Recent Investing Research

Each year in December, Barron’s publishes its list of the best 10 stocks for the next year. Do these picks on average beat the market? To investigate, we scrape the web to find these lists for years 2011 through 2026, calculate the associated calendar year total return for each stock and calculate the average return… Keep Reading

Having been trained by humans on human information, do Large Language Models (LLM) behave like human investors? In their January 2026 paper entitled “Artificially Biased Intelligence: Does AI Think Like a Human Investor?”, Javad Keshavarz, Cayman Seagraves and Stace Sirmans investigate whether 48 widely used LLMs exhibit any of 11 known cognitive biases in financial… Keep Reading

Have we entered an era when only the biggest firms can afford the massive investments needed to field hot, globally scalable technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence)? To investigate, we ask Grok to identify the 10 largest NASDAQ firms by market capitalization (Big 10) over the last 10 years. We then compare annual average next-year total returns… Keep Reading

Past research relating U.S. stock market returns to the party holding the Presidency mostly concludes that Democratic presidents are better for the stock market than Republican presidents. However, Presidents share power conferred by the electorate with Congress. Does historical data confirm that Democratic control of Congress is also better for stock market returns than Republican… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 1/12/26 through 1/16/26. These summaries give you a quick snapshot of our content the past week so that you can quickly decide what’s relevant to your investing needs. Subscribers: To receive these weekly digests via email, click here to sign up for our mailing list.

“Exploiting the Presidential Cycle and Party in Power” summarizes strategies that hold small stocks (large stocks or bonds) when Democrats (Republicans) hold the U.S. presidency. How has this strategy performed in recent years? To investigate, we consider three strategy alternatives using exchange-traded funds (ETF): D-IWM:R-SPY: hold iShares Russell 2000 (IWM) when Democrats hold the presidency and SPDR… Keep Reading

How do exchange-traded-funds (ETF) focused on development of robotics-artificial intelligence (AI), an arguably hot area of technology, perform? To investigate, we consider eight of the largest such ETFs, all currently available, as follows: Robo Global Robotics and Automation Index ETF (ROBO) ARK Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF (ARKQ) Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence ETF (BOTZ) First Trust… Keep Reading

The full-year Trading Calendar indicates that the U.S. stock market has three phases over the calendar year, corresponding to calendar year trading days 1-84 (January-April), 85-210 (May-October) and 211-252 (November-December). What are typical stock market returns and return variabilities for these phases? Using daily S&P 500 Index closes from the end of December 1927 through… Keep Reading

The Inflation Forecast now incorporates actual total and core Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for December 2025. The actual total (core) inflation rate is about the same as (about the same as) forecasted. We have also updated the inflation seasonality chart through 2025.

Does lack of critical assessment of cause and effect undermine reliability of findings in scientific research? In his December 2025 presentation package entitled “Investment Lessons from Cosmology: Draw Your Assumptions Before Your Conclusions”, Marcos Lopez de Prado describes how recent developments in cosmology demonstrate the potential power of causal inference to prevent false discoveries in… Keep Reading