Multifactor Portfolio: Definition, Benefits, and Formula for Comparing Factors

Investment strategies have undergone drastic changes over the years. Investors are shifting from traditional investment strategies like asset allocation and stock picking to more modernistic and balanced approaches, like factor investing. With the rise of market complexities, modern-day investors have become smarter to opt for more comprehensive investing strategies to mitigate various market risks.

In modern times, data-based decision-making has taken center stage in the investment scenario. It enables investors to examine and adjust portfolios depending on real-time financial data. A popular example of such an approach is multi-factor investing, which enables investors to optimize their returns and address their risks more efficiently. That’s possible because they can combine more than a single factor into their intelligent investment strategies.

What is a Multi-Factor Model?

A multifactor model is a financial investing strategy that employs several factors in its estimations to explain individual security, equilibrium asset prices, a portfolio of securities, or market phenomena. This investing approach screens stocks for multiple factors or key characteristics, like quality, value, momentum, size, and minimum volatility.

The multi-factor investing strategy, as the name suggests, combines multiple investment factors to offer investors improved risk-adjusted returns. Historically, these factors have been seen to improve market returns. Since the multi-factor strategy offers diversification, it helps minimize the portfolio risk that arises from factor cyclicality.

A multifactor model helps reveal which factors have the highest impact on the asset’s price. Moreover, it works by comparing and analyzing two or more factors to determine the relationships between the associated variables and the final performance.

What are the Common Factors in a Multi-factor Model?

Some of the common factors used in multi-factor models are:

• Value: Investors prefer choosing stocks that are lower than their intrinsic values to seek undervalued investment opportunities.

• Quality: Every stock investor should prefer investing in companies that have powerful financial fundamentals and backgrounds.

• Momentum: Individuals should pick stocks that have shown significantly strong recent performance trends.

• Low Volatility: Stock investors are advised to find stocks with lower price volatility to alleviate the financial risks.

How Are Multi-Factor Portfolios Constructed?

Multi-factor models help construct multi-factor portfolios with specific characteristics, like risk, or as an index-tracking tool. One can build multi-factor portfolios using several methods, including combinational, intersectional, and sequential modeling. It often becomes challenging to decide how many factors are required to construct a multi-factor portfolio and which would be the most effective ones.

Furthermore, models are finalized based on historical numbers, which may not be able to predict future values accurately. These models also explain the weight of varying factors, thus determining which factor has the greatest impact on an asset’s value. Here is a multi-factor model formula that helps investors to compare different factors.

Ri = ai + _i(m) * Rm + _i(1) * F1 + _i(2) * F2 +...+_i(N) * FN + ei

Where ‘Ri’ signifies the return of security, and ‘Rm’ refers to the market return. Besides, the numbered ‘F’ refers to each of the used factors, ‘e’ is the error term, and ‘a’ signifies the intercept. Also, ‘_’ denotes the beta in relation to each factor that includes the market value (m).

3 Different Kinds of Multi-Factor Models

We can divide multifactor models into three categories:

1. Macroeconomic Models: Macroeconomic models help compare the return of a security concerning factors like inflation, employment, and interest rates.

2. Statistical Models: Statistical models help compare the returns of various securities, depending on every security’s statistical performance in and of itself. At times, historical data is required while using this kind of modeling.

3. Fundamental Models: Fundamental models are used to analyze the relationship between the underlying financials of a security and its return. Some of these financials may include market capitalization, earnings, and debt levels.

3 Multi-Factor Construction Models

Here are the three most commonly used models to build a multi-factor model.

1. Combination Model: In this model, several single-factor models are combined to construct a multi-factor model. Each single-factor model uses a single factor to differentiate between various stocks. For instance, stocks may be arranged based solely on momentum in the first pass. The consecutive passes will use different factors, like volatility, to help classify them and tell them apart.

2. Intersectional Model: In an intersectional model, the stocks are segregated based on their specific intersections for factors. For instance, these stocks may be classified and sorted based on intersections in momentum and value.

3. Sequential Model: In a sequential model, the stocks are sorted based on a single factor arranged in a sequential pattern to create a multi-factor model. For example, investors may sequentially analyze the stocks for a certain market capitalization depending on several factors, such as momentum and value.

5 Benefits of Multifactor Portfolio

You should opt for the multi-factor investing strategy because of the following potential benefits it offers its investors.

1. Minimized Concentration Risk: Investing in a single factor involves higher risks, so by diversifying your assets, you can mitigate the risks and concentration in one particular area.

2. Improved Diversification: It helps diversify the risks linked to specific factors by taking into account multiple factors, thus offering a more resilient and balanced portfolio.

3. Higher Adaptability to Various Market Conditions: Varying factors may perform more effectively under different market conditions. Multifactor investing also enables the portfolio to adapt to the ever-changing market dynamics.

4. Higher Potential for Risk-Adjusted Returns: A good mix of factors is proven to improve financial returns and helps manage the overall portfolio risk. It potentially enhances risk-adjusted performance.

5. Long-Term Focus: the systematic approach of a multifactor investing strategy sometimes depends on historical performance and rigorous market research. Therefore, it helps promote a long-term investment perspective for serious, long-term investors.

Conclusion 

A multifactor investment strategy provides a holistic and data-driven approach for modern-day investors willing to navigate several complex and volatile markets. The strategy allows them to compare multiple factors, thus offering an intelligent way to invest their assets across varying market conditions.

If you are a long-term investor, you can pick a more resilient portfolio by adopting the multi-factor investing style. This approach is designed to provide investors with the adaptability and diversification required to buffer against market volatility. Explore this new investing style to check whether it seems promising to meet your future financial goals.