Investing Research Articles

Is leveraging with margin a good way to boost the performance of the “Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy” (SACEMS)? To investigate effects of margin, we augment SACEMS by: (1) initially applying 2X leverage via margin (limited by Federal Reserve Regulation T); (2) for each month with a positive portfolio return, adding margin at the… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 11/20/23 through 11/24/23. 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.

Can large language models (LLM) such as ChatGPT and GPT-4 pass the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) exam, which covers fundamentals of investment tools, asset valuation, portfolio management and wealth planning? In their October 2023 paper entitled “Can GPT models be Financial Analysts? An Evaluation of ChatGPT and GPT-4 on Mock CFA Exams”, Ethan Callanan, Amarachi… Keep Reading

Is there a clearly superior multi-factor model of next-month stock returns? In the November 2023 revision of their paper entitled “A Quantum Leap in Asset Pricing: Explaining Anomalous Returns”, James Kolari, Jianhua Huang, Wei Liu and Huiling Liao compare abilities of the following eight multi-factor models of stock returns to explain 133 stubbornly persistent stock… Keep Reading

Can investors reliably time the market, size, value and profitability long-short equity factor premiums? In their October 2023 paper entitled “Another Look at Timing the Equity Premiums”, Wei Dai and Audrey Dong test strategies that time these four premiums in U.S., developed ex-U.S. and emerging equity markets. They define the premiums as: Market – the… Keep Reading

A subscriber asked about an update of “Simplest Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy?”, which each month holds SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) or iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond (TLT) depending on which has the higher total return over the last three months, including a direct comparison to a portfolio that each month allocates 50%… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 11/13/23 through 11/17/23. 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.

The number of published factors significantly explaining variation in individual stock returns has grown steadily over time into the hundreds, inviting the term “factor zoo.” Are all these factors important when applied in combination? In their October 2023 paper entitled “Factor Zoo”, Alexander Swade, Matthias Hanauer, Harald Lohre and David Blitz assess compressibility of the… Keep Reading

Numerous option trading studies report finding strategies with remarkably high mean returns and Sharpe ratios. Are these findings too good to be true? In their October 2023 paper entitled “Too Good to Be True: Look-ahead Bias in Empirical Option Research”, Jefferson Duarte, Christopher Jones, Mehdi Khorram and Haitao Mo investigate the extent to which look-ahead… Keep Reading

Do conventional market capitalization-weighted stock indexes suffer from a long-term buy-high/sell-low performance drag when adding and deleting stocks? In their October 2023 paper entitled “Reimagining Index Funds”, Robert Arnott, Chris Brightman, Xi Liu and Que Nguyen construct alternative indexes that select stocks based on fundamental measures of underlying firm size and then weight them by… Keep Reading