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Stock weighting and nontrading bias in estimated portfolio returns
Author(s) -
Gray Philip
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
accounting and finance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.645
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-629X
pISSN - 0810-5391
DOI - 10.1111/acfi.12014
Subject(s) - weighting , econometrics , portfolio , stock (firearms) , economics , basis point , financial economics , momentum (technical analysis) , stock market , excess return , interest rate , monetary economics , engineering , geography , physics , mechanical engineering , context (archaeology) , archaeology , acoustics
Liu and Strong (2008) note that researchers often employ a simple (but incorrect) averaging approach that induces significant error into estimated buy‐and‐hold portfolio returns. This study explores the additional challenges that arise when stocks are subject to nontrading. We develop a decomposition of the total bias in estimated return into the components attributable to the stock weighting approach and the treatment of nontrading. While the latter is shown to be negligible, the former can approach 150 basis points per month. Our empirical analysis of Australian equities shows that the simple averaging approach tends to overstate the size and book‐to‐market effects, and understate the momentum effect.