Multifactor Models
Multifactor Models
Vincent Milhau
vincent.milhau@edhec.edu
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Examples of Multifactor Strategies in Stocks
▶ Blackrock (iShares exchange-traded funds):
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Examples of Multifactor Strategies in Stocks (Con’t)
▶ Russell (US equity fund):
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Why Are Multifactor Strategies Interesting?
▶ The CAPM’s central prediction, namely
𝜇𝑖 − 𝑅𝑓 = 𝛽𝑖 × [𝜇𝑚 − 𝑅𝑓 ]
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Objectives
▶ Review some classical patterns in stock returns: the size, value
and momentum effects.
▶ Introduce the 3-factor Fama-French model and the 4-factor
extension (Fama-French-Carhart).
▶ Eugene Fama (b. 1939, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2013)
and Ken French (b. 1954).
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Outline
Size, Value and the 3-Factor Model of Fama and French (1993)
Beyond 3 Factors
Factor Investing
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Grouping Stocks Into Portfolios
▶ Most of the asset pricing literature has tested the CAPM on stock
portfolios.
▶ Grouping stocks on attributes has a long tradition in empirical
asset pricing:
▶ Black, Jensen and Scholes (1972). “The Capital Asset Pricing Model:
Some Empirical Tests”: group stocks on past estimated beta;
▶ Same in Fama and MacBeth (1973). “Risk, Return, and Equilibrium:
Empirical Tests”;
▶ ... and many papers following Fama and French (1992). “The
Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns”. Journal of Finance: sort
on size and book-to-market ratio.
▶ Principles:
▶ For every stock, collect an attribute known at the portfolio
formation date: past beta, market cap, book-to-market ratio, past
12-month return...
▶ Make groups of increasing attribute, e.g. 3, 6 or 10 groups;
▶ Calculate the value-weighted or equally weighted returns within
each group;
▶ Hold the stocks until the next portfolio formation date, e.g. 3, 6 or
12 months later.
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Early Evidence for the Size Puzzle
▶ Banz (1981). “The relationship between return and market value
of common stocks”. Journal of Financial Economics.
▶ Stocks are sorted on the market capitalization.
▶ Key finding: stocks of large firms earn lower returns than “small”
stocks after controlling for market exposure.
▶ Key idea: buy stocks that are priced below their “intrinsic value”,
which depends on the company’s ability to make earnings.
▶ And keep a “margin for safety” to account for uncertainty in the
determination of intrinsic value.
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Value Effect
▶ Stocks are now sorted on their book-to-market ratio.
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A Long-Short Strategy
▶ On a portfolio formation date, sort stocks into value and growth,
and
▶ Purchase $1 of value stocks;
▶ Sell short $1 of growth stocks;
▶ Invest $1 in the risk-free asset (collateral).
1 −1 1
𝑟𝑝 = ×𝑟 + × 𝑟growth + × 𝑅𝑓
1 value 1 1
= 𝑅𝑓 + 𝑟value − 𝑟growth
𝑟𝑝 − 𝑅𝑓 = 𝑟value − 𝑟growth
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Does the CAPM Explain the Returns on the
Long-Short Strategy?
▶ The workbook Value_effect.xlsx contains the monthly returns on
B/M-sorted and value-weighted portfolios and the market factor
from the data library of Ken French.
▶ We use the same sample period as Fama and French: 1963.07 to
1990.12.
1. Calculate the monthly excess returns on a portfolio that goes long
the 10% most value stocks (“Hi 10”) and short the most growth
ones (“Lo 10”).
2. Calculate the average excess return on the long-short portfolio.
3. Regress the excess returns of the long-short portfolio on the
market factor. Does the factor explain the profitability of the
strategy?
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Size and Value Factors
▶ Fama and French (1993). “Common Risk Factors in the Returns on
Stocks and Bonds”. Journal of Financial Economics.
