Investing Research Articles

Is optimal stock anomaly exploitation long-only or long-short? If not long-short, does shorting the market rather than individual stocks work as well as shorting individual stocks? In his November 2017 paper entitled “How Do Short Selling Costs and Restrictions Affect the Profitability of Stock Anomalies?”, Filip Bekjarovski explores effects of short selling costs and constraints on… Keep Reading

What is the smartest way (having the lowest prediction errors) to estimate market beta across stocks for the purpose of portfolio construction? In their November 2017 paper entitled “How to Estimate Beta?”, Fabian Hollstein, Marcel Prokopczuk and Chardin Simen test effects of different return sampling frequencies, forecast adjustments and model combinations on market beta prediction accuracy across the universe… Keep Reading

Are cryptocurrencies potentially useful portfolio diversifiers? In their November 2017 paper entitled “Exploring the Dynamic Relationships between Cryptocurrencies and Other Financial Assets”, Shaen Corbet, Andrew Meegan, Charles Larkin, Brian Lucey and Larisa Yarovaya apply a battery of tests to analyze relationships: (1) among three cryptocurrencies; and, (2) between the cryptocurrencies and conventional asset classes. They consider cryptocurrencies with market values… Keep Reading

In reaction to “Combine Market Trend and Economic Trend Signals?”, a subscriber suggested adding an interest rate trend signal to those for the U.S. stock market and U.S. unemployment rate for the purpose of timing the S&P 500 Index (SP500). To investigate, we look at combining: The 10-month simple moving average (SMA10) for the SP500. The… Keep Reading

Is value investing particularly profitable when the price spread between cheap and expensive assets (the value spread) is extremely large (deep value)? In their November 2017 paper entitled “Deep Value”, Clifford Asness, John Liew, Lasse Pedersen and Ashwin Thapar examine how the performance of value investing changes when the value spread is in its largest fifth (quintile). They consider… Keep Reading

Do investors underestimate the adverse import of large left tails for future stock returns? In their November 2017 paper entitled “Left-Tail Momentum: Limited Attention of Individual Investors and Expected Equity Returns”, Yigit Atilgan, Turan Bali, Ozgur Demirtas and Doruk Gunaydin investigate the relationship between left-tail risk and next-month returns for U.S. and international stocks. They measure left-tail risk at the… Keep Reading

As described in “Quantifying Snooping Bias in Published Anomalies”, anomalies published in leading journals offer substantial opportunities for exploitation on a gross basis. What profits are left after accounting for portfolio maintenance costs? In their November 2017 paper entitled “Accounting for the Anomaly Zoo: A Trading Cost Perspective”, Andrew Chen and Mihail Velikov examine the combined… Keep Reading

Is data snooping bias a material issue for cross-sectional stock return anomalies published in leading journals? In the September 2017 update of their paper entitled “Publication Bias and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns”, Andrew Chen and Tom Zimmermann: (1) develop an estimator for anomaly data snooping bias based on noisiness of associated returns; (2) apply it to replications… Keep Reading

Is volatility dangerously oversold? In their November 2017 paper entitled “Everybody’s Doing it: Short Volatility Strategies and Shadow Financial Insurers”, Vineer Bhansali and Lawrence Harris survey strategies that directly or indirectly short volatility, including: Relevant strategies (selling options, buying and selling products linked to volatility indexes, risk parity, risk premium harvesting and volatility targeting). Types of investors… Keep Reading

Can investors refine portfolio rebalancing while capturing a volatility risk premium (VRP) by systematically shorting options matched to target allocations of the underlying asset? In their October 2017 paper entitled “An Alternative Option to Portfolio Rebalancing”, Roni Israelov and Harsha Tummala explore multi-asset class portfolio rebalancing via an option selling overlay. The overlay sells out-of-the-money options such… Keep Reading