The impact of volatility scaling on portfolio performance

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the performance of volatility-adjusted portfolios for nine different factors and five different combination portfolios. I scale the portfolios by the inverse of the estimated variance. The variance is estimated using the previous month's realized variance, the Garch (1,1) method, and the GJR-Garch method. I find that the realized variance scaling method yields better alphas than the alternative Garch (1,1) and GJR-Garch methods. In addition, I find that there is little difference in Sharpe ratios across the scaling methods for the combination portfolios and that the volatility-adjusted portfolios tend to be positively skewed while the unmanaged portfolios are often negatively skewed.

Date of Award	20 Oct 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Paul Ehling (Supervisor)