Momentum Investing

From a purely statistical perspective, how many factors are optimal for explaining both time series and cross-sectional variations in stock anomaly/stock returns, and how do these statistical factors relate to stock/firm characteristics? In their July 2018 paper entitled “Factors That Fit the Time Series and Cross-Section of Stock Returns”, Martin Lettau and Markus Pelger search for the optimal set of equity factors via a generalized Principal Component Analysis (PCA) that includes a penalty on return prediction errors returns. They apply this approach to three datasets:

1. Monthly returns during July 1963 through December 2017 for two sets of 25 portfolios formed by double sorting into fifths (quintiles) first on size and then on either accruals or short-term reversal.
2. Monthly returns during July 1963 through December 2017 for 370 portfolios formed by sorting into tenths (deciles) for each of 37 stock/firm characteristics.
3. Monthly excess returns for 270 individual stocks that are at some time components of the S&P 500 Index during January 1972 through December 2014.

They compare performance of their generalized PCA to that of conventional PCA. Using the specified datasets, they find that: Keep Reading

Are there any gold trading strategies that reliably beat buy-and-hold? In their April 2018 paper entitled “Investing in the Gold Market: Market Timing or Buy-and-Hold?”, Viktoria-Sophie Bartsch, Dirk Baur, Hubert Dichtl and Wolfgang Drobetz test 4,095 seasonal, 18 technical, and 15 fundamental timing strategies for spot gold and gold futures. These strategies switch at the end of each month as signaled between spot gold or gold futures and U.S. Treasury bills (T-bill) as the risk-free asset. They assume trading frictions of 0.2% of value traded. To control for data snooping bias, they apply the superior predictive ability multiple testing framework with step-wise extensions. Using monthly spot gold and gold futures prices and T-bill yield during December 1979 through December 2015, with out-of-sample tests commencing January 1990, they find that:

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The many factor-based indexes and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that track them now available enable investors to construct multi-factor portfolios piecemeal. Is such piecemeal construction suboptimal? In their July 2018 paper entitled “The Characteristics of Factor Investing”, David Blitz and Milan Vidojevic apply a multi-factor expected return linear regression model to explore behaviors of long-only factor portfolios. They consider six factors: value-weighted market, size, book-to-market ratio, momentum, operating profitability and investment(change in assets). Their model generates expected returns for each stock each month, and further aggregates individual stock expectations into factor-portfolio expectations holding all other factors constant. They use the model to assess performance differences between a group of long-only single-factor portfolios and an integrated multi-factor portfolio of stocks based on combined rankings across factors. The focus on gross monthly excess (relative to the 10-year U.S. Treasury note yield) returns as a performance metric. Using data for a broad sample of U.S. common stocks among the top 80% of NYSE market capitalizations and priced at least $1 during June 1963 through December 2017, they find that: Keep Reading

A betting against beta (BAB) portfolio is long low-beta assets and short high-beta assets, with each side leveraged to a beta of one. Do strong past stock market returns (when investors tend to overweight high-beta stocks) predict an increase in BAB returns? In his June 2018 paper entitled “Time-Varying Leverage Demand and Predictability of Betting-Against-Beta”, Esben Hedegaard tests the prediction that BAB performs better in times and in countries after high past stock market returns in three ways: (1) regression of BAB returns versus past market returns; (2) sorts of BAB returns into fifths (quintiles) based on past market returns; and, (3) a timing strategy that is long BAB half the time and short BAB half the time based on detrended inception-to-date past market returns, scaled to 10% annualized volatility for comparability. Using daily and monthly data, including monthly BAB returns, for U.S. common stocks and the U.S. stock market since 1931 and for 23 other countries from as early as 1988, all through January 2018, he finds that: Keep Reading

A subscriber asked whether some different momentum metric might improve performance of the “Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy” (SACEMS), which each month reforms a portfolio of winners from the following universe based on total return over a specified lookback interval:

PowerShares DB Commodity Index Tracking (DBC)
iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index (EEM)
iShares MSCI EAFE Index (EFA)
SPDR Gold Shares (GLD)
iShares Russell 2000 Index (IWM)
SPDR S&P 500 (SPY)
iShares Barclays 20+ Year Treasury Bond (TLT)
Vanguard REIT ETF (VNQ)
3-month Treasury bills (Cash)

To investigate, we compare performances of the following alternative monthly momentum metrics to that of the original baseline metric:

• Average monthly total returns over the lookback interval.
• Slope of the dividend-adjusted price series over the lookback interval.
• Sharpe ratio of the monthly total return series over the lookback interval (using Cash return as the risk-free rate, and setting the Sharpe ratio of Cash at zero).

