High Returns from Low Risk: A Remarkable Stock Market Paradox

HIGH RETURNS from LOW RISK 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