I came across a very descriptive visualization of the Factor Attribution that I will replicate today. There is the Three Factor Rolling Regression Viewer at the mas financial tools web site that performs rolling window Factor Analysis of the “three-factor model” of Fama and French. The factor returns are available ... [Read more...]

Nico brought to my attention the 130/30: The New Long-Only (2008) by A. Lo, P. Patel paper in his comment to the Multiple Factor Model – Building CSFB Factors post. This paper presents a very detailed step by step guide to building 130/30 Index using average CSFB Factors as the alpha model and MSCI ... [Read more...]

In the last post, Multiple Factor Model – Building Risk Model, I have shown how to build a multiple factor risk model. In this post I want to explain why do we need a risk model and how it is used during portfolio construction process. The covariance matrix is used during ... [Read more...]

This is the fourth post in the series about Multiple Factor Models. I will build on the code presented in the prior post, Multiple Factor Model – Building CSFB Factors, and I will show how to build a multiple factor risk model. For an example of the multiple factor risk models, ... [Read more...]

This is the third post in the series about Multiple Factor Models. I will build on the code presented in the prior post, Multiple Factor Model – Building Fundamental Factors, and I will show how to build majority of factors described in the CSFB Alpha Factor Framework. For details of the ... [Read more...]

This is the second post in the series about Multiple Factor Models. I will build on the code presented in the prior post, Multiple Factor Model – Fundamental Data, and I will show how to build Fundamental factors described in the CSFB Alpha Factor Framework. For details of the CSFB Alpha ... [Read more...]

The Multiple Factor Model can be used to decompose returns and calculate risk. Following are some examples of the Multiple Factor Models: The expected returns factor model: Commonality In The Determinants Of Expected Stock Returns by R. Haugen, N. Baker (1996) The expected returns factor model: CSFB Quantitative Research, Alpha Factor ... [Read more...]

Equal risk contribution of assets determines the asset weights given the variance matrix.  How sensitive are those weights to the variance estimate? Previously The post “Risk parity” gave an overview of the idea. In particular it distinguished the cases: the assets have equal risk contribution groups of assets have equal ... [Read more...]

We come closer to a definitive answer on the relative merit of Ledoit-Wolf shrinkage versus a statistical factor model for variance matrices. Previously This post builds on the post entitled: A test of Ledoit-Wolf versus a factor model That post depended on some posts previous to it. New information Previously ... [Read more...]

Statistical factor models and Ledoit-Wolf shrinkage are competing methods for estimating variance matrices of returns.  So which is better?  This adds a data point for answering that question. Previously There are past blog posts on: the idea of variance matrices factor models of variance The data in this post are ... [Read more...]

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