Stephen Satchell

• PhD (LSE) PhD(Cam) FIA, MA Cam, MA Syd, MCOM UNSW
• Lecturer at retired

In this paper, we quantify the economic gain from accounting for departures from normality for the mean-variance (MV) investor. We provide two models that account for the key empirical regularities of financial returns: stochastic volatility, asymmetric returns, heavy tails and tail dependence. We show that accounting for departures from normality...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide theory for some popular models and strategies used by practitioners in constructing optimal portfolios. King (2007), for example, advocated adding a diversification term to mean-variance problems to create better portfolios and provided clear empirical evidence that this is beneficial. Design/methodo...

This paper considers liquidity as an explanation for the positive association between expected idiosyncratic volatility (IV) and expected stock returns. Liquidity costs may affect the stock returns, through bid-ask bounce and other microstructure-induced noise, which will affect the estimation of IV. We use a novel method (developed by Weaver, 1991...

While momentum benefits from persistent trends of the market, such strategies are unable to distinguish between upside and downside risk and suffer consequently. We propose a Partial Moment Momentum (PMM) trading strategy that is sensitive to the sign of risk and show risk-adjusted outperformance compared to plain momentum and volatility-adjusted m...

Errors in variables in linear regression continue to be a significant empirical issue in financial econometrics. We propose using the characteristic function (CF) to obtain estimates for linear models with errors in the variables. By assuming that the explanatory variable follows a flexible double gamma distribution, we obtain closed-form expressio...

Existing approaches have considered characteristics of Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) focused investments from a return-oriented perspective without paying due consideration to investors’ utility and how ESG features impact utility. We contribute to this literature by providing a model that captures the implications for invest...

In this paper, we analyse theoretically the distributional properties and the forecastability of cross‐sectional momentum (CSM) and time series momentum (TSM) returns. By decomposing these returns into their fundamental building blocks, we expose their structural similarities and differences that shed valuable insights into the conditions under whi...

We propose a multivariate model of returns that accounts for four of the stylised facts of financial data: heavy tails, skew, volatility clustering, and asymmetric dependence with the aim of improving the accuracy of risk estimates and increasing out-of-sample utility of investors’ portfolios. We accommodate volatility clustering, the generalized P...

We extend the traditional capital asset pricing model (CAPM) to incorporate duration as a general measure of the price volatility of bonds or equities, to facilitate estimation and testing for short-termism. Duration is a widely-used measure to quantify and control interest rate risk exposure within asset management. Given extremely low interest ra...

A longstanding objective of managers is to reduce risk to their businesses. The conventional strategy for risk reduction is diversification; however, evidence for the effectiveness of diversification remains inconclusive. According to Organizational Portfolio Analysis, firms are viewed as portfolios of business units, and the key to risk reduction...

Prior studies found that analyst forecast dispersion predicts future market returns. Some prior studies attribute this predictability to the short-sale constraints in the market according to the overpricing theory. Using the U.S. data from 1981 to 2014, we find that the return predictive power of aggregate dispersion only exists prior to 2005. The...

We examine the 21-minute flash crash in the spot rate for Pound Sterling (GBP/USD) in October 2016. During this period, the sterling price fell 9%. Proprietary data reported to the Financial Conduct Authority show that the round-trip costs of dealers are 60 times higher during the flash crash compared to normal times given liquidity constraints. Fu...

In Kwon and Satchell (2018), a theoretical framework was introduced to investigate the distributional properties of the cross-sectional momentum returns under the assumption that the vector of asset returns over the ranking and holding periods were multivariate normal. In this paper, the framework is extended to derive the corresponding results whe...

We look at a technique of classification, based on convergent and divergent patterns of returns that has been applied to hedge funds and alternative investments, and apply it to US equity investment styles with a particular interest in ESG. We extend the technique by looking at the impact of price changes on factor-mimicking portfolio weights. This...

Momentum-based investment strategies are widely used by practitioners, and their empirical properties have attracted considerable research interest from academics. This paper discusses some theoretical results on cross-sectional momentum, time-series momentum, and relative strength portfolio returns. We use simple examples to explain their relevanc...

The transmission of risk among financial institutions is not limited to systematic risk and interest rate factors, but is also affected by the interconnectedness of institutions through balance sheet exposures. It is recognized that univariate specifications have severe limitations in explaining banks observed performance and measurement of risk, a...

We challenge the academic consensus that estimation error makes mean–variance portfolio strategies inferior to passive equal-weighted approaches. We demonstrate analytically, via simulation, and empirically that investors endowed with modest forecasting ability benefit substantially from a mean–variance approach. An investor with some forecasting a...

