Harmful diversification: evidence from alternative investments

Platanakis, E., Sakkas, A. and Sutcliffe, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0187-487X (2019) Harmful diversification: evidence from alternative investments. The British Accounting Review, 51 (1). pp. 1-23. ISSN 0890-8389 doi: 10.1016/j.bar.2018.08.003

Abstract/Summary

Alternative assets have become as important as equities and fixed income in the portfolios of major investors, and so their diversification properties are also important. However, adding five alternative assets (real estate, commodities, hedge funds, emerging markets and private equity) to equity and bond portfolios is shown to be harmful for US investors. We use 19 portfolio models, in conjunction with dummy variable regression, to demonstrate this harm over the 1997-2015 period. This finding is robust to different estimation periods, risk aversion levels, and the use of two regimes. Harmful diversification into alternatives is not primarily due to transactions costs or non-normality, but to estimation risk. This is larger for alternative assets, particularly during the credit crisis which accounts for the harmful diversification of real estate, private equity and emerging markets. Diversification into commodities, and to a lesser extent hedge funds, remains harmful even when the credit crisis is excluded.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/79123
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Henley Business School > Finance and Accounting
Publisher	Elsevier
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