Resumen
This paper aims to statistically compare the performance of two hedging strategies for Brazilian fixed income portfolios, with discrete rebalancing. The first hedging strategy matches duration, and hence it considers only small parallel changes in the yield curve. The alternative methodology ponders level, curvature and convexity shifts through a factor model. We first estimate the yield curve using the polynomial model of Nelson & Siegel (1987) and Diebold & Li (2006) and then immunize the fixed income portfolio using Litterman & Scheinkman?s (1991) hedging procedure. The alternative strategy for portfolio immunization outperforms duration matching in the empirical exercise we contemplate. Additionally, we show that rebalancing the hedging portfolio every month is more efficient than at other frequencies.