Investing Research Articles

A European subscriber asked about the effect of the dollar-euro exchange rate on the Simple Asset Class ETF Value Strategy (SACEVS) and the Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy (SACEMS). To investigate, we each month adjust the gross returns for these strategies for the change in the dollar-euro exchange rate that month. We consider all strategy… Keep Reading

How has the marketplace for exchange-traded funds (ETFs) evolved? What performances do its “species” deliver? In their January 2021 paper entitled “Competition for Attention in the ETF Space”, Itzhak Ben-David, Francesco Franzoni, Byungwook Kim and Rabih Moussawi summarize evolution of broad-based ETFs (tracking broad market and style indexes) and specialized ETFs (tracking sectors and narrow… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 1/25/21 through 1/29/21. 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.

Is it possible to achieve an attractive return with very low risk from a small universe of exchange-traded funds (ETF)? In the January 2021 revision of his paper entitled “Lazy Momentum with Growth-Trend Timing: Resilient Asset Allocation (RAA)”, Wouter Keller constructs and tests the Resilient Asset Allocation (RAA) strategy as a more aggressive version of… Keep Reading

How have value, quality, low-volatility and momentum equity factors, and combinations of these factors, performed in recent years. In their October 2020 paper entitled “Equity Factor Investing: Historical Perspective of Recent Performance”, Benoit Bellone, Thomas Heckel, François Soupé and Raul Leote de Carvalho review and put into context recent performances of these these factors/combinations as… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 1/19/21 through 1/22/21. 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 Bitcoin, or any other crypto-asset, become a durable currency, or is its value a pure bubble? In his October 2020 paper entitled “Fiat Money, Cryptocurrencies, and the Pure Theory of Money Edward Elgar Handbook on Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies”, David Glasner applies basic concepts and doctrines of the economic theory of money to address the… Keep Reading

Can machine learning software discover predictive stock price patterns? In their December 2020 paper entitled “(Re-)Imag(in)ing Price Trends”, Jingwen Jiang, Bryan Kelly and Dacheng Xiu apply convolutional neural network machine learning software to analyze stock price series images (depicting daily open, high, low, close and moving average prices and trading volume) in search of the… Keep Reading

Intangible assets derive largely from investments in employees, brand and knowledge that are expensed rather than booked. Despite large and growing importance of intangible assets, traditional measures of firm value ignore them. Are firm value assessments therefore defective? In their October 2020 paper entitled “Intangible Value”, Andrea Eisfeldt, Edward Kim and Dimitris Papanikolaou evaluate a… Keep Reading

“Evolution of Bitcoin as an Investment” suggests a shift toward acceptance of Bitcoin (BTC) as an investment asset, as do recent actions by some large investors. Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) offers a way for investors to access BTC via a fund that manages BTC holdings. GBTC price generally carries a premium over its BTC holdings… Keep Reading