The Low Volatility Anomaly in the U.S. and in India – An Evaluation in Light of Different Holding Periods and Regimes

July 18, 2013 Leave a comment

The Low Volatility Anomaly in the U.S. and in India – An Evaluation in Light of Different Holding Periods and Regimes

Raahat Achtani Independent

June 1, 2013

Abstract: 
This study evaluates the existence and extent of the low volatility anomaly in a developed market, the U.S and in an emerging market, India from 2004-2012 for holding periods of 1, 3 and 4.5 years and for two sub-periods 2004-2007 and 2008-2012, by creating equally weighted decile portfolios. The results show that the low volatility anomaly exists in India but does not exist in the U.S, which is inconsistent with the hypothesis that it exists in both markets. The results obtained are statistically significant at the 5% significance level. The volatility effect is stronger during the volatile period of 2008-2012 in both markets, and when comparing low volatility Decile 1 and high volatility Decile 10 portfolios, the effect gets stronger when holding period is increased from 1 year to 3 years. The implications are that in India, low volatility stocks give higher returns, whereas in the U.S, the use of low volatility stocks to give higher returns may not be useful even during a period in which the market is characterized by uncertainty.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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