Investment 4-Arbitrage pricing theory1. The Arbitrage Pricing Theory
The multi-factor model
The idea is to encode information on N assets with K factors (K<N) such that the residuals(the part unexplained by the factors) are uncorrelated(i.e., idiosyncratic)
Extends to n strategies with all α_i\ne 0 and uncorrelated \epsilon_i :
max SR portfolio invests x_i=\frac{\alpha_i}{a\sigma_i^2} in each strategy andSR_P=\sqrt{SR_F^2+\Sigma_{i=1}^{n}IR_i^2}
total risk of the portfolio is \sigma_P=\frac{SR_P}{a} (consistent with APT asymptotic arbitrage lim_{n\rightarrow \infty}SR_p=\infty )
this applies to a multi-factor benchmark model(SRF is then the Sharpe ratio obtained with the K benchmark factor portfolios)
2. APT vs. CAPM
CAPM
Expected excess returns are proportional to market beta
The Market is the only source of priced risk
CAPM is an equilibrium model which restricts the cross-section of expected returns given some assumptions on investor preferences, but does not require that one knows the covariance structure of returns.
APT
Expected return are generated by exposures (factor betas) to several sources of risk times factor risk-premia
APT gives no specific guidance as to what the systematic risk sources are
APT relies on an (approximate) arbitrage argument to restrict the cross-section of expected returns given that one knows the fundamental covariance structure of returns
APT and CAPM are both consistent if the market portfolio return is ‘spanned’ by the K factors
There are more factors that explain the covariance structure of security returns, than there are factors explaining the cross-section of expected returns
Some factors (e.g., industry) carry zero risk-premia (\lambda=0 )
\epsilon_i -residuals are largely uncorrelated \rightarrow a good factor model of covariance structure
A mean-variance efficient portfolio \rightarrow a good factor model for the cross-section of expected returns
adding additional factors does not improve the mean-variance efficient frontier spanned by the K factors
For the cross-section of expected returns the number of factors in the APT model is not relevant as one can always reduce the number of factors to K = 1 by using a mean-variance efficient portfolio return as the unique pricing factor
How to search factors?
Factors as portfolio returns → Fama-French Model
Factors as asset characteristics → Barra Risk Model
Factor analysis → Purely statistical analysis (e.g. principal component)→ Not clear how to interpret the factors → Prone to data-mining
Factors as macro-variables → Classic paper Chen, Roll, and Ross (1986) → Macro-variables observed at low frequency and noisy → Factor-mimicking portfolio
3. Factors as portfolio returns: The Fama-French model
Fama and French show that two firm characteristics, other than beta, predict returns:
Size: market capitalization (or ME)
ME=Market Equity=number of shares × share price
small firms (low ME) historically outperformed large firms
however, in the last 30 years the size anomaly has been considerably weaker
size remains useful in multi-variate sorts (e.g., the value anomaly is particularly strong among small firms)
Value: book-to-market ratio (or BM)
BM=BE/ME, the ratio of a firm’s book value of equity to its market capitalization (same as book-to-price)
value firms (high BM) consistently outperform growth (low BM) firms, even controlling for market beta
UMD_t (Up minus Down) is the difference between the returns on diversified portfolios of winner and loser stocks
Rank each stock by its past return over the past year, typically exclude the most recent month in the year to avoid the short term reversal
Create a portfolio that buys stocks that have gone Up (stocks in the top 3 deciles) and shorts stocks that have gone Down (stocks in the bottom 3 deciles)
Hold this portfolio for the next month
The return on this zero-cost long-short portfolio is UMD (‘up minus down’) or WML (winners minus losers’)
The UMD factor has much higher turnover than HML and SMB
Size&Value: size is useful characteristic when interacted with value in double-sorted and value-weighted portfolios & there is a value effect in each size group but much stronger among small cap stocks(小盘股)