The movement of international art prices in conjunction with other asset prices is preliminary to our understanding whether art is a luxury good. It is well known that there are linkages between art market prices and equity prices. However, less is known about the structure of dependence between these variables and the influence of gold prices and...

Recent literature implies that despite being more diversified, fund of hedge funds (FOFs) are exposed to tail risk. We propose an explanation for this phenomenon; tail risk is a systematic risk factor for hedge funds, which by construction, explains the higher portion of the returns in the diversified portfolios. Our study suggests that not only an...

We describe an investment portfolio optimization method which employs both linear and non-linear asymmetric dependence between assets, as derived by Anderson et al. (2015) and Lundin and Satchell (2018), in order to discriminate between profitable and unprofitable risk and exploit this difference in place of future return expectations. The techniqu...

Endowments have been accused of hoarding their wealth. However, the theoretically ideal spending plan remains unclear and, in practice, endowments follow a range of rules. Here we derive and estimate the optimal spending plans of an infinitely lived charity or endowment with an Epstein-Zin-Weil utility function, given general Markovian returns to w...

Given the key role of momentum-based trading strategies in active investing, assessing the merits of various trading strategies based on momentum should be of value to investors and managers alike. We summarise five momentum-based trading strategies which are well analysed in the academic literature, and introduce our new strategy named partial mom...

We assume that equity returns follow multi-state threshold autoregressions and generalize existing results for threshold autoregressive models presented in Knight and Satchell 2011. “Some new results for threshold AR(1) models,” Journal of Time Series Econometrics 3(2011):1–42 and Knight, Satchell, and Srivastava (2014) for the existence of a stati...

Although there is a vast empirical literature on cross sectional momentum (CSM) returns, there are no known analytical results on their distributional properties due, in part, to the mathematical complexity associated with their determination. In this paper, we derive the density of CSM returns in analytic form, along with moments of all orders, un...

We derive, from basic characteristics of Pearson’s product-moment correlation, an asymmetric method of dependence estimation which makes a distinction between desirable risk and undesirable risk. The method captures non-linear as well as linear dependence, but what distinguishes it most from other methods is its quantification of four bivariate cor...

We consider an extension of the traditional capital asset pricing model (CAPM) to incorporate duration as a general measure of the price volatility of a bond or equity security. Duration is a widely used measure to quantify and control interest rate risk exposure in asset management. Given the extremely low interest rate environment globally, inves...

Avoid downturn vulnerability by managing correlation dependency. Asymmetric Dependence in Finance examines the risks and benefits of asset correlation, and provides effective strategies for more profitable portfolio management. Beginning with a thorough explanation of the extent and nature of asymmetric dependence in the financial markets, this boo...

We investigate the role of individual capability and effort in the management of retirement ruin. In an experimental setting, we analyze how 854 defined contribution (DC) plan members reallocated wealth between a lifetime annuity and a phased withdrawal account when we increased the risk of exhausting the phased withdrawal account before the end of...

Retirement income stream products are difficult for consumers to choose because of their high perceived risk, irreversibility, high expenditure, little opportunity for social learning and distant consequences. Prior literature is unclear about consumers’ use of heuristics in decumulation decisions or whether sociodemographics can help identify vuln...

This paper provides a new approach to recover relative entropy measures of contemporaneous dependence from limited information by constructing the most entropic copula (MEC) and its canonical form, namely the most entropic canonical copula (MECC). The MECC can effectively be obtained by maximizing Shannon entropy to yield a proper copula such that...

We identify two sources of bias arising from time-series regression used to compute beta. This bias arises due to the classical error in variables problem and a ‘mechanical interaction’ which exists when the index comprises the asset of interest. Assuming that the market is proxied by a fixed-weight index, we demonstrate that the relative weighting...

One of the major difficulties in financial management is trying to integrate quantitative and traditional management into a joint framework. Typically, traditional fund managers are resistant to quantitative management, as they feel that techniques of mean-variance analysis and related procedures do not capture effectively their value added. Quanti...

Portfolio performance is usually evaluated against a prespecified benchmark portfolio. One most frequently used measure is tracking error (TE), sometimes defined as differences between portfolio returns and the benchmark portfolio returns. TE is simple and easy to calculate as well as a powerful tool in structuring and managing index funds. Two com...

This book presents 14 papers that have appeared in the Journal of Asset Management since its inception and have been frequently cited. I have ordered them by date of publication. Many of the papers are highly topical and any aspiring quant would benefit greatly from reading them. Whilst the book has not been compiled on a thematic basis, various th...

