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Diversification, Volatility, and Surprising Alpha

Author

Listed:
  • Adrian Banner
  • Robert Fernholz
  • Vassilios Papathanakos
  • Johannes Ruf
  • David Schofield

Abstract

It has been widely observed that capitalization-weighted indexes can be beaten by surprisingly simple, systematic investment strategies. Indeed, in the U.S. stock market, equal-weighted portfolios, random-weighted portfolios, and other naive, non- optimized portfolios tend to outperform a capitalization-weighted index over the long term. This outperformance is generally attributed to beneficial factor exposures. Here, we provide a deeper, more general explanation of this phenomenon by decomposing portfolio log-returns into an average growth and an excess growth component. Using a rank-based empirical study we argue that the excess growth component plays the major role in explaining the outperformance of naive portfolios. In particular, individual stock growth rates are not as critical as is traditionally assumed.

Suggested Citation

  • Adrian Banner & Robert Fernholz & Vassilios Papathanakos & Johannes Ruf & David Schofield, 2018. "Diversification, Volatility, and Surprising Alpha," Papers 1809.03769, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1809.03769
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Karatzas, Ioannis & Ruf, Johannes, 2017. "Trading strategies generated by Lyapunov functions," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 69177, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. William F. Sharpe, 1964. "Capital Asset Prices: A Theory Of Market Equilibrium Under Conditions Of Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 19(3), pages 425-442, September.
    3. Ioannis Karatzas & Johannes Ruf, 2017. "Trading strategies generated by Lyapunov functions," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 753-787, July.
    4. Fernholz, Robert & Shay, Brian, 1982. "Stochastic Portfolio Theory and Stock Market Equilibrium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 37(2), pages 615-624, May.
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    Cited by:

    1. Kangjianan Xie, 2019. "Leakage of rank-dependent functionally generated trading strategies," Papers 1912.04221, arXiv.org.
    2. Kangjianan Xie, 2020. "Leakage of rank-dependent functionally generated trading strategies," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 573-591, December.
    3. Johannes Ruf & Kangjianan Xie, 2019. "The impact of proportional transaction costs on systematically generated portfolios," Papers 1904.08925, arXiv.org.
    4. Andrey Sarantsev & Blessing Ofori-Atta & Brandon Flores, 2019. "A Stock Market Model Based on CAPM and Market Size," Papers 1907.08911, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2021.
    5. Ruf, Johannes & Xie, Kangjianan, 2019. "Generalised Lyapunov functions and functionally generated trading strategies," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 102424, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

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