Size&Momentum: the momentum effect is also present in each size group, but is stronger among small cap stocks
\rightarrow refine factors using double-sortedf portfolios: HML_s,UMD_s
4. Factors as asset characteristics
Use observable factor loading \beta_{jk} (asset characteristics such as market-cap, dividend-yield, industry and country dummy) and no need to estimate it
Run Fama-MacBeth cross-sectional regressions every month t R_{j,t}^e=\lambda_{0,t}+\sum_{k=1}^{K}\lambda_{k,t}\beta_{jk}+u_{j,t}, \ j=1,...,N
use time-series of estimated \hat{\lambda}_{k,t} to estimate the factor risk-premium \bar{\lambda}_k=\frac{1}{T}\sum_{t=1}^{T}\hat{\lambda}_{k,t} and its standard error \sigma(\bar{\lambda}_k)=\frac{\sigma(\hat{\lambda}_{k})}{\sqrt{T}} where \sigma(\hat{\lambda}_k)^2=\frac{1}{T}\sum_{t=1}^{T}(\hat{\lambda}_{k,t}-\hat{\lambda}_{k})^2
test whether intercept and factor risk premia are significant using a t-test applied to t-stat= \frac{\bar{\lambda}_k}{\sigma{(\bar{\lambda}_k)}}
Example: the Barra Europe Equity Model
Covers a universe of around 9500 assets and EUE3, the base version uses a total of 68 equity factors: a regional market factor, 29 country factors, 29 industry factors and 9 style factors (composites of 25 asset characteristics)
The style factors
Size
Log of the month-end issuer capitalization
Log of total assets; an indicator of fundamental firm size
Value
Book-to-price ratio: the last published book value of common equity divided by the current issuer capitalization
Sales-to-price ratio: sales over the last 12 months divided by the current issuer capitalization
Momentum
Historical weekly alpha. Intercept of a regression of weekly asset returns against weekly returns of the cap-weighted market portfolio. An exponentially-weighted average of 104 weeks of data is used
12-month relative strength (essentially a trailing excess return)
6-month relative strength (essentially a trailing excess return)
Liquidity
Log of annual share turnover; an indicator of the average liquidity of an asset over one year
Log of quarterly share turnover
Log of monthly share turnover
Volatility
Historical weekly beta
Realized range of excess returns
Realized return volatility
Leverage
Book leverage
Market leverage
Earnings Yield
Trailing earnings-to-price ratio. Net earnings over the last 12 months divided by the current issuer capitalization
Cash earnings-to-price ratio. Cash earnings over the last 12 months divided by the current issuer capitalization
Return on equity. Net earnings over the last 12 months divided by the last available book value of common equity
Predicted earnings-to-price ratio using 12-month forward-looking earnings per share
Dividend Yield
Annualized dividend per share divided by the current price
Growth
Trailing growth of total assets
Trailing growth of annual sales
Trailing growth of annual net earnings
Short-term predicted earnings growth
Long-term (3-5 years) predicted earnings growth
5. Aymptotic Aribtrage 渐近套利
APT formula without residual risk
Suppose K=1 and \epsilon_i=0 , so that ∀i R_i^e =α_i +β_iF
Choose w_i,w_j such thatw_iβ_i +w_jβ_j =0 (⋆) andR_p^e =w_iR_i^e +w_jR_j^e =w_iα_i +w_jα_j +(w_iβ_i +w_jβ_j)F =w_iα_i +w_jα_j and no arbitrage implies w_iα_i +w_jα_j =0 , so \frac{\alpha_i}{\beta_i}=\frac{\alpha_j}{\beta_j}=\lambda
\rightarrow No arbitrage implies the APT: R_i^e =β_i(F+λ)
For a ‘traded factor’ F=R_F −E[R_F] and since β_F =1 its excess return satisifies R_F^e = (F + λ) so the APT becomes: R_ i^ e = β_ i R_ F^e
If \epsilon_i\ne 0, then any finite portfolio which satisies (⋆) will have residual risk and thus the arbitrage argument will not hold for any finite economy → Instead, APT is justified by the absence of aymptotic arbitrage
APT with residual risk: Asymptotic Arbitrage
Suppose K=1 and \epsilon_i\ne 0 and that the common factor is and excess return, so that ∀i R_i^e =α_i +β_iR_F^e +\epsilon_i
Consider the zero-investment portfolio with return r_i=R_i^e-\beta_iR_F^e=\alpha_i+\epsilon_i andE[r_i]=\alpha_i , V[r_i]=\sigma_{\epsilon_i}^2
