Factor Investing: The Rocky Road from Long Only to Long Short

Content Provider	Scilit
Author	Briere, Marie Szafarz, Ariane
Copyright Year	2017
Description	Journal: SSRN Electronic Journal The performances of factor investing rely heavily on short sales, not only for building the initial long-short strategy, but also for regularly rebalancing the positions. Since short selling is subject to both legal restrictions and substantial costs, this paper examines how severely restrictions on short positions affect the financial attractiveness of factor investing. To fill the gap between unconstrained long-short allocations and restricted long-only portfolios, we consider two in-between strategies: the first imposes that only the market can be shorted, and the second is the so-called “130/30” scenario that caps total short exposure at 30%. The takeaways are twofold. First, any infringement to the long-short strategy can harm significantly the mean-variance performances of efficient factor-based portfolios. This is linked to the fact that the total short exposure of optimal long-short portfolios can reach figures around 400% and above. Second, the factor portfolios built originally by Fama and French (1992) with the purpose of developing asset pricing are impressively clear-sighted when it comes to portfolio management. Indeed, combining these portfolios generates mean-variance performances similar to those of optimized long-short portfolios, except for low levels of volatility.
Related Links	https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/249918/3/wp17013.pdf https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=2908491
ISSN	10914358
e-ISSN	15565068
DOI	10.2139/ssrn.2908491
Journal	SSRN Electronic Journal
Language	English
Publisher	Elsevier BV
Publisher Date	2017-01-30
Access Restriction	Open
Subject Keyword	Journal: SSRN Electronic Journal Asset Allocation Short Selling
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health Psychiatry and Mental Health