Barbara Ostdiek is an Associate Professor of Finance and Academic Director of the El Paso Corporation Finance Center at the Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University. Barbara’s research interests focus on portfolio formation, information flow and volatility, and volatility modeling. Her research has been published in top academic journals including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. A member of the Jones School faculty since 1994, Barbara has taught a variety of courses, most recently Portfolio Management, Economic Environment of Business, International Finance, and Applied Risk Management. She received the Jones Graduate School Excellence in Teaching Award in 2001, 2004, and 2009.
Barbara serves on the Board of Trustees for the USAA Investment Management Company, she is a member of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Investment Committee, and a co-captain of the Classy Chassis Ride & Drive. Barbara graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.A. in International Affairs from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1986. She received a Ph.D. in Business Administration (Finance) from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University in 1994. Prior to returning to school for her Ph.D., Barbara was a portfolio manager and was awarded the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.
Professor Ostdiek's research, focusing on volatility and information flow, indicates that informational market linkages can be quite strong, that volatility is predictable, and that modeling cross-market linkages and volatility dynamics has economic value for market participants. In recent work on active trading strategies, Barbara demonstrates that simple timing strategies based on naïve estimates of risk and return add value over the equally-weighted “1/N” portfolio. This research indicates that reliance on ad hoc portfolio diversification is not optimal and that past risk and return dynamics can be exploited for valuable information regarding portfolio rebalancing.
Research papers are available at SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=42798