Believing "high-risk equals high-reward" is holding your portfolio hostage
High Returns from Low Risk proves that low-volatility, low-risk portfolios beat high-volatility portfolios hands down, and shows you how to take advantage of this paradox to dramatically improve your returns. Investors traditionally view low-risk stocks as safe but unprofitable, but this old canard is based on a flawed premise; it fails to see beyond the monthly horizon, and ignores compounding returns. This book updates the thinking and brings reality to modelling to show how low-risk stocks actually outperform high-risk stocks by an order of magnitude. Easy to read and easy to implement, the plan presented here will help you construct a portfolio that delivers higher returns per unit of risk, and explains how to achieve excellent investment results over the long term.
Do you still believe that investors are rewarded for bearing risk, and that the higher the risk, the greater the reward? That old axiom is holding you back, and it is time to start seeing the whole picture. This book shows you, through deep historical simulation, how to reap the rewards of smarter investing.
- Learn how and why low-risk, low-volatility stocks beat the market
- Discover the formula that outperforms Greenblatt's
- Construct your own low-risk portfolio
- Select the right ETF or low-risk fund to manage your money
Great returns and lower risk sound like a winning combination — what happens once everyone is doing it? The beauty of the low-risk strategy is that it continues to work even after the paradox is widely known; long-term investment success is possible for anyone who can shake off the entrenched wisdom and go low-risk. High Returns from Low Risk provides the proof, model and strategy to reign in your exposure while raking in the profit.
Editorial ReviewsFrom the Inside Flap
If you lie awake at night worrying about your retirement, paying for your children's schooling or your general financial security, High Returns from Low Risk is your solution to a sound sleep. This unique wealth management guide is written by a fund manager who oversees billions of dollars in portfolio assets, and who wants to share his approach with individual investors, advisors, bankers and everyone interested in the stock market. Despite all the appeal exciting stocks have, his evidence-based strategy repeatedly proves low-risk stocks historically beat high-risk ones going back well over eighty years. By how much? Over eighteen times the returns!
Growing wealth doesn't have to be stressful, and it shouldn't be risky when you get High Returns from Low Risk
'The low-risk effect, that is the idea that historically, unlike many well-known theories, average return across stocks doesn't appear to go up with most standard measures of risk, is one of the most important "anomalies" in modern finance. Pim van Vliet is one of the pioneers in studying this effect and using it to improve investor portfolios. Anyone interested in systematic equity investing should carefully read this important book.'
—Clifford S. Asness, Founder, Managing Principal and Chief Investment Officer at AQR Capital Management, USA
'Pim van Vliet's experience as one of the pioneers of low-volatility investing gives him unique insight into one of the most fascinating economic anomalies of our time. The idea that risk, properly defined, generates a positive return, is one of those ideas that becomes even more profound when we learn it is not true. There is no cosmic risk karma that pays people for taking risk, and this book will help people understand what types of investment risks generate premiums, and which will actually cost you money.'
—Eric Falkenstein, Author of The Missing Risk Premium: Why Low Volatility Investing Works, USA
From the Back Cover
'Pim has been a pioneer in turning academic insights on the low-risk equity anomaly into a multi-billion investment portfolio. This book presents his magnum opus in a clear and powerful way. It's definitely a worthy read.'' —Gerben de Zwart, Head of Quantitative Equities, APG Asset Management, The Netherlands
EVIDENCE-BASED INVESTING EVERYONE CAN UNDERSTAND
For generations, investors have believed that risk and return are inseparable. But is this really true? In High Returns from Low Risk, Pim van Vliet, Founder and fund manager of the multi-billion dollar Conservative Equity funds at Robeco and expert in the field of low-risk investing, combines the latest research with stock market data going back to 1929 to prove that investing in low-risk stocks gives surprisingly high returns, significantly better than those generated by high-risk stocks.
Together with investment specialist Jan de Koning, he presents this counterintuitive story as a modern upbeat stock market equivalent of 'the tortoise and the hare'. This book helps you to construct your own low-risk portfolio, select the right ETF, or find an active low-risk fund in order to profit from this paradox. It also explains why investing in low-risk stocks works and will continue to work, even once more people become aware of the paradox. It's also a personal story, one that links our human nature and behavior to a prudent and successful investment formula. High Returns from Low Risk provides all the tools one needs to achieve excellent, long-term investment results.
'I loved reading this book. It's educational, humble, funny and philosophical; quite rare attributes for a financial book. In today's world, where individuals will have to take more and more responsibility for their savings, this book serves a need: providing sound and pragmatic advice about how to manage one's savings. Furthermore, this book puts forward an inconvenient truth about investment that is close to my heart: more risk doesn't necessarily mean more return. On the contrary, it is sound and proactive risk management that permits investment portfolios to have sustainable long-term returns.'
—Fiona Frick, CEO, Unigestion, Switzerland
'Explaining a financial theory to a broad audience is no easy task, and refuting one of the oldest and best known investment theories—higher risk for higher returns—harder still. But Pim (and Jan) manage to convince the reader in this easy-to-read and accessible book of their approach. They not only explain low-risk investing, but offer readers a whole set of investment (and even life) lessons at the same time. I would recommend that every investor read this book. It may not turn all readers into low-risk investors, but it certainly will offer valuable insights into the risk/return question.'
—Ronald van Genderen, CFA, Manager Research Analyst at Morningstar, The Netherlands
- Hardcover: 168 pages
- Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (January 17, 2017)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1119351057
- ISBN-13: 978-1119351054