%0 Journal Article %A Raul Leote de Carvalho %A Xiao Lu %A Pierre Moulin %T Demystifying Equity Risk–Based Strategies:
A Simple Alpha plus Beta Description %D 2012 %R 10.3905/jpm.2012.38.3.056 %J The Journal of Portfolio Management %P 56-70 %V 38 %N 3 %X In this article, de Carvalho, Lu, and Moulin consider five risk-based strategies: equally weighted, equal-risk budget, equal-risk contribution, minimum variance, and maximum diversification. All five strategies can be well described by exposure to the market-cap index and to four simple factors: low beta, small cap, low residual volatility, and value. This finding, in their view, is a major contribution to the understanding of such strategies and provides a simple framework to compare them. All except the equal-weighted strategy are defensive and have lower volatility than the market-cap index. Equal-weighted is exposed to small-cap stocks. Equal-risk budget and equal-risk contribution are exposed to small-cap and to low-beta stocks. These three have a high correlation of excess returns, and their portfolios largely overlap. Their portfolios invest in all stocks available and have both a low turnover and low tracking error relative to the market-cap index. The minimum variance and maximum diversification strategies primarily have exposure to low-beta stocks. These two strategies are the most defensive, invest in much the same stocks, and have high tracking error and turnover.TOPICS: Volatility measures, VAR and use of alternative risk measures of trading risk, analysis of individual factors/risk premia %U https://jpm.pm-research.com/content/iijpormgmt/38/3/56.full.pdf