Shilpa Peswani

The portfolio of low-volatility stocks earns high risk-adjusted returns over a full market cycle. The annual alpha spread of low versus high-volatility quintile portfolios is 25.53% in the Indian equity market for the period from January 2000 to September 2018. The low-volatility (LV) effect is not an overlap of other established factors such as size, value or momentum. The effect persists across various size buckets (market capitalization). The performance of the low-volatility effect within various size buckets is analyzed using three different portfolio formation methods. Irrespective of the method of portfolio construction, the low-volatility effect exists and it also generates economically and statistically significant risk-adjusted returns. The long-short portfolios across the study deliver exceptionally high and statistically significant returns accompanied by negative beta. The low-volatility effect is not restricted to small or illiquid stocks. The effect delivers the highest risk-adjusted returns for the portfolio consisting of largecap stocks. Though the returns of the portfolio comprising of large-cap LV stocks are lower than the returns of the portfolio comprising of small-cap LV stocks, its Sharpe ratio is higher because of less risky nature of large-cap stocks as compared to small-cap stocks. The LV portfolio majorly comprises of large-cap, growth and winner stocks. But within size buckets, large-cap and mid-cap low LV picks growth and winner stocks, while small-cap LV picks value stocks.

The study empirically investigates two theories that claim to explain the low-risk effect in Indian equity markets using a universe of stocks listed on the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) from January 2000 to September 2018. Leverage constraints and preference for lottery are two major competing theories that explain the presence and persistence of the low-risk effect. While the leverage constraints theory argues that systematic risk drives low-risk anomaly and therefore risk should be measured using beta, lottery demand theory claims that irrational investor’s preference towards stocks with lottery-like payoffs is responsible for the persistence of the low-risk effect, and risk should be measured by idiosyncratic volatility. However, given that most of the risk measures are highly correlated, it is not easy to precisely measure a specific theory’s contribution to explaining the low-risk effect. The study constructs the Betting against correlation (BAC) factor to measure the contribution of leverage constraints to the low-risk effect. It further constructs the SMAX factor to untangle the contribution of lottery preference theory. The results show that leverage constraints theory predominantly explains the low-risk effect in Indian markets. This study contributes significantly to the body of literature, as this is the first such study on the Indian market, one of the major emerging markets, especially when the debate on theories explaining the low-risk effect is yet to settle.