Frazzini-Pedersen Market Beta

Frazzini-Pedersen Market Beta

Frazzini-Pedersen Market Beta

The Frazzini-Pedersen Market Beta measures a stock's sensitivity to the overall market by considering its volatility and correlation over specific time horizons, offering insights into risk-adjusted returns and allowing for investment strategies like "betting against beta."

The Frazzini-Pedersen Market Beta measures a stock's sensitivity to the overall market by considering its volatility and correlation over specific time horizons, offering insights into risk-adjusted returns and allowing for investment strategies like "betting against beta."

The Frazzini-Pedersen Market Beta measures a stock's sensitivity to the overall market by considering its volatility and correlation over specific time horizons, offering insights into risk-adjusted returns and allowing for investment strategies like "betting against beta."


The Frazzini-Pedersen Market Beta, developed by Andrea Frazzini and Lasse Heje Pedersen in 2014, is a specialized form of beta that takes into account both the volatility and correlation of a stock with respect to the broader market. Unlike traditional beta calculations, this metric utilizes a 1-year rolling standard deviation for volatilities and a 5-year horizon for correlations, acknowledging that correlations change more slowly than volatilities. This nuanced approach allows for a more precise understanding of risk-adjusted returns, enabling specific investment strategies like "betting against beta," which involves taking long positions in low-beta assets and short positions in high-beta assets to generate significant positive risk-adjusted returns.


Research Origins of Frazzini-Pedersen Market Beta

In finance, beta is a measure used to understand how a stock or portfolio moves in relation to the market. A high beta indicates higher volatility, while a low beta suggests lower volatility relative to the market.

The Constraints of Traditional Beta

Traditional beta calculations often don't factor in the nuanced variations in asset behaviors over different time periods, nor do they consider the varying constraints faced by different investors, such as margin or leverage limits.

Frazzini-Pedersen Market Beta: A Refined Approach

The Frazzini-Pedersen Market Beta aims to refine the concept of beta by taking into account the volatility and correlation of a stock compared to the overall market. Importantly, it uses a 1-year standard deviation for measuring volatility and a 5-year horizon for assessing correlation. This accounts for the observation that correlations tend to change more slowly over time compared to volatilities.

The "Betting Against Beta" Strategy

The Frazzini-Pedersen Market Beta forms the basis for the "betting against beta" (BAB) investment strategy, which proposes that investors can achieve better risk-adjusted returns by taking long positions in low-beta stocks and short positions in high-beta stocks. The strategy suggests that investors who are constrained by leverage or margin requirements tend to overweight high-beta assets, leading to lower risk-adjusted returns for such assets.

Relevance to Investor Behavior

This beta measure is particularly useful for understanding the investment preferences of different types of investors. For instance, constrained investors like mutual funds are more likely to hold high-beta assets, while less constrained investors like Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway are inclined towards low-beta stocks.

Importance for Future Returns

By accounting for investor constraints and providing a more nuanced measure of market sensitivity, the Frazzini-Pedersen Market Beta allows for better-informed investment decisions. It sheds light on how leverage and margin constraints can influence risk-adjusted returns, thereby offering a robust framework for asset selection and portfolio management.

Conclusion

The Frazzini-Pedersen Market Beta provides a sophisticated way to measure a stock's sensitivity to market conditions, accounting for investor constraints and offering a basis for lucrative investment strategies like "betting against beta." By considering both volatility and correlation over specific time horizons, it offers a more nuanced understanding of risk and potential returns.

Total skewness

The Total Skewness metric, featured in the book "Empirical Asset Pricing: The Cross Section of Stock Returns" by Bali, Engle, and Murray, measures the asymmetry in a stock's returns using all available data points, offering insights into whether the stock's returns are more positively or negatively skewed.

Short-Term Reversal

Asset Growth

Asset growth is a key predictor of future stock returns, indicating a company's expansion or contraction, according to a 2008 study.

Investment

Operating Cash Flow to Assets

Operating Cash Flow to Assets is a metric that quantifies a company's ability to generate cash from its core operating activities relative to its total assets, with a higher ratio indicating greater efficiency in cash flow generation and a lower ratio suggesting less effectiveness.

Low Risk

Idiosyncratic Volatility (from CAPM)

Idiosyncratic Volatility from CAPM (21 days) is a metric that quantifies the unpredictability of a stock's returns that can't be explained by market trends over a 21-day period, indicating the extent to which a stock diverges from market behavior as predicted by the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM).

Low Risk

Earnings Variability

Earnings Variability is a financial metric that evaluates the stability and consistency of a company's earnings in relation to its operating cash flow, providing insights into the reliability of a company's profitability over time.

Low Risk

Maximum Daily Return

Maximum Daily Return measures the highest percentage increase in a stock's price within a single trading day over the past 121 days, offering insights into the stock's potential for significant short-term price volatility.

