Does Value Averaging Strategy Improve Investment Performance? Evidence from the Korean Fund Market

This study analyzes whether a value averaging (VA) strategy, which adjusts the amount of investment each period to achieve the target amount of investment in risk assets, as a modified form of a dollar cost averaging (DCA) strategy, improves investment performance. Using 18.5 years of fund market data in Korea from 2001 to June 2019, we compare the investment performance of VA strategy relative to two alternatives: DCA strategy, which invests a certain amount in each period, and Buy-and-Hold (BH) strategy, which refers to half-and-half asset allocation between risky and risk-free assets and has an expected return which is the same as that of DCA in the ex-ante sense. Our historical performance analysis reveals that the VA strategy has lower average return and higher standard deviation compared to the BH strategy and has lower average return and lower standard deviation compared to the DCA strategy. These findings are in stark contrast to the claims made by advocates of VA strategy that the strategy improves investment performance.