New research from Fisher's Alessandro Melone and his colleagues supports the long-held belief that portfolio rebalancing has become so predictable — and the resulting flows so gargantuan — that hedge funds and prop trading firms can profitably front-run these regular rebalancing flows.

Research by Finance Professor Itzhak Ben-David details the ebbs and flows of the investor sentiment cycle is crucial to understanding when investment firms such as BlackRock launch narrowly focused and more expensive products.

Many target date funds rebalance at regular calendar intervals, such as monthly or quarterly, or depending on weight deviation. This knowledge, though, allows Wall Street traders to front-run the rebalancing transactions of these funds, including many pension funds, according to research by Fisher's Alessandro Melone and his colleagues.

Momentum stocks have historically beaten the stock market by a large margin — until recently. A study by Finance Professor Itzhak Ben-David and his colleagues found that a driver of the decline is a change that Morningstar instituted in how it calculates mutual funds' star ratings.

Speculators are capitalizing on predictable timing of routine trades that are intended to rebalance large portfolios such as public pension funds in the U.S., according to new research by Alessandro Melone, assistant professor of finance, and his colleagues.

A new paper authored by a trio of researchers including Assistant Professor of Finance Alessandro Melone reveals the cost to pension funds and other market participants whose rebalancing activity is scheduled and predictable.

Rebalancing is a key tool used by investors to maintain specific portfolio ratios. New research from Fisher’s Alessandro Melone and his colleagues, however, reveals an unintended consequence of rebalancing ― one that costs investors billions of dollars each year.

New research from Fisher's Shaojun Zhang and a colleague finds that fluctuations in demand for oil is a key driver of movement of so-called "greeniums," pricing benefits that investors are willing to pay extra or accept lower yields for in exchange for sustainable impact.

Research from Fisher's Itzhak Ben-David helps illustrate part of the growing focus on mutual fund ratings, which may not be accurate ways to evaluate a fund's performance.  

Despite the strong showing of politically-themed ETFs, finance researcher Itzhak Ben-David says thematic ETFs usually underperform. His research that shows specialized ETFs tend to trail market benchmarks by about 30% over five years.

A new study from Assistant Professor of Finance Shaojun Zhang looks at decisions by companies to adopt environmentally friendly business practices ― and the impact of these practices on shareholder value and market performance.

Finance Professor Itzhak Ben-David spoke with the Swedish House of Finance to discuss exchange-traded funds (ETFs), including their growing popularity, the risks of specialized ETFs, how they increase price volatility and market-wide impacts, and what’s next for the ETF space.

An analysis of a recent research paper from Finance Professor Itzhak Ben-David has important takeaways for investment professionals and finance academics, including: more emphasis by investors on multiples and short-term forecasts of earning and less on expected long term growth of earning and required rates of return. For academics, research must recognize and account for the differential between financial market behavior in theory and the real world.

Thematic ETFs can be a minefield for investors, and Professor Itzhak Ben-David's recent insights provide a timely warning. His research highlights the pitfalls of specialized ETFs (including real estate ETFs), which often lose 6% annually in their early years, as they are launched in response to investor over-excitement.

Institutional backers have reaped rewards while bringing funding and efficiency to some of the world's biggest airports, but not in this country. Now, that may be about to change. Research by Finance Professor Michael Weisbach shows that privatization of airports can lead to positive changes without sacrifices to safety.

Above-average management fees for overvalued investments are a toxic mix, according to research focused on ETFs, conducted by Itzhak Ben-David, the Neil Klatskin Chair in Finance and Real Estate, PhD candidate Byungwook Kim, and their colleagues.

The number of publicly listed companies has been nearly halved since the 1990s. A big reason, according to René Stulz, the Everett D. Reese Chair of Banking and Monetary Economics at Fisher, has been a shift in what companies are producing.

Brian Mittendorf, the H.P. Wolfe Chair in Accounting at Fisher, says an “interesting partnership” has developed between charities and financial-services companies. At the center of this relationship: shared opposition to proposed rules by the U.S. Treasury Department that would penalize certain payments from charitable funds to wealth advisers who steer the investments.

Allocators want a piece of the private credit pie, but new research from Fisher's Isil Erel, the David A. Rismiller Chair in Finance, Michael Weisbach, the Ralph Kurtz Chair in Finance, and Assistant Professor of Finance Thomas Flanagan, shows that their investments might not pay off.

In a new study released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Fisher's Michael Weisbach, the Ralph D. Kurtz Chair in Finance; Isil Erel, the David A. Rismiller Chair in Finance at Fisher; and Assistant Professor of Finance Thomas Flanagan argue that direct lenders on the whole hardly produce any alpha — or extra compensation over broad market benchmarks.

Private markets have plenty of detractors. For many, their worst drawback is high fees. A research paper co-authored by Michael Weisbach, the Ralph Kurtz Chair in Finance, found that private equity funds that specialize in buying out companies tend to see their net returns reduced by 6 percentage points annually because of management fees and interest costs.

Why have momentum stocks performed so poorly over the last two decades? Itzhak Ben-David, the Neil Klatskin Chair in Finance and Real Estate, suggests that a change instituted by Morningstar in how it rates mutual funds could be part of the reason.

After years of concerns about how quickly the money reserved for charity gets distributed and whether donor-advised funds need to operate more transparently, proposed new federal regulations are now pending. Though the regulations would not create new requirements for how rapidly these funds distribute money, they do provide some new guidelines for what uses for DAFs are allowed by law, writes Brian Mittendorf, the H.P. Wolfe Chair in Accounting.

Research by Itzhak Ben-David, the Neil Klatskin Chair in Finance and Real Estate, and his colleagues show how thematic ETFs could be harbingers for the launch of Bitcoin ETFs.

The SEC’s approval of bitcoin ETFs arguably is the occasion to sell, not buy. This is especially important for retirement investors to consider because the existence of a bitcoin ETF should not change the cryptocurrency’s underlying value, according to Itzhak Ben-David, the Neil Klatskin Chair in Finance and Real Estate at Fisher.