Does the Fama-French three-factor model and Carhart four-factor model explain portfolio returns better than CAPM? : - A study performed on the Swedish stock market.

Sammanfattning: This essay will compare the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), Fama and French threefactor model and Carhart´s four-factor model, to see which of these models that can explain portfolio excess returns best on the Swedish stock market. This thesis will tempt to validate the three and four-factor models because of the limited amount of research done on the Swedish stock market. The results indicate that the three-factor model improves explanatory power for portfolio returns in comparison to the CAPM, and the four-factor model gives a small improvement in the explanatory power compared to the three-factor model. The results also indicate that all models have a low explanatory power when the market is volatile.