The Tranching Dilemma [Quantpedia] (opens in new tab)

What if a meaningful part of a usual trading strategy’s performance has nothing to do with your signal—but simply when you rebalance? A recent paper written by Carlo Zarattini & Alberto Pagani highlights a largely underestimated risk in systematic investing: rebalance timing luck (RTL). For practitioners running rotation or factor strategies, this is not noise—it’s a structural source of dispersion. Using a concentrated U.S. equity momentum strategy, the authors show that identical portfolios...