Portrait image for Jason Hsu

Jason Hsu

Adjunct Professor of Finance
“Anderson’s culture of helping students to stretch and excel is one of the best in the country. I know I am surrounded by colleagues who care about students and education.”
Areas of Expertise:
  • Asset Allocation
  • China
  • Chinese A-shares
  • Factor investing
  • Greater China
  • Investment Management
  • Quant
  • Quantamental Investing
  • Smart Beta
About
 

Biography

Jason Hsu (Ph.D. ’05) is founder, chairman and CIO of Rayliant Global Advisors, a quantitative asset manager based in Hong Kong, as well as co-founder of Smart Beta leader Research Affiliates. He works at the forefront of the smart beta revolution and is one of the world's most recognized thought leaders in that space. He is also the non-executive chairman of Henderson Rowe, a UK based Wealth Management Company.

An alumnus of UCLA Anderson, Hsu joined the faculty in the fall of 2008 and teaches Financial Policy for Managers and Quantitative Asset Management. "Anderson provides a wonderful balance for entrepreneurs seeking a rigorous framework to augment their business intuition and for professionals who want to broaden their perspectives on investments, marketing, strategy and management," he says. Hsu previously taught financial management and international finance as a visiting professor at UCI Paul Merage School of Business. He serves on the international faculty of the College of Commerce at Taiwan National Chengchi University (NCCU) and Kyoto University.

Hsu's areas of research include cross-sectional equity anomalies, international finance, asset return predictability, business cycles and optimal portfolio allocations. He is co-author of The Fundamental Index: A Better Way to Invest (Wiley 2008), which is available in English, Chinese and Japanese, and is a contributing author to nine handbooks on investment and risk modeling. Hsu has also published more than 40 peer-reviewed articles. He is an associate editor of Journal of Investment Management and serves on the editorial boards of Financial Analysts JournalJournal of Index Investing and Journal of Investment Consulting.

Hsu was selected as one of the 20 Rising Stars of Hedge Funds by Institutional Investors and has won two Graham & Dodd Scrolls, two Bernstein/Fabozzi/Jacob/Levy Awards and three William Sharpe Awards for his research. He is also a columnist for Caixin Media financial and business news (WeChat: caixinsmartbeta).

Education

Ph.D. Finance, 2005, UCLA Anderson School of Management

M.Sc. Stanford University

B.Sc. summa cum laude California Institute of Technology

Recognition

2015 Institutional Investor William F. Sharpe Award for Best Research Paper

2015 Journal of Portfolio Management 2014 Jacobs-Levy/Fabozzi-Bernstein Outstanding Paper Award

2014 Journal of Portfolio Management 2013 Jacobs-Levy/Fabozzi-Bernstein Outstanding Paper Award

2013 Institutional Investor William F. Sharpe Award for Best Research Paper

2012 Financial Analyst Journal Reader’s Choice Award

2012 CFA Institute 2011 Graham and Dodd Scroll Award for Outstanding Research

2009 Outstanding Service Award, UCLA Anderson MFE Program

2008 Institutional Investor’s Rising Star of Hedge Funds Award

2005 William F. Sharpe Award for Best New Research Paper on Indexing at the Superbowl of Indexing (with Rob Arnott)

Selected Publications

Fundamental Indexation, with Robert D. Arnott and Philip Moore, 2005, Financial Analysts Journal

Cap-Weighted Portfolios are Sub-Optimal Portfolios, 2006, Journal of Investment Management

Noise, CAPM and the Size and Value Effects, with Robert D. Arnott, 2008, Journal of Investment Management

A Model of R&D Valuation and the Design of Research Incentives with Eduardo Schwartz, 2008, Insurance: Mathematics and Economics

A Structural Model for Default Risk with Pedro Santa-Clara and Jesús Saá-Requejo, 2010, Journal of Fixed Income

Performance Attribution: Measuring Dynamic Allocation Skill with Vitali Kalesnik and Brett Myers, 2010, Financial Analysts Journal

Risk Parity Portfolio vs. Other Asset Allocation Heuristic Portfolios with Denis Chaves, Feifei Li and Omid Shakernia, 2011, Journal of Investing.