We focus on the equally weighted (EW) Top 3 SACEMS portfolio. We consider all the performance metrics used for the baseline, with emphasis on compound annual growth rates (CAGR) and maximum drawdowns (MaxDD). Using monthly dividend adjusted closing prices for the asset class proxies and the yield for Cash over the period February 2006 (the earliest all ETFs are available) through May 2018 (148 months), we find that: Keep Reading

Do currency exchange factor strategies usefully diversify a set of conventional asset classes? In their May 2018 paper entitled “Currency Management with Style”, Harald Lohre and Martin Kolrep investigate the systematic harvesting of currency exchange carry, value and momentum strategies, specified as follows and applied to the G10 currencies:

• Carry – buy (sell) the three equally weighted currency forwards with the highest (lowest) short-term interest rates, reformed monthly.
• Momentum – buy (sell) the three equally weighted currency forwards with the greatest (least) appreciation over the past three months, reformed monthly.
• Value (long-term reversion) – buy (sell) the three equally weighted currency forwards with the lowest (highest) change in their real exchange rates, based on purchasing power parity, over the past 60 months, reformed monthly.

They examine in-sample (full-sample) mean-variance relationships for these strategies to assess their value as diversifiers of five conventional asset classes (U.S. stocks, commodities, U.S. Treasury bonds, U.S. corporate investment-grade bonds and U.S. corporate high-yield bonds). They also look at potential out-of-sample benefits of these strategies based on information available at the time of each monthly rebalancing as additions to a risk parity portfolio of the five conventional assets from the perspective. For this out-of-sample test, they consider both minimum variance (tail risk hedging) and mean-variance optimization (return seeking) for aggregating the three currency strategies. Using monthly data for the selected assets from the end of January 1999 through December 2016, they find that: Keep Reading

Does rigorous re-examination of time series (intrinsic or absolute) asset return momentum confirm its statistical and economic significance? In their April 2018 paper entitled “Time-Series Momentum: Is it There?”, Dashan Huang, Jiangyuan Li, Liyao Wang and Guofu Zhou conduct a three-stage review of evidence for predictability of next-month returns based on past 12-month returns for a broad set of asset futures/forwards:

1. They first run a time series regression of monthly returns versus past 12-month returns for each asset to check predictability for individual assets.
2. They then run pooled time series regressions for asset returns scaled by respective volatilities as done in prior research, overall and by asset class, noting that pooled regressions can inflate conventional t-statistics and thereby incorrectly reject the null hypothesis. To correct for this predictability inflation, they apply three kinds of bootstrapping simulations.
3. Finally, they consider a simple alternative explanation of the profitability of an intrinsic momentum strategy tested in prior research that each month buys (sells) assets with positive (negative) past 12-month returns, with the portfolio weight for each asset 40% divided by its past annualized volatility (asset-level target volatility 40%).

Their asset sample consists of 55 contract series spanning commodity futures (24), equity index futures (9), government bond futures (13) and currency forwards (9). They construct returns for an asset by each day calculating excess return for the nearest or next-nearest contract and compounding to compute monthly excess return. Using daily excess returns for the 55 contract series during January 1985 through December 2015, they find that: Keep Reading

Do informed (noise) traders drive short-term stock return momentum (reversal)? In their April 2018 paper entitled “Short-term Momentum”, Mamdouh Medhat and Maik Schmeling investigate interaction of short-term momentum/reversal and recent share turnover for U.S. and international stocks. They define share turnover as prior-month trading volume divided by number of shares outstanding. Specifically, they consider four portfolios:

1. Conventional short-term reversal: Each month go long (short) the value-weighted tenth, or decile, of stocks with the lowest (highest) prior-month returns.
2. Conventional momentum: Each month go long (short) the value-weighted decile of stocks with the highest (lowest) returns from 12 months ago to one month ago.
3. Modified short-term reversal (short-term reversal*): Each month go long (short) the value-weighted decile of stocks with the lowest (lowest) share turnovers within in the presorted decile of stocks with the lowest (highest) prior-month returns. [Long and short sides are reversed from those in the paper so that the expected portfolio return is positive.] 
4. Short-term momentum: Each month go long (short) the value-weighted decile of stocks with the highest (highest) share turnovers within in the presorted decile of stocks with the highest (lowest) prior-month returns.

