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Finance textbooks typically state that 8 to 20 stocks can provide adequate diversification for a portfolio. However, these recommendations usually assume a short time horizon such as one year. We examine 20‐year cumulative rates of return and ending wealth from an initial $100,000 investment allocated among 100 large U.S. stocks. Probability distributions obtained from simulations illustrate the shortfall risk faced by investors who own fewer titan 100 stocks. Five percent of the 20‐stock portfolios have ending wealth shortfalls exceeding 28%. These findings suggest that 8 to 20 stocks may be insufficient for long‐term investors.

Financial institutions that are marketing tax‐sheltered plans claim that the implied rates of return of tax‐sheltered strategies are superior to those rates of return realized from taxable plans. The purpose of our paper is to investigate that claim. To accomplish our purpose, we have developed a model to determine, under different assumptions of various tax rates, the incremental benefits and the implied rates of returns of tax‐deferred investments over the taxable investments. When the model is applied, the results show that tax‐deferred investments are not always superior. Consequently, investors may not have a choice but to select portfolios at the lower end of the efficient frontier.

The home is a substantial investment for most individual investors but the assessment of risk and return of residential real estate has not been well explored yet. The existing real estate pricing literature using a CAPM-based model generally suggests very low risk and unexplained excess returns. However, many academics suggest the residential real estate market is unique and standard asset pricing models may not fully capture the risk associated with the housing market. The purpose of this paper is to extend the asset pricing literature on residential real estate by providing improved CAPM estimates of risk and required return.

The improvements include the use of a levered β which captures the leverage risk and Lin and Vandell (2007) Time on Market risk premium which captures the additional liquidity risk of residential real estate.

In addition to presenting palatable risk and return estimates for a national real estate index, the results of this paper suggest the risk and return characteristics of multiple cities tracked by the Case Shiller Home Price Index are distinct.

The results show higher estimates of risk and required return levels than previous research, which is more consistent with the academic expectation that housing performs between stocks and bonds. In contrast to most previous studies, the authors find residential real estate underperforms based on risk, using standard financial models.