“You are never going to get on the cover of Bloomberg Magazine unless you take big risks,” says Eric Falkenstein, a Quantitative Strategist at Pine River Capital Management in New York. And therein lies the quite rational, all-to-human reason why investors place big bets on high-volatility stocks: The misguided belief that they promise a big pay-off—and greater glory. In Explanations for the Volatility Effect: An Overview Based on the CAPM Assumptions, Falkenstein and his co-authors David Blitz, Head of Quantitative Equity Research at Robeco Asset Management, and Pim van Vliet, a Portfolio Manager for low-volatility strategies at Robeco examine the theoretical assumptions behind the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and how violations of these assumptions in practice explain the volatility effect.