Literature Review

Advisors and investors would do well to pay as much attention to the expected volatility of any portfolio or investment as they do to anticipated returns. Moreover, all things being equal, a new investment should only be added to a portfolio when it either reduces the expected risk for a targeted level of returns, or when it boosts expected portfolio returns without adding additional risk, as measured by the expected standard deviation of those returns. Lesson 2: Don’t assume bonds or international stocks offer adequate portfolio diversification. As the world’s financial markets become more closely correlated, bonds and foreign stocks may not provide adequate portfolio diversification. Instead, advisors may want to recommend that suitable investors add modest exposure to nontraditional investments such as hedge funds, private equity and real assets. Such exposure may bolster portfolio returns, while reducing overall risk, depending on how it is structured. Lesson 3: Be disciplined in adhering to asset allocation targets. The long-term benefits of portfolio diversification will only be realized if investors are disciplined in adhering to asset allocation guidelines. For this reason, it is recommended that advisors regularly revisit portfolio allocations and rebalance

“The Benefits of diversification are clear. Portfolio theory has played a crucial role in explaining the relationship between risk and return where more than one investment is held. It also enables us to identify optimal and efficient portfolios.”

Our approach is an active security selection with passive asset allocation. We invest heavily in common stocks, but vary our holdings to include companies of all sizes and industry groups. We seek to achieve sufficient diversification by abstaining from investing more than 5% of the total assets in a single security unless it has significant upside potential, and we make an exception for ETFs and index funds as they represent a basket of securities. Our main goal is to identify and invest in common stocks with high potential for both short- and long-term capital appreciation. Our secondary goal is to invest in common stocks with steady income. When potential for rewards are high, we also enter into derivative

The regression that we performed in excel for both stocks yielded a beta of .73576 for Reynolds, and a beta of 1.4198 for Hasbro. In question 2 we learned that although Reynolds stock was riskier independently, adding it to the portfolio made it more diversified compared to adding Hasbro, due to the fact that it was less correlated to the market portfolio. Beta is a measure of the volatility, or systematic risk, of a security or a portfolio in comparison to the market as a whole. Therefore, since the beta of Reynolds is lower than Hasbro, our beta calculations align with the fact that Reynolds stock makes the overall portfolio less risky. This finding is also intuitive when considering the nature of the companies; Reynolds is a Tobacco company meaning that is should be less sensitive to changes in market conditions than a toy company like Hasbro.

* The sample of pension funds had a much larger share invested in equities than did Alpine. Equities performed much better than bonds. Yet the trustees told Alpine to hold down risk (Alpine’s beta was also somewhat defensive). Alpine should not be held responsible for an asset allocation policy dictated by the client.

Moreover, consultants help pension funds satisfy their fiduciary responsibility to plan participants. Their experience and their familiarity with diverse firms’ investment processes, personnel and operations provides them critical oversight and the capability to run more rigorous analysis. Therefore, consultants are able to provide clients with the most informed assistance on their asset allocation and manager selection decisions. The criteria to assess the suitability of different investment strategies should be driven by the client profile in terms of risk tolerance, liquidity requirements, time horizon and asset allocation. Nevertheless, a pension fund consultant is also interested in obtaining returns outperforming their competitors’ investment strategies. Therefore, TW should not only take into account their clients’ profiles (i.e. close-end and open-end funds follow different investment strategies according to their nature) but also their investment strategies performance. 2. Examine the business model of Research Affiliates as a firm and compare Research Affiliates model to that of a more traditional investment advisory firm. Put another way, how does the Research Affiliates make money, who are its customers, what services or products does it sell, how scalable is

According to Armour and Capital's own research, investors do best putting their money in actively managed funds with low fees and with a manager who has his or her own money in the fund as well. Before Rothenberg's death, Armour, who was on the management committee, championed

Instead of relying solely on external management, they allocate 68% of their endowment to internal management and the remaining 32% to outside asset managers. In order to do this, HMC employed 38 investment professionals and 148 other employees whose jobs were solely to manage the $19 billion dollars in total assets, of which $15.1 billion were endowment funds. This management strategy generated expenses of around $93 million dollars per year (49 basis points), and produced a real return of 11.3%, after expenses. This method of investment costs about 19 more basis points than a passive strategy and about 51 basis points cheaper than a typical active investment strategy using 100% outside managers. Harvard University opted for this strategy because it is cheaper than a traditional active management strategy while still allowing them the ability to adjust their risks taken and expected returns in order to remain on the “efficient frontier” of what return was required to meet their internal institutional goals.

Diversity investment among stock markets, bounds and nationally and internationally is the best me method of maintaining the risk of investment and expanding its growth. The fourth importance is the cost of single investment; the less money an investor pay; the more financial resources will have to take advantage on future investment opportunities that expand the return. Becker’s final advice of investment success was for investors to slick with their plan. “Lethargy bordering on sloth remains the cornerstone of our investment style”, Warren Buffett. Many investors get influenced by what goes around them and the media to end their investment prematurely or get involved in risky commitment outside of their goals.

Although CastleKeep’s Low PE portfolio has outperformed the market in the past, recent performance has not been satisfactory: a cumulative 20.57% gain over the S&P 500 from 8/27/2012 to 10/1/2015 has become 6.37% of underperformance as of 5/31/2017. Further, the portfolio experiences significant fluctuations in its number of holdings. In the nine months from 8/29/2016 to 5/31/2017, the portfolio grew from 17 stocks to a high of 102 companies in April. To improve performance and limit both the number of stocks in the portfolio and the size of fluctuations in holdings, I tested five different changes to the Low PE strategy.

My experience at Villanova, both as a research fellow and a student was formative of my fascination with investments, hedge funds, and mutual funds. My original interest sparked while working with Dr. Velthuis and performing literature reviews on effects of corporate activism on stock prices, and size effects on hedge fund returns. Since then, classes in Portfolio Theory and

§  Investment Performance is a complicated subject §  Theoretically correct measures are difficult to construct §  Different statistics or measures are appropriate for different types of investment decisions or portfolios §  Many industry and academic measures are different §  The nature of active management leads to measurement problems

1. Fund manager are expertise in the technology industry and thus the fund deals with technology driven companies which fund managers are comfortable in prediction of individual stock related risk and return and they are able to evaluate the technology field and pick up outperforming and positive alpha stocks in the technology field accurately.

As indicated by the case study S&P 500 index was use as a measure of the total return for the stock market. Our standard deviation of the total return was used as a one measure of the risk of an individual stock. Also betas for individual stocks are determined by simple linear regression. The variables were: total return for the stock as the dependent variable and independent variable is the total return for the stock. Since the descriptive statistics were a lot, only the necessary data was selected (below table.)

Findings of this thesis are that advisors influence towards investors trading choices, but they do not add value through their investment recommendations when judged by relative to passive investment benchmarks.