A Sharper Lens for Sizing Up Nickels and Steamrollers

Abstract

In a world of low rates and high stock prices, it's natural many investors are looking for ways to earn a good return with limited exposure to equities. However, many candidate strategies have return distributions which are significantly different from the Normal and Log-normal distributions that serve as reasonable approximations for the return profile of most typical portfolio asset classes. They require an upgraded set of tools to analyse and incorporate into our portfolio, maintaining a good balance of risk and reward.

Keywords: Decision Making under Uncertainty, Risk, Uncertainty, Utility, Risk Aversion, Kelly, Coin Flip, Heuristics, Rules of Thumb, Behavioral Finance, Market Timing, Gamblers Fallacy, St. Petersburg Paradox, Gambling, Betting, CRRA

JEL Classification: B12, B16, B20, C00, C10, C11, C50, C57, C73, D03, D81, D83, E00, G00, G02, G11, G12, G14, G17, G23