A Survey of Alternative Equity Index Strategies with Tzee-man Chow, Vitali Kalesnik, and Bryce Little, 2011, Financial Analyst Journal. [2011 CFA Graham and Dodd Scroll Award; 2011 FAJ Readers' Choice Award]

What Drives Equity Market Non-Participation? 2012, North American Journal of Finance and Economics.

Efficient Algorithms for Computing Risk Parity Portfolio Weights with Denis Chaves, Feifei Li and Omid Shakernia, 2012, Journal of Investing.

The Risk in Risk Parity: A Factor-Based Analysis of Asset-Based Risk Parity with Vineer Bhansali, Josh David, Graham Rennison and Feifei Li, 2012, Journal of Investing.

When Sell-Side Analysts Meet High-Volatility Stocks: An Alternative Explanation for the Low-Volatility Puzzle with Hideaki Kudo and Toru Yamada, 2013, Journal of Investment Management.

A Framework for Analyzing Asset Allocation Alpha with Omid Shakernia, 2013, Journal of Index Investing. [2013 William F. Sharpe Award for Best Paper]

The Surprising Alpha from Malkiel's Monkey and Upside-Down Strategies with Robert D. Arnott, Vitali Kalesnik and Phil Tindall, 2013, Journal of Portfolio Management, [2013 Q-Group Conference Selection; 2013 Jacob-Levy/Fabozzi-Bernstein Outstanding Paper Award]

What Drives the Value Effect? Risk versus Mispricing: Evidence from International Markets with Denis Chaves, Vitali Kalesnik and Joseph Shim, 2013, Journal of Investment Management, [2013 JOIM Conference Selection]

A Study of Low-Volatility Portfolio Construction Methods with Tzee-man Chow, Li-lan Kuo and Feifei Li, 2014, Journal of Portfolio Management, [2014 Jacob-Levy/Fabozzi-Bernstein Outstanding Paper Award]

The Folly of Blame: Why Investors Should Care About Their Managers' Culture with Jim Ware and Chuck Heisinger, 2015, Journal of Portfolio Management.

A Framework for Assessing Factors and Implementing Smart Beta Strategies with Vitali Kalesnik and Vivek Viswanathan, 2015, Journal of Index Investing. [2015 William Sharpe Award] Option Writing Strategies in a Low Volatility Framework with Xianfa (Donald) He and Neil Rue, 2015, Journal of Investing]

Can Noise Create the Size and Value Effect? with Robert D. Arnott, Jun Liu, and Harry Markowitz, 2015 Management Science. [2008 AFA Conference Selection; 2010 JOIM Conference Selection]]

Timing Poorly: a guide to generating poor returns while investing in successful strategies with Brett Myers and Ryan Whitby, 2016, Journal of Portfolio Management. [2016 JOIM Conference Selection].

The Self Fulfilling Prophecy of Popular Asset Pricing Model with Bradford Cornell 2016, Journal of Investment Management]

Will Your Factor Deliver? An Examination of Factor Robustness and Implementation Costs with Noah Beck, Vitali Kalesnik and Helge Kostka, 2016, Financial Analyst Journal. [2016 CFA Graham and Dodd Scroll Award]

The Performance Impact of Alternative Methods for Choosing Investment Managers with Bradford Cornell and David Nanigian, 2016, Journal of Portfolio Management.

Does Past Performance Matter in Investment Manager Selection with Bradford Cornell and David Nanigian, 2017, Journal of Portfolio Management.

Anomalies in Chinese A-Shares with Jason Hsu, Vivek Viswanathan, Michael Wang, and Phillip Wool, 2018, Journal of Portfolio Management.

Outperformance Through Investing in ESG in Need with Jason Hsu, Xiaoyang Liu, Keren Shen, Vivek Viswanathan, and Yanxiang Zhao, 2018, Journal of Index Investing.

What is Quality with Jason Hsu, Vitali Kalesnik, and Engin Kose , 2018, Financial Analysis Journal