so R_P=\frac{1}{N}\sum_{i=1}^Nr_i , E[R_P]=\frac{1}{N}\sum_{i=1}^N|\alpha_i| andV[R_P]=\frac{1}{N^2}\sum_{i=1}^N\sigma_{\epsilon_i}^2\leq \frac{1}{N}max_i\sigma_{\epsilon_i}^2
the maximum residual's variance is finite then lim_{N\rightarrow\infty}V[R_p]=0
to rule out an arbitrage we must have lim_{N\rightarrow\infty}\frac{1}{N}\sum_{i=1}^N|\alpha_i|=0
this implies that all but a finite number of securities must have αi = 0, i.e., the APT must hold for most securities
Theorem
An asymptotic arbitrage is a sequence of portfolio weight vectors w^n such that
1^{\top}w^n=0
lim_{n\rightarrow\infty}w^{n\top}\Sigma w^n=0
w^{n\top}\mu\geq \delta>0
Suppose V[\epsilon_i]=S_i^2<\bar{S}^2 \ \forall i then No Asymptotic Arbitrage implies \mu=\lambda_01+\beta\lambda+\nu (⋆) where the vector of pricing errors \nu satisfies
If there is no asymptotic arbitrage, in the limit as the number of assets becomes large, most (that is, all but a finite number) of assets’ expected returns should satisfy the APT relation (⋆)
However, APT holds except that fully diversified portfolios with well-balanced weights (i.e., lim_{n\rightarrow\infty}\sum_{i=1}^n\frac{w_i^2}{1/n}\leq C for some constant C) have no idiosyncratic risk in the limit (i.e., lim_{n\rightarrow\infty}\sum_{i=1}^n{w_i^2}S_i^2=0 ) and lim_{n\rightarrow\infty}\sum_{i=1}^n{w_i}\nu_i=0 , so the portfolio \mu_P=\lambda_0+w^{\top}\beta\lambda
Equal weighted vs. value weighted portfolio returns
Suppose two stocks have the price path A=(100,200,100) and B=(100,100,100)
EW portfolio return 0.5x(1−0.5)=25%(A有价格波动,100到200收益率是1,200到100收益率是-0.5,A的权重是0.5)
VW portfolio return is a buy and hold strategy that requires no-trading
EW portfolio return is an implicit dynamic trading strategy, requires selling stocks that went up and buying stocks that went down
EW portfolio returns can be misleading:
Stocks experience negative autocorrelation as a result of bid-ask bounce (not a ‘true’ return)
It puts same weight on small illiquid stocks and on large liquid stock returns (loads on size and illiquidity anomalies)
It loads on the short-term reversal anomaly (can be tested by increasing the return horizon)
Constructing covariance matrices
Covariance matrices require lots of parameters: with 100 assets, an unconstrained covariance matrix has 5050 (N(N + 1)/2) parameters
Parsimonious covariance matrices can be constructed with factor models. Assuming K independent factors with factor variance Cov(R_i,R_j)=\sum^K_{k=1}β_{jk}β_{ik}σ^2_k and Var(Ri)=\sum^K_{k=1}β^2_{ik}σ^2_k+ σ^2_{\epsilon_i} will require only (N+1)xK parameters for the covariances and N idiosyncratic volatilities. So for 100 assets and K=5 factors that’s 605 parameters
Given a history of factor returns, one can construct covariance matrix forecasts by forecasting factor variances
Investment 4-Arbitrage pricing theory1. The Arbitrage Pricing Theory
The multi-factor model
The idea is to encode information on N assets with K factors (K<N) such that the residuals(the part unexplained by the factors) are uncorrelated(i.e., idiosyncratic)
Arbitrage Pricing Theory links K-factor model of covariance of returns to K-factor model of expected returns
Maximun Sharpe Ratio Portfolio
Suppose the portfolio has the return R_i^e=\alpha_i+\beta_iR_F^e+\epsilon_i with \alpha_i>0 and Var(\epsilon_i)=\sigma_i^2
Information Ratio
The portfolio max Sharpe ratio is SR_P=\frac{\mu_P-R_0}{\sigma_P}=\sqrt{SR_F^2+IR^2}
Extends to n strategies with all α_i\ne 0 and uncorrelated \epsilon_i :
- max SR portfolio invests x_i=\frac{\alpha_i}{a\sigma_i^2} in each strategy andSR_P=\sqrt{SR_F^2+\Sigma_{i=1}^{n}IR_i^2}
- total risk of the portfolio is \sigma_P=\frac{SR_P}{a} (consistent with APT asymptotic arbitrage lim_{n\rightarrow \infty}SR_p=\infty )
- this applies to a multi-factor benchmark model(SRF is then the Sharpe ratio obtained with the K benchmark factor portfolios)
2. APT vs. CAPMCAPM
APT
APT and CAPM are both consistent if the market portfolio return is ‘spanned’ by the K factors
Factors for a good APT model
How many factors?
How to search factors?
