English

Betting Against (Bad) Beta

Portfolio Management 2024-09-04 v1

Abstract

Frazzini and Pedersen (2014) Betting Against Beta (BAB) factor is based on the idea that high beta assets trade at a premium and low beta assets trade at a discount due to investor funding constraints. However, as argued by Campbell and Vuolteenaho (2004), beta comes in "good" and "bad" varieties. While gaining exposure to low-beta, BAB factors fail to recognize that such a portfolio may tilt towards bad-beta. We propose a Betting Against Bad Beta factor, built by double-sorting on beta and bad-beta and find that it improves the overall performance of BAB strategies though its success relies on proper transaction cost mitigation.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2409.00416,
  title  = {Betting Against (Bad) Beta},
  author = {Miguel C. Herculano},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.00416},
  year   = {2024}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T18:29:53.298Z