▶ FF93 sort NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ stocks on market
capitalization and book-to-market ratio:
▶ 2 size groups: Small, Big.
▶ 3 book-to-market groups: Low, Medium, High.
Definitions
The size factor is the excess return of a portfolio of small socks over
a portfolio of big stocks:
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Factor Construction Details
▶ 6 value-weighted portfolios are formed from the size and
book-to-market groups:
S/L, S/M, S/H, B/L, B/M, B/H
▶ Stocks are value-weighted in each of the 6 portfolios.
▶ Small-minus-big factor:
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Fama-French Alpha and Betas
▶ Inputs:
▶ Returns on security or portfolio 𝑖: 𝑟 .;
𝑖
▶ Market, size and value factors (MKT, SMB, HML);
▶ Time series of risk-free rates: 𝑅 .
𝑓
Fama-French Model
The market, size and value betas in the Fama-French model are the
multivariate betas of excess returns on security or portfolio 𝑖 with
respect to the market, size and value factors:
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Return Decomposition in Fama-French Model
▶ Take the expectation and in both sides of the regression
equation:
ΛMKT = 𝔼 [𝑟𝑚 − 𝑅𝑓 ]
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One-Factor versus Three-Factor Regression
▶ See workbook Factor_regressions.xlsx.
▶ We have monthly quotes (10.2019 - 07.2024) for the S&P 500
index and the GE Aerospace (General Electric until April 2024)
stock.
▶ Also given are the Fama-French factor values and the monthly
risk-free rate multiplied by 100.
▶ Exercise:
1. Calculate the monthly excess returns multiplied by 100.
2. Regress the two series of excess returns on the market factor
alone, then on the Fama-French factors, and calculate the
t-statistics of the alphas and the betas.
3. Compare the betas with respect to the market factor and the R2
across the two regressions. Why do the betas and the R2 differ
across the two regressions?
4. Calculate the sample averages of the Fama-French factors and the
two series of excess returns.
5. Calculate the Fama-French implied excess return and check that
the sum of this quantity and the alpha equals the sample average
excess return.
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𝑅2 Increases as New Factors Are Added
▶ Illustration with 2 factors:
𝑟𝑖 = 𝛼𝑖 + 𝛽1/𝑖 𝐹1 + 𝛽2/𝑖 𝐹2 + 𝜀𝑖
Size, Value and the 3-Factor Model of Fama and French (1993)
Beyond 3 Factors
Factor Investing
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Momentum Effect
▶ Jegadeesh and Titman (1993).“Returns to Buying Winners and
Selling Losers: Implications for Stock Market Efficiency”. Journal
of Finance.
▶ Investment strategy:
▶ Sort stocks on their past 𝐽-month return (𝐽 = 3, 6, 9 or 12);
▶ Group stocks in 10 equally weighted portfolios;
▶ Buy the 10% winners and sell the 10% losers (zero-dollar
strategy);
▶ Hold the portfolio for 𝐾 months;
▶ Go back to step 1.
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Momentum Effect in Stock Returns (Con’t)
▶ Excerpt of Table I in JT93 (average monthly excess returns, in %):
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Do the Fama-French Factors Explain the Momentum
Effect?
▶ Excerpt of Table VII (sample period from 07.1963 to 12.1993) in
Fama and French (1996):
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Momentum Factor
▶ Introduced by Carhart (1997). “On Persistence in Mutual Fund
Performance”. Journal of Finance.
Definition
The winners-minus-losers (WML) factor, or momentum factor, is the
excess return of a portfolio of past winners over a portfolio of past
losers.
▶ Carhart’s (1997) momentum factor:
▶ Stocks are sorted on past 12-month return, skipping last month,
into 3 groups (30% winners, 30% losers).
▶ Stocks are equally weighted in long and short legs and are held for
1 month.
▶ Momentum factor from Ken French’s data library:
▶ Stocks are sorted in 2 size groups (S, B) and 3 past 12-month return
groups (30% W, 30% L).
