August 27, 2014 - Fundamental Valuation
Which firm accounting measures best predict future stock returns? In the August 2014 version of their paper entitled “Are Cash Flows Better Stock Return Predictors than Profits?”, Stephen Foerster, John Tsagarelis and Grant Wang investigate the power of enhanced cash flow measures to predict stock returns. They first devise procedures for transforming indirect cash flow and income… Keep Reading
August 25, 2014 - Currency Trading
In his August 2014 paper entitled “Bitcoin Myths and Facts”, Campbell Harvey examines eight claims about bitcoin. One of these claims is that bitcoin is currently too volatile to serve as a store of value. Using daily data for the dollar-bitcoin exchange rate during mid-July 2010 through mid-August 2014, he finds that:
August 25, 2014 - Economic Indicators, Equity Premium, Fundamental Valuation
Is the U.S. stock market in a Federal Reserve-driven bubble that is about to burst? In his August 2014 paper entitled “Fed by the Fed: A New Bubble Grows on Wall St.”, Oliver Dettmann examines how shifts away from quantitative easing by central banks, and the introduction of rising interest rates, may affect current valuation levels of the U.S. stock market. He focuses on a discounted real earnings… Keep Reading
August 22, 2014 - Animal Spirits, Volatility Effects
What is the best way to harvest asset mispricings derived from aggregate overreaction/underreaction by naive investors? In his July 2014 presentation package entitled “Betting On ‘Dumb Volatility’ with ‘Smart Beta’”, Claude Erb examines strategies for exploiting the “dumb volatility” arguably generated by naive investors who buy high and sell low, temporarily driving prices materially above and below fair values. These… Keep Reading
August 21, 2014 - Value Premium
What is the best way to capture the slowly realized and variable value premium? In his August 2014 paper entitled “Value Investing: Smart Beta vs. Style Indices”, Jason Hsu compares exploitation of the value premium by traditional style indexes and recent smart beta strategies. Traditional value indexes pick stocks with low price‐to‐book ratios (P/B) and weight them by market capitalization…. Keep Reading
August 19, 2014 - Big Ideas
How can researchers account for the snooping bias derived from testing of multiple strategy alternatives on the same set of data? In the July 2014 version of their paper entitled “Evaluating Trading Strategies”, Campbell Harvey and Yan Liu describe tools that adjust strategy evaluation for multiple testing. They note that conventional thresholds for statistical significance assume an independent… Keep Reading
August 18, 2014 - Investing Expertise, Mutual/Hedge Funds
How should investors use Morningstar mutual fund ratings/grades to select mutual funds? In his July 2014 paper entitled “Morningstar Mutual Fund Measures and Selection Model”, John Haslem surveys the five kinds of Morningstar mutual fund ratings and grades: (1) Morningstar star ratings (one to five stars); (2) analyst ratings (gold, silver, bronze, neutral and negative); (3) total pillar… Keep Reading
August 15, 2014 - Calendar Effects, Momentum Investing
In response to “Optimal Monthly Cycle for Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy?”, a subscriber asked about the optimal monthly cycle for “Simple Sector ETF Momentum Strategy”, which each month allocates all funds to the one of the following nine Select Sector Standard & Poor’s Depository Receipts (SPDR) exchange-traded funds (ETF) with the highest total return… Keep Reading
August 13, 2014 - Big Ideas, Mutual/Hedge Funds, Volatility Effects
Are widely used volatility-adjusted investment performance metrics, such as Sharpe ratio, robust to different measurement intervals? In the July 2014 version of their paper entitled “The Divergence of High- and Low-Frequency Estimation: Implications for Performance Measurement”, William Kinlaw, Mark Kritzman and David Turkington examine the sensitivity of such metrics to the length of the return interval… Keep Reading
August 12, 2014 - Commodity Futures, Momentum Investing
Has the growing role of financial investors in commodities markets (financialization) weakened performance of widely used momentum and term structure investing strategies? In his July 2014 paper entitled “Strategies Based on Momentum and Term Structure in Financialized Commodity Markets”, Adam Zaremba investigates impacts of financialization of commodity markets on the profitability of momentum and term structure strategies. His base momentum strategy is… Keep Reading