Investing Research Articles

Do hopes and fears of U.S. election outcomes, and associated political machinations, alter the “normal” seasonal variation in monthly stock market returns? To check, we compare average returns and variabilities (standard deviations of returns) by calendar month for the S&P 500 Index during years with and without quadrennial U.S. presidential elections and biennial congressional elections…. Keep Reading

Do target retirement date funds, offering glidepaths that shift asset allocations away from equities and toward bonds as target dates approach, safely generate attractive returns? To investigate, we consider seven such mutual funds offered by Vanguard, as follows: Vanguard Target Retirement 2020 Fund (VTWNX) Vanguard Target Retirement 2025 Fund (VTTVX) Vanguard Target Retirement 2030 Fund… Keep Reading

Does investor fear level predict U.S. Treasury instrument returns? In their September 2024 paper entitled “Fear in the ‘Fearless’ Treasury Market”, Tianyang Wang, Yuanzhi Wang, Qunzi Zhang and Guofu Zhou examine how investor fear relates to future returns on U.S. Treasuries. They define bond risk premiums by duration as annual returns in excess of the… Keep Reading

Can Google’s  large language model (LLM), Gemini, beat simple benchmarks by picking a small portfolio of stocks? In their September 2024 paper entitled “Can AI Beat a Naive Portfolio? An Experiment with Anonymized Data”, Marcelo Perlin, Cristian Foguesatto, Fernanda Müller and Marcelo Righi test the ability of Gemini 1.5 Flash to weight a portfolio of five… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 10/21/24 through 10/25/24. 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.

How do exchange-traded-funds (ETF) focused on supplying renewable energy perform? To investigate, we consider nine of the largest renewable energy ETFs, all currently available, as follows: iShares Global Clean Energy (ICLN) Invesco Solar (TAN) First Trust NASDAQ Clean Edge Green Energy Index (QCLN) Invesco WilderHill Clean Energy (PBW) ALPS Clean Energy (ACES) Invesco Global Clean… Keep Reading

Do funds based on Jim Cramer’s stock/market recommendations generate attractive returns? To investigate, we compare performances for Northern Lights Fund Trust IV – Long Cramer Tracker ETF (LJIM) and Northern Lights Fund Trust IV – Inverse Cramer Tracker ETF (SJIM) to that for SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY). The prospectus for LJIM and SJIM… Keep Reading

Should retail investors accept the risk of non-execution and use limit orders to get better prices? In the August 2024 version of their paper entitled “Retail Limit Orders”, Amber Anand, Mehrdad Samadi, Jonathan Sokobin and Kumar Venkataraman evaluate use of limit orders for U.S. stocks placed by retail traders. They compare limit orders to market… Keep Reading

Do exchange-traded funds (ETF) that seek to mimic holdings of top-ranked hedge funds, firm insiders or other investing gurus offer attractive performance? To investigate, we consider nine ETFs, five live and four dead, in order of introduction: Invesco Insider Sentiment (NFO) – focuses on stocks attracting interest of insiders such as company executives, fund managers… Keep Reading

Can relatively modest large language models (LLM), pretrained with diverse financial information, effectively rank stocks? In their September 2024 paper entitled “Re(Visiting) Large Language Models in Finance”, Eghbal Rahimikia and Felix Drinkall introduce base and small versions of FinText, LLMs that are: (1) kept compact compared to state-of-the-art LLMs to allow practical use with personal… Keep Reading