Testing equality of modified Sharpe ratios
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David Ardia
a,b,
⇑
, Kris Boudt
c,d
a
Département de finance, assurance et immobilier, Université Laval, Québec, Québec, Canada
b
Centre interuniversitaire sur le risque, les politiques économiques et l’emploi, Québec, Québec, Canada
c
Solvay Business School, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
d
Faculty of Economics and Business, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
article info
Article history:
Received 27 November 2014
Accepted 26 February 2015
Available online 5 March 2015
JEL classification:
C12
C15
C22
C52
Keywords:
Bootstrap test
Hedge fund
Modified Sharpe ratio
Non-normal returns
Performance measurement
abstract
The modified Sharpe ratio is commonly used to evaluate the
risk-adjusted performance of an investment with non-normal returns,
such as hedge funds. In this note, a test for equality of modified
Sharpe ratios of two investments is developed. A simulation study
demonstrates the good size and power properties of the test. An
application illustrates the complementarity between the Sharpe
ratio and modified Sharpe ratio test for performance testing on
hedge fund return data.
Crown Copyright Ó 2015 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights
reserved.
1. Introduction
Ledoit and Wolf (2008) recommend a bootstrap method to test equality of Sharpe ratios between
two funds, accounting for the finite sample properties of the return distribution and for the potential
autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity. If one of the funds has non-normally distributed returns,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2015.02.008
1544-6123/Crown Copyright Ó 2015 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
q
We are grateful to the Editor (Ramazan Gençay), an anonymous referee, Peter Carl, Michel Dubois, Ivan Guidotti, Lennart
Hoogerheide, Simon Keel, Jeremy Kolly, Doug Martin, Enrico Schumann and participants at various conferences and seminars
for useful comments. Financial support from aeris CAPITAL AG, IFM2 Montréal, and the Dutch science foundation is gratefully
acknowledged. The views expressed in this paper are the sole responsibility of the authors. Any remaining errors or
shortcomings are the authors’ responsibility.
⇑
Corresponding author at: Département de finance, assurance et immobilier, Université Laval, Québec, Québec, Canada.
E-mail addresses: david.ardia@fsa.ulaval.ca (D. Ardia), kris.boudt@vub.ac.be (K. Boudt).
Finance Research Letters 13 (2015) 97–104
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Finance Research Letters
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/frl