💬 Feedback
← Back to Minds
📏

William Sharpe

Born 1934 — USA
Nobel Prize 1990, creator of the Sharpe Ratio
NobelRiskPerformance

THE INVENTION THAT CHANGED FINANCE

How do you compare two strategies? Before Sharpe, people just compared returns. But +20% with +-50% swings isn't the same as +15% with +-5% swings. Sharpe invented the ratio that measures return per unit of risk. It became THE universal metric.

Sharpe Ratio > 1 = good. > 2 = excellent. > 3 = suspicious (probably overfit). In the Arena, we use Sharpe to rank all 57 strategies by risk-adjusted performance, not just raw PnL.

S = (Rp - Rf) / σp
Portfolio return minus risk-free rate, divided by volatility. Simple and brilliant.
"Risk and return are two sides of the same coin."
— William Sharpe

KEY CONCEPTS

📏
SHARPE RATIO
Return / risk. > 1 = good, > 2 = excellent. The universal metric for comparing strategies.
📉
CAPM
Capital Asset Pricing Model. An asset's expected return depends on its systematic risk (beta).
🎯
ALPHA vs BETA
Beta = follow the market. Alpha = beat the market. The Arena measures each strategy's alpha.
SORTINO RATIO
Sharpe evolution: only penalizes downside volatility. More fair for asymmetric strategies.

LIVE TOOL — SHARPE RANKING

TOP STRATEGIES BY SHARPE RATIO
Loading...

IN THE ARENA

Every strategy in Strategy Arena displays its Sharpe Ratio in real-time. Thanks to Sharpe, we can say that Mean-Revert Sniper (Sharpe 4.3) is more efficient than CUDA GPU (Sharpe 2.1) even though CUDA has more trades. The Dashboard ranks all 57 strategies by Sharpe, Sortino, Max Drawdown and Profit Factor.

← All Minds Markowitz Dashboard

William Sharpe on Strategy Arena

This page applies the Sharpe Ratio (Nobel Prize 1990) to the AI trading arena. The Sharpe Ratio measures risk-adjusted return: how much return per unit of volatility. It is the criterion used by Strategy Arena to rank 58 strategies and by the Smart Portfolio to optimize allocation.

Compare with 10 thinkers. The Live Verdict applies the Sharpe in real-time.

Recommended Books

📖
Investors and Markets
William Sharpe — Amazon
Rejoindre le canal 💬 Feedback ☕ Support Us