Dead Alphas as Risk Factors

Abstract: We give an explicit algorithm and source code for extracting equity risk factors from dead (a.k.a. "flatlined" or "hockey-stick") alphas and using them to improve performance characteristics of good (tradable) alphas. In a nutshell, we use dead alphas to extract directions in the space of stock returns along which there is no money to be made (and/or those bets are too volatile). In practice the number of dead alphas can be large compared with the number of underlying stocks and care is required in identifying the aforesaid directions.