In other words, they pick stocks for portfolios 3 and 4 by first sorting into deciles based on prior-month return and then sorting each of these deciles into nested deciles sorted based on share turnover. Using data for a broad sample of U.S. common stocks since July 1962 and common stocks in 22 developed markets since January 1993, both through December 2016, they find that: Keep Reading

Is there an easy way for investors to capture jointly the most reliable stock return factor premiums? In their March 2018 paper entitled “The Conservative Formula: Quantitative Investing Made Easy”, Pim van Vliet and David Blitz propose a stock selection strategy based on low return volatility, high net payout yield and strong price momentum. Specifically, at the end of each quarter they:

1. Segment the then-current 1,000 largest stocks into 500 with the lowest and 500 with the highest 36-month return volatilities.
2. Within each segment, rank stocks based on total net payout yield (NPY), calculated as dividend yield minus change in shares outstanding divided by its 24-month moving average.
3. Within each segment, rank stocks based on return from 12 months ago to one month ago (with the skip-month intended to avoid return reversals).
4. Within the low-volatility segment, average the momentum and NPY ranks for each stock and equally weight the top 100 to reform the Conservative Formula portfolio.
5. Within the high-volatility segment, average the momentum and NPY ranks for each stock and equally weight the bottom 100 to reform the Speculative Formula portfolio.

Limiting the stock universe to the top 1,000 based on market capitalization suppresses liquidity risk. Limiting screening parameters to three intensely studied factors that require no accounting data mitigates data snooping and data availability risks. They focus on the 1,000 largest U.S. stocks to test a long sample, but also consider the next 1,000 U.S. stocks (mid-caps) and the 1,000 largest stocks from each of Europe, Japan and emerging markets. They further examine: (1) sensitivity to economic conditions doe the long U.S. sample; and, (2) impact of trading frictions in the range 0.1%-0.3% for developed markets and 0.2%-0.6% for emerging markets. Using quarterly prices, dividends and shares outstanding for the contemporaneously largest 1,000 U.S. stocks since 1926, European and Japanese stocks since 1986 and emerging markets stocks since 1991, all through 2016, they find that:

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Does adding international equity exposure and an escape to “cash” enhance performance of a relative momentum strategy that switches between stock and U.S. Treasury bond exchange-traded funds (ETF)? In his February 2018 paper entitled “Simple and Effective Market Timing with Tactical Asset Allocation Part 2 – Choices”, Lewis Glenn updates and considers two extensions to a strategy summarized in “Simplest Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy?” that each month holds SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) or iShares Barclays 20+ Year Treasury Bond (TLT) depending on which has the higher total return over the last three months. Specifically, the three strategies are:

1. Pair Switching (PS) – the original strategy as described above.
2. Quint Switching (QS) – adds iShares MSCI EAFE (EFA), PowerShares QQQ (QQQ) and iShares MSCI Emerging Markets (EEM) to the asset universe, each month picking the top performer.
3. Quint Switching Filtered (QSF) – modifies QS by adding a rule that if any of SPY, TLT, EFA, QQQ and EFA have non-positive returns over the lookback interval, switch to iShares Barclays 7-10 Year Treasury (IEF) . 

For all strategies, he includes 0.1% switching frictions for each buy and sell action. He focuses on compound annual growth rate (CAGR) and maximum drawdown (DDD_max) as key strategy performance metrics. He considers momentum ranking (lookback) intervals of 1 to 5 months to determine the optimal interval for the two strategy extensions. Using monthly dividend-adjusted closes of the specified funds during April 2004 through January 2018, he finds that:

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