July 23, 2012 - Commodity Futures, Mutual/Hedge Funds
How effective is technical cloning of hedge funds (attempting to capture a hedge fund’s future returns via a portfolio of liquid assets that empirically replicates the fund’s historical returns)? In the July 2012 version of their paper entitled “Send in the Clones? Hedge Fund Replication Using Futures Contracts”, Nicolas Bollen and Gregg Fisher test whether… Keep Reading
July 20, 2012 - Strategic Allocation
What are the fundamental considerations for portfolio weights and rebalancing rules over the long run? In the July 2012 version of his book excerpt entitled “Dynamic Portfolio Choice”, Andrew Ang elaborates these considerations as derived from two precepts: (1) periodic or conditional rebalancing of the components of a diversified portfolio is foundational to long-term investing;… Keep Reading
July 19, 2012 - Fundamental Valuation
How prevalent is earnings manipulation among U.S. public companies? What indications warn investors of the likelihood of earnings manipulation? In their July 2012 paper entitled “Earnings Quality: Evidence from the Field”, Ilia Dichev, John Graham, Campbell Harvey and Shiva Rajgopal explore earnings quality issues based on results of an anonymous survey of public company Chief Financial Officers… Keep Reading
July 18, 2012 - Economic Indicators
The employment-population ratio (percentage of those age 16 or older who are employed) is arguably a better measure of the U.S.employment situation than either employment or the unemployment rate. Is this series usefully predictive of U.S. stock market behavior in subsequent months, quarters and years? Using monthly seasonally adjusted employment-population ratio data from the Bureau of… Keep Reading
July 17, 2012 - Strategic Allocation
Is equal weighting of diversified portfolio assets good enough, or are mean-variance optimized allocation strategies constructed from asset return and variance forecasts worth the complexities of implementation? In the June 2012 draft of their paper entitled “Market Volatility, Optimal Portfolios and Naive Asset Allocations”, Massimiliano Caporin and Loriana Pelizzon investigate the conditions under which mean-variance optimized… Keep Reading
July 16, 2012 - Economic Indicators
Does anticipation of Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) monetary policy announcements move the market? Is any such anticipation permanent? In the June 2012 revision of their paper entitled “The Pre-FOMC Announcement Drift”, David Lucca and Emanuel Moench investigate the effects of FOMC announcements on global equity markets. They focus on the U.S. stock market during the 24-hour… Keep Reading
July 13, 2012 - Big Ideas, Volatility Effects
Does demand for high-beta stocks by money managers extinguish the risk-return relationship? In his May 2012 paper entitled “Agency-Based Asset Pricing and the Beta Anomaly”, David Blitz investigates whether a volatility preference among stock portfolio managers flattens any relationship between beta and expected returns, thereby invalidating the most widely used asset pricing models. Because institutional investors typically… Keep Reading
July 12, 2012 - Currency Trading
Do currency exchange returns exhibit reliable daily patterns? In their March 2012 paper entitled “Intraday Patterns in FX Returns and Order Flow”, Francis Breedon and Angelo Ranaldo investigate currency exchange returns during local trading hours and the balance of the day. They analyze six exchange rates: euro-U.S. dollar; U.S. dollar-yen; Great Britain pound-U.S. dollar; euro-yen;… Keep Reading
July 10, 2012 - Strategic Allocation, Volatility Effects
Are popular exchange-traded products (ETP) such as VXX (iPath S&P 500 VIX Short Term Futures) and VXZ (iPath S&P 500 VIX Mid-Term Futures), designed to track specific S&P 500 VIX futures constant maturity index series, good hedges for stock portfolios? In their June 2012 paper entitled “Are VIX Futures ETPs Effective Hedges?”, Geng Deng, Craig McCann and Olivia Wang investigate whether these ETPs… Keep Reading
July 9, 2012 - Momentum Investing
Is there a reliable signal for exiting a stock momentum strategy before months during which the strategy crashes? In the June 2012 version of their paper entitled “Tail Risk in Momentum Strategy Returns”, Kent Daniel, Ravi Jagannathan and Soohun Kim investigate conditions under which a basic U.S. stock momentum strategy performs very poorly and develop… Keep Reading