On the Performance of Volatility-Managed Portfolios
70 Pages Posted: 18 Apr 2019
Date Written: March 20, 2019
Abstract
Using a comprehensive set of 103 equity strategies, we analyze the value of volatility-managed portfolios for real-time investors. Volatility-managed portfolios do not systematically outperform their corresponding unmanaged portfolios in direct comparisons. Consistent with Moreira and Muir (2017), volatility-managed portfolios tend to exhibit significantly positive alphas in spanning regressions. However, the trading strategies implied by these regressions are not implementable in real time, and reasonable out-of-sample versions generally earn lower certainty equivalent returns and Sharpe ratios than do simple investments in the original, unmanaged portfolios. This poor out-of-sample performance for volatility-managed portfolios stems primarily from structural instability in the underlying spanning regressions.
Keywords: volatility-managed portfolios, portfolio choice
JEL Classification: G10, G11, G12
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation