The mosaic permutation test: an exact and nonparametric goodness-of-fit test for factor models

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Spector, Asher, Barber, Rina Foygel, Hastie, Trevor, Kahn, Ronald N., Candès, Emmanuel
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Spector, Asher
Barber, Rina Foygel
Hastie, Trevor
Kahn, Ronald N.
Candès, Emmanuel
author_facet Spector, Asher
Barber, Rina Foygel
Hastie, Trevor
Kahn, Ronald N.
Candès, Emmanuel
contents Financial firms often rely on fundamental factor models to explain correlations among asset returns and manage risk. Yet after major events, e.g., COVID-19, analysts may reassess whether existing risk models continue to fit well: specifically, after accounting for a set of known factor exposures, are the residuals of the asset returns independent? With this motivation, we introduce the mosaic permutation test, a nonparametric goodness-of-fit test for preexisting factor models. Our method can leverage modern machine learning techniques to detect model violations while provably controlling the false positive rate, i.e., the probability of rejecting a well-fitting model, without making asymptotic approximations or parametric assumptions. This property helps prevent analysts from unnecessarily rebuilding accurate models, which can waste resources and increase risk. To illustrate our methodology, we apply the mosaic permutation test to the BlackRock Fundamental Equity Risk (BFRE) model. Although the BFRE model generally explains the most significant correlations among assets, we find evidence of unexplained correlations among certain real estate stocks, and we show that adding new factors improves model fit. We implement our methods in the python package mosaicperm.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_15017
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The mosaic permutation test: an exact and nonparametric goodness-of-fit test for factor models
Spector, Asher
Barber, Rina Foygel
Hastie, Trevor
Kahn, Ronald N.
Candès, Emmanuel
Methodology
62H25 (Primary) 62G10, 62G09 (Secondary)
Financial firms often rely on fundamental factor models to explain correlations among asset returns and manage risk. Yet after major events, e.g., COVID-19, analysts may reassess whether existing risk models continue to fit well: specifically, after accounting for a set of known factor exposures, are the residuals of the asset returns independent? With this motivation, we introduce the mosaic permutation test, a nonparametric goodness-of-fit test for preexisting factor models. Our method can leverage modern machine learning techniques to detect model violations while provably controlling the false positive rate, i.e., the probability of rejecting a well-fitting model, without making asymptotic approximations or parametric assumptions. This property helps prevent analysts from unnecessarily rebuilding accurate models, which can waste resources and increase risk. To illustrate our methodology, we apply the mosaic permutation test to the BlackRock Fundamental Equity Risk (BFRE) model. Although the BFRE model generally explains the most significant correlations among assets, we find evidence of unexplained correlations among certain real estate stocks, and we show that adding new factors improves model fit. We implement our methods in the python package mosaicperm.
title The mosaic permutation test: an exact and nonparametric goodness-of-fit test for factor models
topic Methodology
62H25 (Primary) 62G10, 62G09 (Secondary)
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.15017