Investing Research Articles

Is equal weighting of portfolio assets easy or hard to beat within or across asset classes? In their April 2023 paper entitled “Is Naïve Asset Allocation Always Preferable?”, Thomas Conlon, John Cotter, Iason Kynigakis and Enrique Salvador employ simulations to pit equal portfolio weighting against 19 other weighting strategies (fixed strategic weights, nine variations of… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 5/8/23 through 5/12/23. 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.

A subscriber requested review of a strategy that seeks to exploit “Sell in May” by switching between risk-on assets during November-April and risk-off assets during May-October, with assets specified as follows: Risk-on – SPDR S&P 500 (SPY), iShares Russell 2000 Index (IWM) and Invesco DWA Technical Leaders (PDP). Risk-off – iShares Barclays 20+ Year Treas Bond… Keep Reading

Can investors improve long-term retirement portfolio outcomes by targeting equity factor premiums in their stock allocations? In his April 2023 paper entitled “How Targeting the Size, Value, and Profitability Premiums Can Improve Retirement Outcomes”, Mathieu Pellerin investigates whether stock portfolios that target size, value and profitability factor premiums better sustain retirement spending and generate larger… Keep Reading

Which industries are most exposed to disruption by artificial intelligence (AI) language models such as ChatGPT? In the April 2023 version of their paper entitled “How will Language Modelers like ChatGPT Affect Occupations and Industries?”, Edward Felten, Manav Raj and Robert Seamans focus the previously developed AI Occupational Exposure (AIOE) measure on models such as… Keep Reading

Does the speed of a stock index decline from a recent high help decide whether to buy-the-dip or wait? In his April 2023 paper entitled “The 5% Canary”, Andrew Thrasher evaluates the whether the duration of initial 5% declines from 52-week highs for the S&P 500 Index and Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) help quantify… Keep Reading

Can day traders reliably get rich quick? In their April 2023 paper entitled “Can Day Trading Really Be Profitable? Evidence of Sustainable Long-term Profits from Opening Range Breakout (ORB) Day Trading Strategy vs. Benchmark in the US Stock Market”, Carlo Zarattini and Andrew Aziz test the performance of a 5-minute Opening Range Breakout (ORB) strategy… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 5/1/23 through 5/5/23. 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.

A reader requested: “I would love to see a backtest pitting a 10-month simple moving average (SMA) against a 200-day SMA for SPDR S&P 500 (SPY). I assume trading costs would go through the roof on the latter, but do performance gains offset additional costs?” Others asked about a 40-week SMA. To investigate, we use… Keep Reading

Conventional wisdom holds that a steep yield curve (wide U.S. Treasuries term spread) is good for stocks, while a flat/inverted curve is bad. Is this wisdom correct and exploitable? To investigate, we consider in-sample tests of the relationships between several yield curve metrics and future U.S. stock market returns and two out-of-sample signal-based tests. Using… Keep Reading