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Adam Upenieks

PhD, MSc, MA

Positions

PhD Candidate

Haskayne School of Business, Finance [FNCE]

Contact information

Background

Educational Background

MSc. Finance, Bayes Business School , 2020

MA Economics, University of Waterloo , 2019

BA Economics , University of Waterloo , 2017

CV

Biography

Adam Upenieks is a PhD Candidate in Finance at the Haskayne School of Business (2021 - present). He earned his MSc from Bayes Business School in the United Kingdom, and his MA and BA in Economics from the University of Waterloo. Adam's research interests in Asset Pricing include the application of machine learning, and how information is incorporated into asset prices.

Research

Areas of Research

Asset Pricing

Courses

Course number Course title Semester
FNCE 445 Futures and Options Winter 2024

Projects

The Elusive CAPM: Idiosyncratic News and the Tilt of the Security Market Line

The capital asset pricing model (CAPM) performs poorly empirically, as market risk (beta) is weakly related to average excess returns. In low news periods, identified using idiosyncratic news from the Dow Jones Newswire, market betas have a strong and positive relation with average returns. On days with news, firms with higher betas earn lower returns. Removing returns around news improves the pricing of beta unconditionally. Hybrid ``betting-against-beta'' trading strategies exploiting these periods earn 28% annually. I conclude that waves of high aggregate idiosyncratic news obscure the performance of the CAPM at the firm level and significantly influence asset pricing.

Awards

  • Alberta Graduate Excellence Scholarship , Province of Alberta . 2023

More Information

Supervisor: Miguel Palacios