5. Final remarks
This paper aims to identify a possible mismatch between the theory found in academic research and the practices of investment managers in Brazil. For this purpose, a bibliographical and field survey was carried out with 78 respondents to a questionnaire posted online, out of a total of 274 asset management companies. This study may be considered a pioneering work in portfolio construction, risk management and performance evaluation in Brazil. The results of the tests performed indicate that practice departs from theory in the country: of the eight hypotheses tested, we rejected seven hypotheses and partially rejected one hypothesis. One possible explanation is that few Brazilian academic studies consider transaction costs such as brokerage fees, bid-ask spreads and liquidity when studying the benefits of quantitative portfolio optimization. Santos and Tessari (2012) and Caldeira et al. (2013), for example, considered three types of rebalancing, daily, weekly and monthly, which would generate very high turnover and cost.