Betting Against (Bad) Beta
Abstract
Frazzini and Pedersen (2014) Betting Against Beta (BAB) factor is based on the idea that high beta assets trade at a premium and low beta assets trade at a discount due to investor funding constraints. However, as argued by Campbell and Vuolteenaho (2004), beta comes in "good" and "bad" varieties. While gaining exposure to low-beta, BAB factors fail to recognize that such a portfolio may tilt towards bad-beta. We propose a Betting Against Bad Beta factor, built by double-sorting on beta and bad-beta and find that it improves the overall performance of BAB strategies though its success relies on proper transaction cost mitigation.
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