Dfa Case Essay

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Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) is an investment management firm that prides itself on basing its investment strategies on sound academic research. Many of the best-known finance research papers of the past two decades (especially those by Eugene Fama and Kenneth French, who work closely with DFA) have led to DFA investment strategies. DFA began as a small-stock fund, attempting to take advantage of the "size affect" (excess performance of small stocks) that had been discovered by a number of academic researchers. Later, DFA added "value" strategies to its mix of offerings. After academic research documented superior performance by value stocks in a multitude of countries, DFA began to create a variety of international value-stock and small-stock investment funds. The company was highly successful, despite missing out on the great 1990s growth-stock boom. DFA's assets under management grew from $8 billion to $40 billion between 1991 and 2002. With value stocks having performed well in the first two years of the new decade, DFA is experiencing continued growth of its investor base and is now seeking new areas in which it can add value for investors while continuing to claim to have no special "stock-picking" ability. Dimensional Fund Advisors Case 1. Describe the investment strategy employed by DFA. Does DFA consider itself an active or passive manager? What aspects of its strategy are active? What aspects are passive? DFA’s investment strategy was centered on academic research, specifically on the findings of Banz’ “size effect” and Fama and French’s “book-to-market effect.” In Banz’ research, he found that small stocks consistently outperformed large stocks over the entire history of the stock market from 1926 through the late 1970s. See Exhibit 1 for overview of growth between large and small cap stocks. In the Fama & French paper, they found that: 1)

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