page_title: Low-volatility investing
section_title: Performance
hierarchical_section_title: Low-volatility investing / Performance
caption_attribution_description: English: 10 US stock portfolios sorted on volatility 1929-2018 paradoxinvesting
context_page_description: Low-volatility investing is an investment style that buys securities with low volatility and avoids securities with high volatility. This investment style exploits the low-volatility anomaly. According to financial theory risk and return should be positively related, however in practice this is not true. Low-volatility investors aim to achieve market-like returns, but with lower risk. This investment style is also referred to as minimum volatility, minimum variance, managed volatility, smart beta, defensive and conservative investing.
context_section_description: This investment style is slowly becoming accepted, as many low-volatility strategies have been able to deliver good real-life performance. Several low-volatility strategies have existed for more than 10 years. Most academic studies and most low-volatility indices are based on simulations. Some studies go back 90 years and show that low-volatility stocks beat high-volatility stocks over the very long run (see image). Since low-volatility securities tend to lag during bull markets and tend to reduce losses in bear markets, a full business cycle is needed to assess performance. Over a shorter time period like one year, Jensen's alpha is useful to calculate performance. This performance metric corrects the performance of for market beta risk. For example, when a low-volatility strategy has a beta of 0.7 and the market is up by 10% the expected return is 7%. Lower risk should give lower return. If the actual return is 10%, then Jensen’s alpha is 3%.
caption: 10 portfolios of stocks sorted on volatility: US 1929-2018.
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