This book presents a series of contributions on key issues in the decision-making behind the management of financial assets. It provides insight into topics such as quantitative and traditional portfolio construction, performance clustering and incentives in the UK pension fund industry, pension fund governance, indexation, and tracking errors. Mar...

This paper considers liquidity as an explanation for the positive association between expected idiosyncratic volatility (IV) and expected stock returns. Liquidity costs may affect the stock returns, through bid-ask bounce and other microstructure-induced noise, which will affect the estimation of IV. We use a novel method (developed by Weaver, 1991...

Orthant probabilities applied in a two-dimensional framework are used to derive quadrant-conditional financial asset return correlations which fully capture both linear and non-linear components of co-variability. We investigate the potential for employing quadrant-conditional correlations in order to construct portfolios which generate a long-run...

We present new analytical results for the impact of portfolio weight constraints on an investor’s optimal portfolio when parameter uncertainty is taken into account. While it is well known that parameter uncertainty and imposing weight constraints results in reduced certainty equivalent returns, in the general case, there are no analytical results....

Efficient investment of personal savings depends on clear risk disclosures. We study the propensity of individuals to violate some implications of expected utility under alternative “mass-market” descriptions of investment risk, using a discrete choice experiment. We found violations in around 25% of choices, and substantial variation in rates of v...

This paper investigates why general Moving Average (MA) trading rules are widely used by technical analysts and others. We assume general stationary processes for prices and we derive the autocorrelation function for an MA trading rule. Based on our results, we conjecture that autocorrelation amplification is one of the reasons why such trading rul...

In this paper, we present a unified theory of linear smoothing, which looks at the problem from a time-series perspective. We use the term ‘conversion’ to refer to generic operations that create a difference between true returns and reported returns. ‘Smoothing’ occurs when that conversion process leads to a reduction in the variance of the reporte...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the properties of locally explosive regimes in the light of steady state results for threshold auto-regressive (TAR) models recently derived by Knight and Satchell (2011) [Journal of Time Series Econometrics, 3]. We study the conditions under which a steady state distribution of deviations of asset prices fro...

We investigate the role of capability and effort in the management of retirement ruin. In an experimental setting, we analyze how 854 DC plan members reallocated wealth between a lifetime annuity and a phased withdrawal account when we increased the risk of exhausting the phased withdrawal account before the end of life. We find that more numerate...

This article re-examines portfolio higher moments, skewness and kurtosis, to see whether this information can be used to improve portfolio construction and to diagnose any mis-specification of models for portfolio returns. In common with most discussion of quantitative portfolio risk, we assume a linear factor model framework, and some empirical ca...

This research studies whether individuals make choices consistent with expected utility maximization in allocating wealth between a lifetime annuity and a phased withdrawal account at retirement. The paper describes the construction and administration of a discrete choice experiment to 854 respondents approaching retirement. The experiment finds ov...

Choices of retirement income stream products pose the usual challenges associated with credence goods. Moreover, high perceived (and actual) risk, irreversibility of most purchases, high expenditure, little opportunity for social learning and distant consequences make these choices even more intimidating to consumers. Nevertheless, governments worl...

The returns decomposition framework of Vuolteenaho (2002) decomposes realized returns into lagged expected returns, cash-flow news and discount rate news items. This framework has further been used by Easton and Monahan (2005) for evaluating cost of capital measures. In this paper we present a new specification of the original of this which allows...

The notion of optimism or pessimism is defined in the psychology literature in terms of forecasting where the term is used more generally than in statistics. Here we use the theory of loss aversion combined with Bayesian forecasting to propose rather precise definitions of optimism and pessimism. Put simply, optimists are those who condition their...

The skew-normal distribution presents itself as a natural candidate for modelling conditional heteroskedasticity in financial time series since it generalises the normal distribution as a special case and departures from normality are skewed and leptokurtic. Conditional heteroskesdacity models are presented in addition to conditional skewness model...

Mean-variance optimisation has been roundly criticised by financial economists and practitioners alike, leading many to advocate a simple 1/N weighting heuristic. We investigate the performance of the Markowitz technique conditional on investor forecasting ability. Using a novel analytical approach, we demonstrate that investors with a modicum of f...

We examine a popular practitioner methodology used in the construction of linear factor models whereby particular factors are increased/decreased in relative importance within the model. This allows model builders to customise models and, as such, reflect those factors that the client/modeller may think important. We call this process Pragmatic Bay...

Performance indices for illiquid investments are known to suffer from returns smoothing, and the purpose of this paper is to investigate the presence and nature of such smoothing in the context of venture capital. We find that while the standard techniques may or may not indicate the presence of smoothing, significant evidence of smoothing exists w...

