Me ha extrañado mucho encontrar aquí la defensa de una estrategia descartada una y otra vez a lo largo de los años por tanto académicos como profesionales de la inversión (y eso que rara vez se ponen de acuerdo).
Lo único que se consigue es aumentar la desviación standard del rendimiento, pero el efecto sobre éste en si es nulo.
Aquí un poco de bibliografía para el que no se haya dado cuenta inmediatamente que esta estrategia sólo maquilla -que no disminuye- el riesgo. Me temo que en inglés, como el la mayoría de estos casos:
Peter W. Bacon, Richard E. Williams, and M. Fall Ainina, "Does Dollar-Cost Averaging Work for Bonds?," Journal of Financial Planning, June 1997. This article compares lump-sum investment in bonds vs. doing it gradually over time. "Does dollar-cost averaging work for bonds? Based on historical evidence, the major conclusion of our study is that an investor is better off, in terms of return and risk-adjusted performance, investing the lump sum immediately. "
George M. Constantinides, "A Note on the Suboptimality of Dollar-Cost Averaging as an Investment Policy," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, June 1979, pp. 443-450 (652kb). An outstanding theoretical discussion of the issue.
John G. Greenhut, "Mathematical Illusion: Why Dollar-Cost Averaging Does Not Work," Journal of Financial Planning, October 2006, pp. 76-83. This article examines the oft-cited reason to use dollar-cost averaging — that this causes the average price per share to be lower than the average share price. "We found instead that the price variations that would be expected for fundamentally valued stocks is precisely the pattern that negates the advantage DCA commonly has been illustrated to hold. .... Whether DCA is practiced by investors should be based on their psychological makeup (for example, aversion to regret) and their outlook for stocks, not on an overly simplistic and misleading representation of how stock prices vary. "
John R. Knight and Lewis Mandell, "Nobody Gains from Dollar Cost Averaging: Analytical, Numerical, and Empirical Results," Financial Services Review, 2(1) 1993, pp. 51-61. "Our results strongly imply that the additional cost and effort associated with Dollar Cost Averaging cannot be justified for any investor, regardless of degree of risk aversion. With the possible exception of its promoters, nobody gains from Dollar Cost Averaging."
Karyl B. Leggio and Donald Lien, "Does loss aversion explain dollar cost averaging?," Financial Services Review, 10 (2001), pp. 117-127. Perhaps the premier reason that some advocate dollar cost averaging is its ability to avoid the regret that might come from investing a lump sum "at the worst possible time." This paper concludes that even taking this into account, DCA results in sub-par performance when compared to lump sum investing.
Karyl B. Leggio and Donald Lien, "Comparing Alternative Investment Strategies Using Risk-Adjusted Performance Measures," Journal of Financial Planning, January 2003, pp. 82-86. This article also appeared as "An Empirical Examination of the Effectiveness of Dollar-Cost Averaging Using Downside Risk Performance Measures," Journal of Economics and Finance, Summer 2003, pp. 211-223. This paper compares dollar cost averaging to lump sum investing using three different measures of risk-adjusted return: Sharpe Ratio, Sortino Ratio, and Upside Potential Ratio. "...performance metrics that more accurately reflect investor risk and return such as the Sortino ratio and the UPR also fail to consistently support DCA as a preferred investing strategy."
Richard E. Williams and Peter W. Bacon, "Lump Sum Beats Dollar Cost Averaging," Journal of Financial Planning, April 1993, pp. 64–67 (1.8mb). Also in Journal of Financial Planning, June 2004, pp. 92-95. This article compares lump-sum investment in the stock market vs. doing it gradually over time. "... the odds strongly favor investing the lump sum immediately [as opposed to spreading it out over equal installments]."
