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Arman Hassanniakalager edited this page Jan 28, 2022 · 23 revisions

Welcome to the knockoff_index wiki!

What?

This project aims to generate positive alpha by using an econometric tool –knockoff filter as in Barber and Candes (2015). The practitioner shall set a fundamental factor (say BPS to market ratio) to select 50 US stocks as candidates to construct active portfolios. The portfolios are based on analysis of the past 10 years performance and rebalanced annually. The performance of portfolios are measured by excess return (relative to effective funds rate) and are tracked over 1996-2020.

Why?

  • This strategy considers both fundamentals and market performance.
  • This is a low-cost strategy to create a positive return in the stock market.
  • This strategy is reproducible for non-US stock markets. If you have such data and are keen please get in touch.
  • The investment strategy can be linked to certain investment factors or goals. For instance, the same approach could be used to consider firms with the highest ESG scores.

How?

The knockoff filter develops a regression model by controlling for false discoveries. This project uses four alternative US indexes – DJIA, S&P 500, NASDAQ, and Russell 1000 – to pick an optimal subset of qualified stocks. It is up to the practitioner to define the qualified stocks. For the moment the pool for qualified stocks is formed as 50 US stocks with the highest book-to-market. The stocks picked by the knockoff filter are used to build optimised portfolios with minimum portfolio variance. Flowchart of analysis

Deployment

See the codes and the accompanying read me file for a step-by-step guide to replicate the results.

Selected portfolios

NEW>>> Details of selected equities for each testing period (calendar years 1996-2021) are accessible under folder "Portfolios".

Backtest results

The figure below shows the value of a portfolio worth $100 portfolio on 31 December 1995 over backtest period. All portfolios are equal-weight. portfolio backtested vs benchmarks

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