Low Risk

Cash Flow Volatility

Cash Flow Volatility measures how much a company's operating cash flow changes relative to its sales over a period of 16 quarters, helping to indicate the stability of the company's cash generation.

Low Risk

Operating Accruals

Stock prices often fail to fully account for the information contained in operating accruals until it impacts future earnings.

Accruals

Mispricing factor: Performance mispricing

The Performance Mispricing Factor is a composite metric developed by Stambaugh and Yuan in 2017 that aggregates various financial indicators to identify potential mispricing in stock performance, offering insights into stocks that may be either undervalued or overvalued.

Quality

Cash-based Operating Profits-to-lagged Book Assets

Cash-based Operating Profits-to-lagged Book Assets is a metric that gauges a company's cash-based profitability relative to its book assets from the previous year, offering insights into efficiency and profitability that have been shown to significantly influence stock returns.

Low Risk

Inventory Growth

Inventory growth measures how a company's inventory changes over time, providing insights into its ability to meet demand and manage resources, which in turn influences the firm's risk and financial performance.

Investment

Labor Force Efficiency

Labor force efficiency measures the change in a company's sales per employee relative to the change in sales per employee in the previous year. It provides insights into the company's productivity and efficiency in utilizing its workforce to generate sales growth. Positive values indicate improved labor force efficiency, while negative values suggest a decline in productivity relative to the previous year.

Profit Growth

Highest 5 days of return scaled by volatility

The Short-Term Reversal metric, introduced by Asness et al. in 2020, calculates the highest 5-day return of a stock scaled by its volatility, aiming to capture significant positive price movements in the context of the stock's overall price volatility.

Short-Term Reversal

Tax Expense Surprise

Tax expense surprise measures unexpected changes in a company's tax bill compared to last year and can offer investors clues about the company's future profitability.

Investment

Return Volatility

Return Volatility measures how much a stock's price swings up and down over a certain period, giving investors an idea of the risk level associated with that stock.

Low Risk

Pitroski F-score

The Piotroski F-score is like a financial health score for companies, calculated using details like income and debt; a higher score means the company is financially strong and a safer bet for investors.

Profitability

Ohlson O-score

The Ohlson O-score is a number that helps predict how likely it is for a company to go bankrupt, based on various financial factors like debt and profitability.

Profitability

Share Turnover

Share Turnover is a metric that measures a stock's trading activity by dividing the total traded volume by the average number of outstanding shares, providing insights into the stock's liquidity, with higher turnover indicating more trading activity and liquidity and lower turnover suggesting the opposite.

Low Risk

Market Beta

Measures a stock's sensitivity to market changes.

Low Risk

Dimson Beta

Dimson Beta is a financial metric that improves the traditional calculation of beta by accounting for the impact of infrequent trading, thereby offering a more accurate measure of a stock's relationship with the broader market.

Low Risk

Frazzini-Pedersen Market Beta

The Frazzini-Pedersen Market Beta measures a stock's sensitivity to the overall market by considering its volatility and correlation over specific time horizons, offering insights into risk-adjusted returns and allowing for investment strategies like "betting against beta."

Low Risk

Amihud Measure

The Amihud Measure calculates how much a stock's price moves in response to trading activity, helping investors understand how easy or costly it will be to buy or sell that stock.

Size

Price Momentum

Price Momentum measures the long-term trend in a stock's price, helping investors identify whether the stock has generally been going up or down over a specified period.

Momentum

Capital Turnover

Capital turnover is a measure that shows how good a company is at using its capital to make sales; a higher number means the company is more efficient, while a lower number could mean it's not making the most out of its money.

Quality

Gross Profit Change

Gross Profit Change shows how much a company's gross profit has grown or shrunk over the past year, helping you understand if the company is getting better or worse at making money from its sales.

Quality

Quality minus Junk: Growth

Quality minus Junk Growth is a score that combines various financial growth indicators like profit growth and cash flow growth to gauge a company's financial performance; a higher score means the company is growing well, while a lower score indicates weaker growth prospects.

Quality

Operating Leverage

Operating leverage is a measure that shows how much a company's costs are fixed, meaning it tells you how sensitive a company's profits are to changes in sales.

Quality

Kaplan-Zingales Index

The Kaplan-Zingales index is a tool that helps us understand how easily a company can get the money it needs for growth and investments by looking at factors like income, debt, and available cash.

Seasonality

R&D-to-Market

The R&D-to-market ratio tells us how much a company is spending on research and development compared to its overall market value, giving us an idea of how focused the company is on innovating and growing in the future.

Size

Net Stock Issues

Net stock issues indicate the net change in a company's outstanding shares over a set period, offering a predictive signal for future stock returns.

Value