A Multi-Factor Stock Market Model with Regime-Switches, Student's T Margins, and Copula Dependencies

Sammanfattning: Investors constantly seek information that provides an edge over the market. One of the conventional methods is to find factors which can predict asset returns. In this study we improve the Fama and French Five-Factor model with Regime-Switches, student's t distributions and copula dependencies. We also add price momentum as a sixth factor and add a one-day lag to the factors. The Regime-Switches are obtained from a Hidden Markov Model with conditional Student's t distributions. For the return process we use factor data as input, Student's t distributed residuals, and Student's t copula dependencies. To fit the copulas, we develop a novel approach based on the Expectation-Maximisation algorithm. The results are promising as the quantiles for most of the portfolios show a good fit to the theoretical quantiles. Using a sophisticated Stochastic Programming model, we back-test the predictive power over a 26 year period out-of-sample. Furthermore we analyse the performance of different factors during different market regimes.