IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/ijtafx/v18y2015i06ns0219024915500375.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On The Role Of Skewness, Kurtosis, And The Location And Scale Condition In A Sharpe Ratio Performance Evaluation Setting

Author

Listed:
  • BENJAMIN R. AUER

    (Department of Finance, University of Leipzig, Grimmaische Straße 12, 04109 Leipzig, Germany)

Abstract

In recent years, researchers and practitioners have invested considerable effort in the development of new investment fund performance measures that account for mean, variance and the higher moments of the return distribution. To justify the application and necessity of the new performance measures in decision-making, some authors argue that the theoretical conditions required to use the Sharpe ratio are violated by high skewness and kurtosis in empirical asset return data. In this note, we highlight that high levels of skewness and kurtosis and even cross-sectional variations in skewness and kurtosis do not allow a decision-theoretic rejection of the Sharpe ratio. However, we also point out that while it is hard to discard the measure on decision-theoretic grounds, it can be challenged on technical grounds because it has several undesirable properties.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin R. Auer, 2015. "On The Role Of Skewness, Kurtosis, And The Location And Scale Condition In A Sharpe Ratio Performance Evaluation Setting," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 18(06), pages 1-13.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:ijtafx:v:18:y:2015:i:06:n:s0219024915500375
    DOI: 10.1142/S0219024915500375
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219024915500375
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S0219024915500375?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William N. Goetzmann & Jonathan E. Ingersoll, Jr. & Matthew I. Spiegel & Ivo Welch, 2002. "Sharpening Sharpe Ratios," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm29, Yale School of Management.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vukovic, Darko & Lapshina, Kseniya A. & Maiti, Moinak, 2019. "European Monetary Union bond market dynamics: Pre & post crisis," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 369-380.
    2. Auer, Benjamin R., 2018. "A note on Guo and Xiao's (2016) results on monotonic functions of the Sharpe ratio," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 289-290.
    3. Zhang, Hanxiong & Auer, Benjamin R. & Vortelinos, Dimitrios I., 2018. "Performance ranking (dis)similarities in commodity markets," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 115-137.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Getmansky, Mila & Lo, Andrew W. & Makarov, Igor, 2004. "An econometric model of serial correlation and illiquidity in hedge fund returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(3), pages 529-609, December.
    2. Rania HENTATI & Jean-Luc PRIGENT, 2010. "Structured Portfolio Analysis under SharpeOmega Ratio," EcoMod2010 259600073, EcoMod.
    3. Urcola, Hernan A. & Irwin, Scott H., 2006. "Has the Performance of the Hog Options Market Changed?," 2006 Annual meeting, July 23-26, Long Beach, CA 21479, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    4. Fischer, Thomas & Lundtofte, Frederik, 2020. "Unequal returns: Using the Atkinson index to measure financial risk," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    5. Benjamin Auer, 2013. "The low return distortion of the Sharpe ratio," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 27(3), pages 299-306, September.
    6. Cvitanic, Jaksa & Lazrak, Ali & Wang, Tan, 2008. "Implications of the Sharpe ratio as a performance measure in multi-period settings," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 1622-1649, May.
    7. Yang, Fan & Havranek, Tomas & Irsova, Zuzana & Novak, Jiri, 2022. "Hedge Fund Performance: A Quantitative Survey," EconStor Preprints 260612, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    8. Henn Overbeck, Jacqueline & Meier, Iwan, 2005. "Performance Analysis of Hedge Fonds," Working papers 2005/06, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    9. Marie Brière & Jean-David Fermanian & Hassan Malongo & Ombretta Signori, 2012. "Volatility Strategies for Global and Country Specific European Investors," Post-Print hal-01494509, HAL.
    10. Peter Temin & Hans-Joachim Voth, 2004. "Riding the South Sea Bubble," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1654-1668, December.
    11. Hilary Till, 2004. "Risk Measurement Of Investments In The Satellite Ring Of A Core-Satellite Portfolio: Traditional Versus Alternative Approaches," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 49(01), pages 105-130.
    12. Kabir, M. Humayun & Hassan, M. Kabir & Maroney, Neal, 2011. "International diversification with American Depository Receipts (ADRs)," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 98-114, January.
    13. Francesco Franzoni & José M. Marin, 2005. "Portable Alphas from Pension Mispricing," Working Papers 227, Barcelona School of Economics.
    14. Schuster, Martin & Auer, Benjamin R., 2012. "A note on empirical Sharpe ratio dynamics," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 124-128.
    15. André Lucas & Arjen Siegmann, 2008. "The Effect of Shortfall as a Risk Measure for Portfolios with Hedge Funds," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(1‐2), pages 200-226, January.
    16. Nicole Branger & Christian Schlag, 2007. "Option Betas: Risk Measures For Options," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 10(07), pages 1137-1157.
    17. Kent Smetters & Xingtan Zhang, 2013. "A Sharper Ratio: A General Measure for Correctly Ranking Non-Normal Investment Risks," NBER Working Papers 19500, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Peter Carr & Liuren Wu, 2004. "Variance Risk Premia," Finance 0409015, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Eric Benhamou, 2018. "Connecting Sharpe ratio and Student t-statistic, and beyond," Papers 1808.04233, arXiv.org, revised May 2019.
    20. Carolina Fugazza & Massimo Guidolin & Giovanna Nicodano, 2009. "Time and Risk Diversification in Real Estate Investments: Assessing the Ex Post Economic Value," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 37(3), pages 341-381, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:ijtafx:v:18:y:2015:i:06:n:s0219024915500375. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/ijtaf/ijtaf.shtml .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.