Sharpening the Arithmetic of

Active Management

Lasse Heje Pedersen

November 2017

Professor of Finance, Copenhagen Business School and NYU

Principal, AQR Capital Management

Disclosures

The information set forth herein has been obtained or derived from sources believed by AQR Capital Management, LLC (“AQR”) to be reliable. However, AQR does not make any representation or warranty, express or implied, as to the information’s accuracy or completeness, nor does AQR recommend that the attached information serve as the basis of any investment decision. This document has been provided to you solely for information purposes and does not constitute an offer or solicitation of an offer, or any advice or recommendation, to purchase any securities or other financial instruments, and may not be construed as such. This document is intended exclusively for the use of the person to whom it has been delivered by AQR and it is not to be reproduced or redistributed to any other person. Please refer to the Appendix for more information on risks and fees. Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance.

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2

Academics vs. academics Academics vs. practitioners

Active vs. Passive: Efficient vs. Ineffective

Eugene Fama

Nobel Prize 2013

Robert Shiller

Nobel Prize 2013

Efficient! Inefficient!

William Sharpe

Nobel Prize 1990

Either way, passive wins on average

“Passive investing is worse

than Marxism”

Bernstein, L.P.

2016

I challenge all these views

3

4

Sharpe’s “Arithmetic of Active Management

For illustrative purposes only. Image courtesy of http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1990/sharpe-bio.html

William Sharpe

Nobel Prize 1990

It must be the case that (1) Before costs: average active return = passive return

(2) After costs: average active return < passive return

“ “ These assertions …

depend only on the laws of addition,

subtraction, multiplication and division.

Nothing else is required.

“ “

Sharpe’s “Arithmetic of Active Management

5 For illustrative purposes only. Image courtesy of http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1990/sharpe-bio.html

Focus first on returns before fees

Results for net returns follow from higher fees for active

Sharpe’s starting point:

market = passive investors + active investors

market return = average (passive return, active return)

Passive investing defined as holding market-cap weights

market return = passive return

Conclusion:

market return = passive return = average active return William Sharpe

Nobel Prize 1990

Sharpe’s arithmetic does not hold in the real world for

several reasons:

First Objection:

• Informed (i.e. good) vs. uninformed (i.e., bad)

managers

• Informed managers can outperform even if the

average doesn’t

Broader Objection:

• Can you be passive by being inactive?

6

Sharpening the Arithmetic of Active Management

For illustrative purposes only. Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance.

7

Even a “Passive” Investor Must Trade

Source: Sharpening the Arithmetic of Active Management (Pedersen 2016). Shows path of an investor starting in a given year (1926, 1946, 1966, 1986, 2006) with the market portfolio and not trading thereafter. Market portfolio is all stocks included in the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) database. For illustrative purposes only. Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance. Please read important disclosures in the Appendix.

The fraction of the market owned by an investor who starts off with the market portfolio but never trades

after that (i.e., no participation in IPOs, SEOs, or share repurchases). Each line is a different starting date.

Sharpening the Arithmetic of Active Management

Sharpe’s hidden assumption:

• Market never changes and passive investors trade to their market-cap weights for free

• This assumption does not hold in the real world:

− IPOs, SEOs, share repurchases, etc.

− Index inclusions, deletions

Relaxing this assumption breaks Sharpe’s equality

• When passive investors trade, they may get worse prices

• Passive investors deviate from “true market”

So active can be worth positive fees in aggregate

• Empirical questions:

− Do they actually add value?

− If so, how much? More than their fees?

• Adding value requires that the market is inefficient

8 For illustrative purposes only. Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance.

= ≠

For S&P 500 and Russell 2000 (Petajisto, 2011)

• Price impact from announcement to effective day has averaged:

− +8.8% and +4.7% for additions and −15.1% and −4.6% for deletions

• Lower bound of the index turnover cost:

− 21–28 bp annually and 38–77 bp annually

9

Trading by a “Passive” Investor: Indices

Source: Sharpening the Arithmetic of Active Management (Pedersen 2016). Turnover from 1926-2015 for equity indices (S&P500 and Russell 2000) and corporate bond indices (BAML investment grade and high yield indices), and turnover is computed as sum of absolute changes in shares outstanding as a percentage of total market value in the previous month. “Other” includes mergers that may not require trading. For illustrative purposes only. Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance. Please read important disclosures in Appendix.

Efficiently inefficient security and asset management markets

Ine

ffic

ien

t

Shiller (1980) Fama (1970)

Ine

ffic

ien

t

Definition: efficiently inefficient markets

• Inefficient enough that active investors are compensated for their costs

• Efficient enough to discourage additional active investing

Said differently:

• These markets must be difficult – but not impossible – to beat

• Grossman and Stiglitz (1980): “equilibrium degree of disequilibrium”

10

Security Markets vs. Asset Management Markets

Source: AQR, Efficiently Inefficient (Pedersen 2015).

Security markets Asset management markets

Eff

icie

nt

Fama (1970)

Shiller (1980) Fama (1970)

11

Efficiently Inefficient Markets

Source: AQR. For illustrative purposes only.