Diversification is a widely accepted outcome of mean-variance optimization assuming a riskless asset and uniform risk aversion. Conversely due to differing risk tolerances investors may choose equity only portfolios. We revisit the case for 100% long-term investment in equities. Assuming there is no long-run riskless asset, we solve the investor’s...

The purpose of this paper is to look for bubbles in the Art Market using a structure based on steady state results for TAR models and appropriate definitions of bubbles recently put forward by Knight, Satchell and Srivastava (2011). The usual method for investigating bubbles is to measure prices as deviations from fair value. We assess whether it i...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the properties of bubbles in the light of steady state results for threshold auto-regressive (TAR) models recently derived by Knight and Satchell (2011). We assert that this will have implications for econometrics. We study the conditions under which we can obtain a steady state distribution of asset prices u...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamics and statistics of style rotation based on the Barberis-Shleifer model of style switching. Investors in stocks regard the forecasting of style-relative performance, especially style rotation, as highly desirable but difficult to achieve in practice. Whilst we do not claim to be able to do this...

In this paper, we re-examine Mendelson’s model for the equilibrium price of a double-blind Dutch auction with Poisson-distributed stochastic demand and supply. We present a number of new results. We focus on the various ways that demand and supply cross. We identify four different categories of crossing, extending Mendelson’s results which are base...

This paper looks at various definitions of momentum then investigates a particular definition of momentum via a statis-tical model where the asset price is assumed to follow a log Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. Momentum is a term that is widely used to describe price behaviour but is not clearly defined in terms of statistical models. The results we d...

While much has been written on the vast topic of high-frequency trading (HFT), a great deal of the evidence has been contaminated by group self-interest. Furthermore, what constitutes a 'good' or a 'bad' is not clearly discussed. This paper presents an assessment of the costs and benefits of HFT and considers the more philosophical question as to w...

We derive expressions for optimal consumption for family trusts with random wealth and uncertain survival. Using UK birth statistics and the theory of branching processes, we compute size and survival probabilities for single- and multiple-branch families. Survival for a single-branch family is approximated by a Pareto distribution and consumption...

We propose the average F statistic for testing linear asset pricing models. The average pricing error, captured in the the statistic, is of more interest than the ex post maximum pricing error of the multivariate F statistic that is associated with extreme long and short positions and excessively sensitive to small perturbations in the estimates of...

Abstract This paper examines,the use of proxies (or reference variables) for the true factors in the ,Arbitrage Pricing Theory ,(APT). It generalises ,the work ,of Reisman(1992) and Shanken(1992) and shows that, when there are more reference variables than the true factors, the APT still holds. The possibility of fewer reference variables than the...

We characterize the stability properties of a heteroscedastic multi‐factor model of financial asset returns, with conditionally known factors and beta coefficients driven by general conditionally autoregressive processes. These processes generalize existing structures and address a number of empirical issues of current concern. Our analysis derives...

We propose newly developed unsmoothing techniques for appraisal-based real estate returns based on a regime-switching Threshold Autoregressive (TAR) model. We show that when true returns follow a TAR process, conventional linear autoregressive technique are misspecified and underestimate true variance. Two exogenous variables, equity returns and GD...

Financial literacy has become a prominent item on the public agenda worldwide, with its relevance very much underlined by the high-profile role played by consumer finance in global credit crises from 2007 onwards. Assumptions about the level of consumers’ financial literacy frequently influence the formulation of regulatory policy, whether tacitly...

The thrust of this paper is to develop a new theoretical framework, based on large deviations theory, for the problem of optimal asset allocation in large portfolios. This problem is, apart from being theoretically interesting, also of practical relevance; examples include, inter alia, hedge funds where optimal strategies involve a large number of...

We study the financial competence of Australian retirement savers using self-assessed and quantified measures. Responses to numeracy and basic and sophisticated financial literacy questions show large variation and compare poorly with international surveys. We graph the relationships between financial competence index scores and a wide range of dem...

Here we test the usefulness of a discrete choice experiment (DCE) for identifying individuals who consistently exhibit concave utility over returns to wealth, despite variations in the framing of risk. At the same time, we test the relative strengths of nine standard descriptions of investment risk. We ask a sample of 1200 retirement savings accoun...

We investigate risk presentations in retirement savings decisions using a discrete choice experiment where subjects choose between a bank account, a growth account and a 50:50 account. Using nine standard formats for investment risk, we analyze responses to risk per se and to format changes. Switching between formats changes individuals' investment...

The purpose of this paper is to derive some new results for threshold models. We consider AR(1) threshold models, with either self-exciting or exogenous triggers. In the latter case, we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a stationary distribution, which are wider than the sufficient conditions that are the consequence o...