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Factor Loadings and Benchmark Comparison

This notebook is constructed to quantify and visualize the factor exposures of selected Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) ETFs relative to broad-market investable index-funds benchmarks.
We use monthly total-return data from Yahoo Finance and the Fama–French factor datasets hosted in our public GitHub repository.

Note: Although the core analysis was handwritten, LLM coding agents were used to make the code more robust and better documented.

From the data, Fama-French 5-Factor + Momentum betas for each fund are estimated to get a sense of the fund's exposure to:

Cumulative performance of the fund is then plotted against the most relevant benchmark. VTI (U.S. total market) for US funds, or VXUS (ex-U.S. total market) for funds in international equity. The plots go as far back as the data go. For the ETFs where the predecessor mutual funds are known, the mutual fund data are used to extend the data period back further.


Data Sources

All factor data are drawn from the Ken French Data Library, curated and harmonized through our repository:

Dataset Source Coverage Universe
us_ff5_mom Fama–French U.S. 5-Factor + Momentum 1963–present U.S. Market
global_exus_ff5_mom Fama–French Developed ex-U.S. 5-Factor + Momentum 1990–present Developed ex-U.S. Markets

A copy of these datasets are kept in the FamaFrench repository, refreshed monthly via GitHub Actions to ensure data continuity. All series are monthly, in percent units, and indexed to month-end to align with typical fund reporting frequency.


Notes

All analyses use open data and reproducible code.
Factor datasets and scripts are provided under the MIT License.
Original Fama–French factors remain copyright of Kenneth R. French and must be cited as per the Data Library Terms of Use.


References

Fama, Eugene F., and Kenneth R. French. 1993. “Common Risk Factors in the Returns on Stocks and Bonds.” Journal of Financial Economics 33 (1): 3-56.
Fama, Eugene F., and Kenneth R. French. 2015. “A Five-Factor Asset Pricing Model.” Journal of Financial Economics 116 (1): 1-22.
Carhart, Mark M. 1997. “On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance.” Journal of Finance 52 (1): 57-82.
Fama, Eugene F., and Kenneth R. French. 2020. “The Value Premium.” Journal of Finance 75 (5): 2739-2779.

Factor Tables and Helper Function Definitions

We load Fama–French factor tables directly from a GitHub repository. We estimate factor loadings, summarize alphas and R², and compare growth of capital for the fund versus an appropriate benchmark.

Configuration

Set TICKER to the target fund. The benchmark will be detected automatically by comparing correlations with VTI and VXUS. No additional configuration is required.

Helper Functions

This section defines helpers for data acquisition, factor loading estimation, expense ratio retrieval, and plotting.

Data Acquisition and Model Choice

Factor Loadings Table

Net Annualized Return and Performance Plot

Expense Ratio Comparison

Interpretation and Closing Remarks

Factor regressions confirm that the DFA Core Equity ETFs exhibit systematic exposures to factors identified in the Fama-French framework.