Re:Medallion Fund “Stretches Explanation to the Limit,” Prof...
by Tycho on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @01:35PM
(#22184186)
If the value and momentum and size factors are legitimate, then it stands to reason that there could be other more obscure, less intuitive and more profitable anomalies. Are those limited to very small magnitudes? Maybe, but I don't see why that should necessarily be so. It seems like EMH is predicated on the idea that the only investment opportunities are ones that map to human reasoning.
Re:Medallion Fund “Stretches Explanation to the Limit,” Prof...
by o_nate on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @03:03PM
(#22185159)
Another analogy would be the theory of perfectly competitive markets. It makes sense for economists to assume this in many cases, even though that would imply that consistently profitable firms are impossible.
Re:Medallion Fund “Stretches Explanation to the Limit,” Prof...
by throw0101a on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @12:25PM
(#22183183)
I was under the impression that the Fama-French (3/5) factor model do pretty well at explaining why certain stocks/sectors do better than the market average.
If somebody comes up to you, a random Joe Schmoe, and tells you they have an investment that consistently beats the market on a risk-adjusted basis. Well... You can pretty much guarantee that they're full of shit.
Even just analyzing papers that passed the rigor of academic peer review, the sizable majority of market anomalies fail to replicate on an out-of-sample basis[1].
Like Newtonian gravity, to the extent that deviations exist it's either of very small magnitude or in very exotic conditions. The market anomalies that do exist, like the HML value effect or momentum effect, don't substantially improve the optimal portfolio and go through very long periods of deep drawdowns.
Or in the realm of the very exotic, there are small teams, in aggregate making up much less than 0.1% of the market, that do consistently out-perform. There common characteristics of these strategies are that they have tightly limited capacity, involve a huge up-front investment in technology and expertise, almost never offer to manage outsider money, and are extremely hard to replicate even by other experts.
[1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w23394