CFA Society of Columbus May 10 Luncheon
*Please be sure to review the agenda (at the bottom of the page) for this event as the time/schedule will be different and extended.
Please join the CFA Society of Columbus in welcoming Kenneth Ronald "Ken" French the Roth Family Distinguished Professor of Finance at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, as our guest speaker.
Which Factors?
Researchers have identified hundreds of return factors, and they continue to search for more. How should investors decide which factors actually capture meaningful differences in expected returns? In this presentation, Professor Ken French offers a framework to assess the likelihood that a proposed factor explains important differences in expected returns. French also discusses how an investor might judge whether a factor premium is likely to persist out of sample and, if it will, how the expected future premium compares to the premium reported by researchers.
Kenneth Ronald "Ken" French (born March 10, 1954) is the Roth Family Distinguished Professor of Finance at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College. He has previously been a faculty member at MIT, the Yale School of Management, and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is most famous for his work on asset pricing with Eugene Fama. They wrote a series of papers, that cast doubt on the validity of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), which posits that a stock's beta alone should explain its average return. These papers describe two factors above and beyond a stock's market beta which can explain differences in stock returns: market capitalization and "value". They also offer evidence that a variety of patterns in average returns, often labeled as "anomalies" in past work can be explained with their Fama-French three-factor model.
Professor French was the vice president of the American Finance Association in 2005 and was the organization's president in 2007. Also in 2007, Professor French was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS).
He obtained a B.S. in 1975, from Lehigh University in mechanical engineering. He then earned an M.B.A. in 1978, an M.S. in 1981 and a Ph.D. in finance in 1983, all from the University of Rochester. In 2005, French became a Rochester Distinguished Scholar.
French is a board member of Dimensional Fund Advisors in Austin, Texas, where he also works as Consultant and Head of Investment Policy.
Agenda
12:15-1:00 - Networking Lunch
1:00-2:15 - Presentation By Mr. French
2:15- Q&A
RSVP's due by COB Monday, May 7, 2018.