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Why do equally weighted portfolios beat value-weighted ones?

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>31/03/2023
<mark>Journal</mark>Journal of Portfolio Management
Issue number5
Volume49
Number of pages21
Pages (from-to)167-187
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Equal-weighted (EW) portfolios have outperformed their value-weighted (VW) counterparts over multiple decades in various investment universes. This article investigates the long-term evidence for the EW–VW return spread in a broad US equity universe across multiple factor models. Unsurprisingly, EW investing comes with a highly significant positive size factor exposure. Given its acyclic rebalancing character, EW investing is also found to benefit from short-term reversal effects while suffering from negative momentum exposure. The authors also document a pronounced seasonality effect in EW investing that would see outsized returns in January. They revisit these findings in the more investable universe of S&P 500 stocks and discuss how to best harvest the embedded factor premiums.