Ian Khrashchevskyi
Ian Khrashchevskyi with his thesis ”Essays on Risks in Investment Strategies”.

Prior joining PhD programme, Ian worked as a teaching assistant at Stockholm Business School and actively participated in teaching process of finance courses. As a PhD student, Ian continued his involvement in teaching and supervised Bachelor thesis.
During his PhD studies, Ian made a research visit to Warwick Business School and his research was presented at international conferences in finance (e.g. IFABS, EFA European Conference, EFMA). He also has a publication in Journal of Asset Management.

 

 

 

Three questions to Ian:

How did you choose your subject for the dissertation?

Ian defends his dissertation

I was always interested in financial markets and financial risks, but the real “a-ha” moment was during the work on my Master thesis, where I analyzed risk propagation during 2008 financial crisis. So, when I applied for the PhD programme, I had an idea on what I would like to work on. I am very happy that the PhD studies gave me an opportunity to get inspired, meet top academics in my field and develop my ideas into PhD dissertation.

What has been easy and difficult in the work on the dissertation?

I think the hardest was coming up with a good and precise research question. It is a time consuming process which requires a lot of reading, learning, discussion and interpretation. It is very exciting and stimulating process, but one need to put a good amount of effort in it. On the other hand, if you got it right, everything else becomes easier and flows.

Can you tell us something about the conclusions you made in your dissertation?

The dissertation was conducted remotely via Zoom.

In my dissertation, I took a broad perspective on risks people and institutions face during investment decisions. It analyzes risks that come from the market and investable assets together with the risk that come from the investors’ behavior. The results can be applicable for practitioners as well as people, who casually invest in funds and/or stocks.
If I am to generalize my dissertation in three practical conclusions, they would be as follows. First, educating oneself in finance and investing seem to pay off. Second, one should consider risks when the times are good; when the times are bad it may be too late. Third, each portfolio is different and one should take it into account when designing appropriate risk management strategy.

 

Abstract

This dissertation contains three articles, which investigate different types of risks investors encounter during the investment process.

Article I investigates the relation between macroeconomic risk and higher-moment moment risk premia. This article uses the existing methodology on higher-moment swaps to estimate variance and skewness swaps and develops new methodology for kurtosis swaps. The expected excess returns on such swaps are interpreted as higher-moment risk premia. The findings suggest that macroeconomic risk is relevant for higher-moment risk premia and that higher-moment swaps are good candidates for hedging macroeconomic risk.

Article II investigates the hedging and safe haven properties of gold and US Treasury bonds for different investment styles. The results show that hedging and safe haven properties depend on investment styles and change over time. US Treasury bonds exhibit more stable hedge properties than gold over time and should therefore be preferred by investors who hold market portfolios. The main lesson of the article is that investment style should be taken into consideration while formulating appropriate risk management and diversification strategies.

Article III investigates how attention to different types of information are related to retail investors' portfolio performance. The findings suggest that paying attention has a differential impact on performance depending on the type of information. Portfolio monitoring and attention to financial education are positively related to performance, while attention to analytical information is detrimental to performance. The attention to technical analysis is negatively related to performance of actively trading investors, but improves the performance of less frequent traders.