Information

Search

Informed investors

Good securities

Bad securities

Uninformed investors

Informed asset

managers

Uninformed asset

managers

Efficiently Inefficient: Security Markets

Several styles have historically outperformed

• Value, momentum, quality, carry, low-risk

Failure of the Law of One Price:

• Stocks: Siamese twin stock spreads

• Bonds: Off-the-run vs. on-the-run bonds

• FX: Covered interest-rate parity violations

• Credit: CDS-bond basis

Bigger anomalies when

• Information costs for managers are high

• Search costs for investors are high

Conclusion: security markets are

• Not fully efficient

• Efficiently inefficient

12 Source: AQR. For illustrative purposes only. Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance.

Informed investors

Good securities

Bad securities

Uninformed investors

Informed asset

managers

Uninformed asset

managers

“Old consensus” in the academic literature:

• Active mutual funds have no skill: Looks only at average manager, Jensen (1968), Fama (1970)

“New consensus” in the academic literature

• Skill exists among mutual funds and can be predicted: Fama and French (2010), Kosowski, Timmermann, Wermers, White (2006):

“We find that a sizable minority of managers pick stocks well enough to more than cover their costs. Moreover, the superior alphas of these managers persist”

• Skill exists among hedge funds: Fung, Hsieh, Naik, and Ramadorai (2008), Jagannathan, Malakhov, and Novikov (2010), Kosowski, Naik, and Teo (2007):

“Top hedge fund performance cannot be explained by luck”

• Skill exists in private equity and VC: Kaplan and Schoar (2005)

“We document substantial persistence in LBO and VC fund performance”

Conclusion: asset management market is efficiently inefficient Good managers exist, but picking them is difficult (requires recourses, manager selection team, due diligence, etc.

13

Efficiently Inefficient: Asset Managers

Source: AQR. For illustrative purposes only. Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance.

Informed investors

Good securities

Bad securities

Uninformed investors

Informed asset

managers

Uninformed asset

managers

Efficiently Inefficient: Investors

Institutional investors outperform retail investors

• Gerakos, Linnainmaa, and Morse (2015)

“Institutional funds earned annual market-adjusted returns of 108 basis points before fees and 61 basis points after fees”

Larger institutional investors outperform smaller ones

• Dyck and Pomorski (2015)

Follow the smart money

• Evans and Fahlenbrach (2012)

“Retail funds with an institutional twin outperform other retail funds by 1.5% per year”

Conclusion: efficiently inefficient investors

• Evidence that more sophisticated investors can

perform better

• These educate themselves and spend resources picking managers

14

Sources: Gerakos, Joseph, Juhani T. Linnainmaa, and Adair Morse (2016), “Asset manager funds,” working paper. Evans, Richard, and Rudiger Falhenbrach (2012), “Institutional Investors and Mutual Fund Governance: Evidence from Retail – Institutional Fund Twins”. Dyck, Alexander, and Lukasz Pomorski (2015), “Investor Scale and Performance in Private Equity Investments” and (2011), “Is Bigger Better? Size and Performance in Pension Management.” For illustrative purposes only. Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance.

Informed investors

Good securities

Bad securities

Uninformed investors

Informed asset

managers

Uninformed asset

managers

Implications of Sharpe’s zero-sum arithmetic:

• Active loses to passive after fees

• Money flows passive markets less efficient

• Surprisingly active still loses

• Eventually all money leaves active, sector is doomed

What happens if everyone is passive?

All IPOs successful regardless of price

• Everyone asks for their fraction of shares

Initial result: boom in IPOs

Eventual result: doom

• Opportunistic firms fail

• Equity market collapses

• People lose trust in financial system

• No firms can get funded

• Real economy falters

15

Conclusion: The future of asset management – Doom?

For illustrative purposes only. Image Courtesy of http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Wonder_Woman_Vol_1_601

Good

For Me

Good for

You

Conclusion: The Future of Asset Management

My arithmetic:

• Suppose active loses to passive after fees

• Money flows to passive markets less efficient

• Active becomes more profitable new equilibrium, no doom

The future of asset management

• Passive will continue to grow, but towards a level<100%

• Systematic investing and FinTech will continue to grow

• Active management will survive, pressure on performance and fees

Capital market is a positive-sum game

• Issuers can finance useful projects

• Passive investors get low-cost access to equity

• Active managers compensated for their information costs

16 For illustrative purposes only

Good

For Me

Good

for You

Disclosures

17

This document has been provided to you solely for information purposes and does not constitute an offer or solicitation of an offer or any advice or recommendation to purchase any securities or other

financial instruments and may not be construed as such. The factual information set forth herein has been obtained or derived from sources believed to be reliable but it is not necessarily all-inclusive

and is not guaranteed as to its accuracy and is not to be regarded as a representation or warranty, express or implied, as to the information’s accuracy or completeness, nor should the attached

information serve as the basis of any investment decision. This document is intended exclusively for the use of the person to whom it has been delivered and it is not to be reproduced or redistributed to

any other person. PAST PERFORMANCE IS NOT A GUARANTEE OF FUTURE PERFORMANCE.

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It is also possible to lose more than the initial deposit when engaging in leverage, trading futures and/or granting/writing options. All funds committed should be purely risk capital.

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