IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sol/wpaper/2013-269054.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Factors and Sectors in Asset Allocation: Stronger Together?

Author

Listed:
  • Marie Briere
  • Ariane Szafarz

Abstract

This paper compares and contrasts factor investing and sector investing, and then seeks a compromise by optimally exploiting the advantages of both styles. Our results show that sector investing is effective for reducing risk through diversification while factor investing is better for capturing risk premia and so pushing up returns. This suggests that there is room for potentially fruitful combinations of the two styles. Presumably, by combining factors and sectors, investors would benefit both from the diversification potential of the former and the risk premia of the latter. The tests reveal that composite strategies are particularly attractive; they confirm that sector investing helps reduce risksduring crisis periods, while factor investing can boost returns during quiet times.

Suggested Citation

  • Marie Briere & Ariane Szafarz, 2018. "Factors and Sectors in Asset Allocation: Stronger Together?," Working Papers CEB 18-016, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    • Handle: RePEc:sol:wpaper:2013/269054
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/269054/3/wp18016.pdf
    File Function: Œuvre complète ou partie de l'œuvre
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:dau:papers:123456789/9297 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Lewellen, Jonathan & Nagel, Stefan & Shanken, Jay, 2010. "A skeptical appraisal of asset pricing tests," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 175-194, May.
    3. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 2015. "A five-factor asset pricing model," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 1-22.
    4. Marie Briere & Ariane Szafarz, 2017. "Factor Investing: The Rocky Road from Long-Only to Long-Short," Working Papers CEB 17-013, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    5. Marie Brière & Bastien Drut & Valérie Mignon & Kim Oosterlinck & Ariane Szafarz, 2013. "Is the Market Portfolio Efficient? A New Test of Mean-Variance Efficiency when all Assets are Risky," Finance, Presses universitaires de Grenoble, vol. 34(1), pages 7-41.
    6. Maximilian Vermorken & Ariane Szafarz & Hugues Pirotte, 2008. "Sector classification through non-Gaussian similarity," Working Papers CEB 08-032.RS, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    7. Ang, Andrew, 2014. "Asset Management: A Systematic Approach to Factor Investing," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199959327.
    8. Ehling, Paul & Ramos, Sofia B., 2006. "Geographic versus industry diversification: Constraints matter," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(4-5), pages 396-416, October.
    9. 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.
    10. 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.
    11. Chou, Pin-Huang & Ho, Po-Hsin & Ko, Kuan-Cheng, 2012. "Do industries matter in explaining stock returns and asset-pricing anomalies?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 355-370.
    12. William N. Goetzmann & Lingfeng Li & K. Geert Rouwenhorst, 2005. "Long-Term Global Market Correlations," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 78(1), pages 1-38, January.
    13. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    14. Marie Brière & Bastien Drut & Valérie Mignon & Kim Oosterlinck & Ariane Szafarz, 2013. "Is the Market Portfolio Efficient? A New Test of Mean-Variance Efficiency when all Assets are Risky," Finance, Presses universitaires de Grenoble, vol. 34(1), pages 7-41.
    15. Basak, Gopal & Jagannathan, Ravi & Sun, Guoqiang, 2002. "A direct test for the mean variance efficiency of a portfolio," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 26(7-8), pages 1195-1215, July.
    16. Robert Novy-Marx & Mihail Velikov, 2016. "A Taxonomy of Anomalies and Their Trading Costs," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(1), pages 104-147.
    17. Barroso, Pedro & Santa-Clara, Pedro, 2015. "Momentum has its moments," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 111-120.
    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. Jonathan Fletcher, 2018. "An Examination of the Benefits of Factor Investing in U.K. Stock Returns," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 10(4), pages 154-170, April.
    2. 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.
    3. Brière, Marie & Szafarz, Ariane, 2020. "Good diversification is never wasted: How to tilt factor portfolios with sectors," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 33(C).
    4. Jonathan Fletcher, 2017. "An Empirical Examination of the Incremental Contribution of Stock Characteristics in UK Stock Returns," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 5(4), pages 1-19, October.

    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. 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.
    2. Marie Briere & Ariane Szafarz, 2017. "Factor Investing: The Rocky Road from Long-Only to Long-Short," Working Papers CEB 17-013, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    3. Jonathan Fletcher, 2018. "An Examination of the Benefits of Factor Investing in U.K. Stock Returns," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 10(4), pages 154-170, April.
    4. Fletcher, Jonathan, 2018. "Betas V characteristics: Do stock characteristics enhance the investment opportunity set in U.K. stock returns?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 114-129.
    5. Fletcher, Jonathan, 2018. "An empirical examination of the diversification benefits of U.K. international equity closed-end funds," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 23-34.
    6. Wolfgang Drobetz & Rebekka Haller & Christian Jasperneite & Tizian Otto, 2019. "Predictability and the cross section of expected returns: evidence from the European stock market," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 20(7), pages 508-533, December.
    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. Adam Zaremba & Jacob Koby Shemer, 2018. "Price-Based Investment Strategies," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-319-91530-2, November.
    9. Vitor Azevedo & Christopher Hoegner, 2023. "Enhancing stock market anomalies with machine learning," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 60(1), pages 195-230, January.
    10. Andrew Detzel & Jack Strauss, 2018. "Combination Return Forecasts and Portfolio Allocation with the Cross-Section of Book-to-Market Ratios [Illiquidity and stock returns: cross-section and time-series effects]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 22(5), pages 1949-1973.
    11. 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.
    12. Hansen, Erwin, 2022. "Economic evaluation of asset pricing models under predictability," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 50-66.
    13. Alex R. Horenstein, 2017. "Betting Against Alpha," Working Papers 2017-13, University of Miami, Department of Economics.
    14. Fletcher, Jonathan, 2021. "International equity U.S. mutual funds and diversification benefits," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 246-257.
    15. Assaf Eisdorfer & Efdal Ulas Misirli, 2020. "Distressed Stocks in Distressed Times," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(6), pages 2452-2473, June.
    16. Patton, Andrew J. & Weller, Brian M., 2020. "What you see is not what you get: The costs of trading market anomalies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(2), pages 515-549.
    17. Kaserer Christoph & Hanauer Matthias X., 2017. "25 Jahre Fama-French-Modell: Erklärungsgehalt, Anomalien und praktische Implikationen," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 18(2), pages 98-116, June.
    18. David Blitz & Matthias X. Hanauer & Pim Vliet, 2021. "The Volatility Effect in China," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 22(5), pages 338-349, September.
    19. DeMiguel, Victor & Martin-Utrera, Alberto & Nogales, Francisco J. & Uppal, Raman, 2017. "A Portfolio Perspective on the Multitude of Firm Characteristics," CEPR Discussion Papers 12417, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Investment; Asset allocation; Factor; Industry; Sector; Crisis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • C52 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Evaluation, Validation, and Selection
    • D92 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Intertemporal Firm Choice, Investment, Capacity, and Financing

    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:sol:wpaper:2013/269054. 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: Benoit Pauwels (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cebulbe.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.