▶ They are value-weighted and held for 1 month.
𝑆/𝑊 + 𝐵/𝑊 𝑆/𝐿 + 𝐵/𝐿
Mom = −
2 2
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The Fama-French-Carhart Model
Fama-French-Carhart Alpha and Betas
The market, size, value and momentum betas are the multivariate
betas of excess returns on security or portfolio 𝑖 with respect to the
market, size, value and momentum factors:
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What’s Next? The Volatility Puzzle
▶ Ang, Hodrick, Xing and Zhang (2006). “The Cross Section of
Volatility and Expected Returns”. Journal of Finance.
▶ Stocks are sorted every month into 5 groups based on their past
idiosyncratic volatility in the FF93 model (volatility of residuals)
and are value-weighted.
▶ Excerpt of their Table VI (sample period from 07.1963 to 12.2000):
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How Many Factors Do We Need?
▶ Profitability and investment effects in stock returns: Fama and
French (2006), Novy-Marx (2013).
▶ Survey by Harvey, Liu and Zhu (2016) “... and the Cross Section of
Expected Returns”, Review of Financial Studies: more than 300
factors have been proposed!
▶ Widely accepted stock market factors carrying a premium:
▶ Market, size, value (Fama-French 3-factor model);
▶ Momentum (Fama-French-Carhart 4-factor model);
▶ Profitability and investment;
▶ Volatility (more debated).
▶ What in other asset classes (bonds, commodities...)?
▶ Empirical evidence for momentum and “value” (defined as
long-term reversal) effects in bonds, commodities and currency
futures: Asness, Moskowitz and Pedersen (2013). “Value and
Momentum Everywhere”. Journal of Finance.
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How Can We Justify the Size, Value and Momentum
Effects?
▶ There are many possible stories!
▶ Concerns about risk:
▶ Small firms and firms with high B/M might be closer to distress:
Fama and French (1992, 1993), Vassalou and Xing (2004).
▶ Small firms are less liquid (Amihud and Mendelson, 1986).
▶ Small and value firms might be more exposed to undiversifiable
risk factors in the sense of the Arbitrage Pricing Theory or the
Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model (see next slides).
▶ Market imperfections and behavioral explanations:
▶ Investors lack information about small firms (Banz, 1981), are
excessively optimistic about growth stocks (Lakonishok et al.,
1994)...
▶ New information is slowly reflected in stock prices, which could
explain momentum (Hong and Stein, 1999).
▶ ...
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A Theoretical Justification for Multiple Factors:
Arbitrage Pricing Theory
▶ Foundation paper: Ross (1976). “The arbitrage theory of capital
asset pricing”. Journal of Economic Theory.
▶ If returns have a 𝐾-factor structure
𝑟𝑖̃ = 𝑐𝑖 + 𝛽𝑖/1 𝐹1 + ⋯ + 𝛽𝑖/𝐾 𝐹𝐾 + 𝜂𝑖
and there is no arbitrage in the market, then 𝜇̃ 𝑖 converges to 𝛃𝑖 𝚲
for some vector of factor premia as the specific variance 𝕍 [𝜂𝑖 ]
shrinks to 0.
▶ A well-diversified portfolio is a portfolio with little or no specific
variance.
▶ A formal mathematical definition in a universe with infinitely many
assets is given by Chamberlain (1983). “Funds, Factors and
Diversification in Arbitrage Pricing Models”. Econometrica.
▶ Well-diversified portfolios are still exposed to factors, so factors
are undiversifiable.
▶ Investors require premia for being exposed to “adverse”
undiversifiable factors.
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Another Theoretical Justification:
Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model
▶ Foundation paper: Merton (1973). “An Intertemporal Capital
Asset Pricing Model”. Econometrica.
▶ Investors rebalance their portfolios in continuous time and face
a randomly changing short-term interest rate.