- Factors as portfolio returns → Fama-French Model
- Factors as asset characteristics → Barra Risk Model
- Factor analysis → Purely statistical analysis (e.g. principal component)→ Not clear how to interpret the factors → Prone to data-mining
- Factors as macro-variables → Classic paper Chen, Roll, and Ross (1986) → Macro-variables observed at low frequency and noisy → Factor-mimicking portfolio
3. Factors as portfolio returns: The Fama-French modelFama and French show that two firm characteristics, other than beta, predict returns:
The Fama-French three-factor Model
The Carhat Four-factor Model
Size&Value: size is useful characteristic when interacted with value in double-sorted and value-weighted portfolios & there is a value effect in each size group but much stronger among small cap stocks(小盘股)
Size&Momentum: the momentum effect is also present in each size group, but is stronger among small cap stocks
\rightarrow refine factors using double-sortedf portfolios: HML_s,UMD_s
4. Factors as asset characteristicsUse observable factor loading \beta_{jk} (asset characteristics such as market-cap, dividend-yield, industry and country dummy) and no need to estimate it
Run Fama-MacBeth cross-sectional regressions every month t R_{j,t}^e=\lambda_{0,t}+\sum_{k=1}^{K}\lambda_{k,t}\beta_{jk}+u_{j,t}, \ j=1,...,N
Example: the Barra Europe Equity Model
Covers a universe of around 9500 assets and EUE3, the base version uses a total of 68 equity factors: a regional market factor, 29 country factors, 29 industry factors and 9 style factors (composites of 25 asset characteristics)
The style factors
- Size
- Log of the month-end issuer capitalization
- Log of total assets; an indicator of fundamental firm size
- Value
- Book-to-price ratio: the last published book value of common equity divided by the current issuer capitalization
- Sales-to-price ratio: sales over the last 12 months divided by the current issuer capitalization
- Momentum
- Historical weekly alpha. Intercept of a regression of weekly asset returns against weekly returns of the cap-weighted market portfolio. An exponentially-weighted average of 104 weeks of data is used
- 12-month relative strength (essentially a trailing excess return)
- 6-month relative strength (essentially a trailing excess return)
- Liquidity
- Log of annual share turnover; an indicator of the average liquidity of an asset over one year
- Log of quarterly share turnover
- Log of monthly share turnover
- Volatility
- Historical weekly beta
- Realized range of excess returns
- Realized return volatility
- Leverage
- Book leverage
- Market leverage
- Earnings Yield
- Trailing earnings-to-price ratio. Net earnings over the last 12 months divided by the current issuer capitalization
- Cash earnings-to-price ratio. Cash earnings over the last 12 months divided by the current issuer capitalization
- Return on equity. Net earnings over the last 12 months divided by the last available book value of common equity
- Predicted earnings-to-price ratio using 12-month forward-looking earnings per share
- Dividend Yield
- Annualized dividend per share divided by the current price
- Growth
- Trailing growth of total assets
- Trailing growth of annual sales
- Trailing growth of annual net earnings
- Short-term predicted earnings growth
- Long-term (3-5 years) predicted earnings growth
5. Aymptotic Aribtrage 渐近套利APT formula without residual risk
Suppose K=1 and \epsilon_i=0 , so that ∀i R_i^e =α_i +β_iF
APT with residual risk: Asymptotic Arbitrage
Suppose K=1 and \epsilon_i\ne 0 and that the common factor is and excess return, so that ∀i R_i^e =α_i +β_iR_F^e +\epsilon_i
Theorem
An asymptotic arbitrage is a sequence of portfolio weight vectors w^n such that
Suppose V[\epsilon_i]=S_i^2<\bar{S}^2 \ \forall i then No Asymptotic Arbitrage implies \mu=\lambda_01+\beta\lambda+\nu (⋆) where the vector of pricing errors \nu satisfies
If there is no asymptotic arbitrage, in the limit as the number of assets becomes large, most (that is, all but a finite number) of assets’ expected returns should satisfy the APT relation (⋆)
However, APT holds except that fully diversified portfolios with well-balanced weights (i.e., lim_{n\rightarrow\infty}\sum_{i=1}^n\frac{w_i^2}{1/n}\leq C for some constant C) have no idiosyncratic risk in the limit (i.e., lim_{n\rightarrow\infty}\sum_{i=1}^n{w_i^2}S_i^2=0 ) and lim_{n\rightarrow\infty}\sum_{i=1}^n{w_i}\nu_i=0 , so the portfolio \mu_P=\lambda_0+w^{\top}\beta\lambda
Equal weighted vs. value weighted portfolio returns
Suppose two stocks have the price path A=(100,200,100) and B=(100,100,100)
VW portfolio return is a buy and hold strategy that requires no-trading
EW portfolio return is an implicit dynamic trading strategy, requires selling stocks that went up and buying stocks that went down
EW portfolio returns can be misleading:
Constructing covariance matrices
Cov(R_i,R_j)=\sum^K_{k=1}β_{jk}β_{ik}σ^2_k and Var(Ri)=\sum^K_{k=1}β^2_{ik}σ^2_k+ σ^2_{\epsilon_i} will require only (N+1)xK parameters for the covariances and N idiosyncratic volatilities. So for 100 assets and K=5 factors that’s 605 parameters