Fama-French Three-Factor Model: Anamika & Vedika
Fama-French Three-Factor Model: Anamika & Vedika
Fama-French Three-Factor Model: Anamika & Vedika
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OUTLINE
Background
Construction of portfolios
CAPM Model: describes the relationship between systematic risk and expected return for assets, particularly
stocks.
Used for pricing risky securities and generating expected returns for assets given the risk of those assets and cost
of capital.
An extension to asset pricing model CAPM
Fama and French (1992, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2006, 2014)
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DEFINING THE FIVE RISK FACTORS: 3 STOCK MARKET FACTORS
(1) Market risk premium (proxy: excess market return Rm-Rf) as in CAPM
(1) Unexpected changes in interest rates: ‘TERM’ serves as a proxy for this :
Difference between Monthly long-term government bond return and the one month
treasury bill rate(measured at the end of previous month)
(2) Default risk: ‘DEF’ proxy for this : Difference between return on a market
portfolio of long-term corporate bonds and long –term government bonds returns.
SIZE AND VALUE: ARE THESE RISK FACTORS?
SMB= 1/3 (Small Value+Small Neutral+Small Growth)- 1/3(Big value+Big Neutral+Big Growth)
HML= ½ (Small Value+Big Value)- ½ (Small Growth+Big Growth)
MODEL/ FORMULA (FAMA-FRENCH, 1992)
Bonds
The average excess returns on the government and corporate bond
portfolios in table 2 are small/weak. All the average excess bond returns
are less than 0.15% per month,
Table 2
DEPENDENT RETURNS
Stocks:
Wide range of average excess returns, from 0.32% to 1.05% per month.
Confirms the Fama-French (1992a) evidence that there is a negative relation
between size and average return, and there is a stronger positive relation between
average return and book-to-market equity.
Table 2
EXPLANATORY RETURNS
The average value of RM-RF (the average premium per unit of market Beta) is 0.43% per month. This is large
from an investment perspective (about 5% per year), but it is a marginal 1.76 standard errors from 0.
The average SMB return (the average premium for the size-related factor in returns) is only 0.27% per month
(t = 1.73).
The book-to-market factor HML. produces an average premium of 0.40% per month (t = 2.91), that is large in
both practical and statistical terms.
Table 2
CONTD..
The average risk premiums for the term-structure factors are trivial relative to those of the stock-
market factors. TERM (the term premium) and DEF (the default premium) are on average 0.06% and
0.02% per month; both are within 0.3 standard errors of 0.
The low means and high volatilities of TERM and DEF will be advantageous for explaining bond
returns. But the task of explaining the strong cross-sectional variation in average stock returns falls on
the stock-market factors. RM-RF, SMB, and HML which produce higher average premiums.
COMMON VARIATION IN RETURNS
The slopes and R2 values are direct evidence on whether different risk factors
capture common variation in bond and stock returns. .
The purpose is to test for overlap between the stochastic processes for stock and
bond returns. Do bond-market factors that are important in bond returns capture
common variation in stock returns and vice versa?
Individually considered bond-market and stock-market factors.
Variation in returns- TERM factor
Variation in returns- DEF Factor
STOCK MARKET FACTORS
Use of F-statistic of Gibbons, Ross. and Shanken (1989) to formally test the hypothesis that a set of explanatory variables produces
regression intercepts for the 32 bond and stock portfolios that are all equal to 0.
Gibbons, Ross & Shanken (1989) test,which tests whether the factors fully explain the expected returns of various portfolios.
The tests reject the hypothesis that the term-structure returns, TERM and DEF suffice to explain the average returns on bonds and
stocks at the 0.99 level.
The F-test rejects the hypothesis that RM-RF suffices to explain average returns at the 0.99 level.
The large positive intercepts for stocks observed when SMB and HML are the only explanatory variables produce an F-statistic that
rejects the zero-intercepts hypothesis at the 0.98 level.
The joint test that all intercepts for the seven bond and 25 stock portfolios are 0 rejects at about the 0.95 level.
The three stock-market factors, RM-RF, SMB, and HML, produce the best-behaved intercepts.
APPLICATIONS OF THE PAPER
Selecting Portfolios:
- The exposures of a candidate portfolio to the five risk factors can be estimated with a regression of the
portfolio’s past excess returns on the five explanatory returns.
- The regression slopes and the historical average premiums for the factors can then be used to estimate the
expected return on the portfolio.
- Using the results for portfolio formation and performance evaluation is even simpler for portfolios that
hold only stocks.
Evaluating Portfolio Performance:
- If the results of the paper are taken at face value, evaluating the performance of a managed portfolio is
straightforward.
- The intercept in the time-series regression of the managed portfolio’s excess return on the five
explanatory returns is the average abnormal return needed to judge whether a manager can beat the
market, that is, whether s/he can use special information to generate average returns.
CONTD..