▶ Welfare / utility is a function of the horizon, the current wealth
and the current interest rate:
𝐽(𝜏 , 𝑊 , 𝑟)
▶ A 3-fund separation theorem obtains, i.e., the optimal portfolio
of every investor is a combination of:
▶ The market portfolio;
▶ The risk-free asset (cash account);
▶ The interest rate-hedging portfolio, i.e., long-term bonds.
▶ The positive hedging demand for bonds is due to the fact that
bond prices increase (good news) when interest rates decrease
(bad news).
▶ This is true for investors who have more marginal utility from one
additional dollar when interest rates are low (𝐽𝑊𝑟 < 0).
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Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model (Con’t)
▶ The additional hedging demand for bonds increases bond
prices, hence decreases the expected returns on bonds at
market equilibrium.
▶ More generally, if investors face time-varying investment
opportunities, they will take:
▶ Long positions in assets that pay off well when investment
opportunities get worse;
▶ Short positions in assets that pay off well when opportunities
improve.
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Outline
Size, Value and the 3-Factor Model of Fama and French (1993)
Beyond 3 Factors
Factor Investing
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Conceptual Justification
▶ Reminder (2-fund separation theorem): under the CAPM’s
assumptions, a portfolio is efficient if, and only if it is a
combination of the market portfolio and the risk-free asset.
▶ Multifactor extension (𝐾-fund separation theorem): if there are
𝐾 pricing factors (e.g., Fama-French or Fama-French-Carhart)
and these factors are the excess returns on factor-replicating
portfolios, then a portfolio is efficient if, and only if, it is a
combination of the 𝐾 factor-replicating portfolios and the
risk-free asset with factor betas proportional to
𝛀−1 𝚲
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Mathematical Proof
▶ Denote with 𝐖 the matrix of percentage weights of the 𝐾
factor-replicating portfolios (𝑁 × 𝐾).
▶ The factor premia are the expected excess returns on the
portfolios, hence
𝚲 = 𝐖′ 𝛍̃
▶ Because the factors are pricing factors, we have
𝛍̃ = 𝛃𝚲
𝛀 = 𝐖′ 𝚺𝐖
𝛃 = 𝚺𝐖𝛀−1
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Mathematical Proof (Con’t)
▶ If a portfolio is efficient, then, by the 2-fund separation theorem,
the risky asset weights satisfy
𝐰 = 𝑥𝐰tan
where 𝑥 = 𝜎/𝜎
̄ tan and 𝜎̄ is the target volatility.
▶ The factor exposures of the portfolio are
𝛃𝑝 = 𝛃 ′ 𝐰
= 𝑥𝛀−1 𝐖′ 𝚺𝐰tan
𝑥
= 𝛀−1 𝐖′ 𝛍̃
𝑒
𝑥 −1
= 𝛀 𝚲
𝑒
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Mathematical Proof (Con’t)
▶ Reciprocal: Suppose now that the exposures of a portfolio 𝐰
have the form
𝛃𝑝 = 𝑥𝛀−1 𝚲
for some 𝑥.
▶ Then,
𝛀−1 𝐖′ 𝚺𝐰 = 𝑥𝛀−1 𝚲
▶ Hence,
𝐖′ [𝚺𝐰 − 𝑥 𝛍]̃ = 𝟎
▶ Hence,
𝐰 = 𝑥𝚺−1 𝛍̃ + 𝚺−1 𝐡
where 𝐖′ 𝐡 = 𝟎.
▶ We have
𝛍̃ = 𝛃𝚲
= 𝚺𝐖𝛀−1 𝚲
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Mathematical Proof (Con’t)
▶ Therefore, if 𝐰 is in the column space of 𝐖, then
𝚺−1 𝐡 = 𝐰 − 𝑥𝐖𝛀−1 𝚲
𝐖′ 𝐡 = 𝐖′ 𝚺𝐖𝐮
= 𝛀𝐮
=𝟎
𝐰 = 𝑥𝚺−1 𝛍̃