors and information dissemination," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 20(4-5), pages 214-234, December.
    17. Rockafellar, R. Tyrrell & Uryasev, Stanislav, 2002. "Conditional value-at-risk for general loss distributions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(7), pages 1443-1471, July.
    18. Ming Yuan & Yi Lin, 2006. "Model selection and estimation in regression with grouped variables," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 68(1), pages 49-67, February.
    19. Canakgoz, N.A. & Beasley, J.E., 2009. "Mixed-integer programming approaches for index tracking and enhanced indexation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 196(1), pages 384-399, July.
    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. Hafner, Christian M. & Wang, Linqi, 2024. "Dynamic portfolio selection with sector-specific regularization," Econometrics and Statistics, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 17-33.

    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. 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.
    2. Ouysse, Rachida & Kohn, Robert, 2010. "Bayesian variable selection and model averaging in the arbitrage pricing theory model," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 54(12), pages 3249-3268, December.
    3. Blitz, David & Huij, Joop, 2012. "Evaluating the performance of global emerging markets equity exchange-traded funds," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 149-158.
    4. Francesco Busato & Cuono Massimo Coletta & Maria Manganiello, 2019. "Estimating the Cost of Equity Capital: Forecasting Accuracy for U.S. REIT Sector," International Real Estate Review, Asian Real Estate Society, vol. 22(3), pages 401-432.
    5. Bernardi, Mauro & Costola, Michele, 2019. "High-dimensional sparse financial networks through a regularised regression model," SAFE Working Paper Series 244, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    6. Lu Zhang, 2019. "Q-factors and Investment CAPM," NBER Working Papers 26538, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Rocciolo, Francesco & Gheno, Andrea & Brooks, Chris, 2022. "Explaining abnormal returns in stock markets: An alpha-neutral version of the CAPM," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    8. Adil Rengim Cetingoz & Olivier Gu'eant, 2023. "Asset and Factor Risk Budgeting: A Balanced Approach," Papers 2312.11132, arXiv.org, revised May 2024.
    9. Zura Kakushadze, 2015. "Heterotic Risk Models," Papers 1508.04883, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2016.
    10. Zura Kakushadze & Willie Yu, 2016. "Statistical Risk Models," Papers 1602.08070, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2017.
    11. Francesco Busato & Cuono Massimo Coletta & Maria Manganiello, 2019. "Estimating the Cost of Equity Capital: Forecasting Accuracy for U.S. REIT Sector," International Real Estate Review, Global Social Science Institute, vol. 22(3), pages 399-430.
    12. Venturini, Alessio, 2022. "Climate change, risk factors and stock returns: A review of the literature," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    13. Massimo Guidolin & Manuela Pedio & Dimos Andronoudis, 2019. "How Smart is the Real Estate Smart Beta? Evidence from Optimal Style Factor Strategies for REITs," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 19117, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    14. Choi, Jaewon & Kim, Yongjun, 2018. "Anomalies and market (dis)integration," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 16-34.
    15. Alles Rodrigues, Alexandre & Casalin, Fabrizio, 2022. "Factor investing in Brazil: Diversifying across factor tilts and allocation strategies," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    16. 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.
    17. Chou, Pin-Huang & Ko, Kuan-Cheng & Rhee, S. Ghon, 2023. "Comparing competing factor and characteristics models: Evidence in Japan," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    18. Christian Fieberg & Gerrit Liedtke & Thorsten Poddig, 2025. "Recurrent double-conditional factor model," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 47(1), pages 205-254, March.
    19. Kees G. Koedijk & Alfred M.H. Slager & Philip A. Stork, 2016. "Investing in Systematic Factor Premiums," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 22(2), pages 193-234, March.
    20. Detlef Seese & Christof Weinhardt & Frank Schlottmann (ed.), 2008. "Handbook on Information Technology in Finance," International Handbooks on Information Systems, Springer, number 978-3-540-49487-4, June.

    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:arx:papers:1510.03385. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.