Investing Research Articles

Can investors discriminate between lucky and skillful equity fund managers by examining the distribution of returns across fund holdings? In the September 2010 preliminary draft of their paper entitled “Home-Run Sluggers vs. Contact Hitters: Stock Performance Distribution inside Mutual Funds and Fund Managers’ Stock Picking Ability”, Peter Chung and Thomas Kim relate the skewness of… Keep Reading

Do the stocks of firms that get the most bang per research buck tend to outperform? In the March 2011 update of their paper entitled “Innovative Efficiency and Stock Returns”, David Hirshleifer, Po-Hsuan Hsu and Dongmei Li investigate the relationship between innovative efficiency (IE) and future stock returns. They consider three alternative definitions of IE: … Keep Reading

In his 2011 book Investing and the Irrational Mind: Rethink Risk, Outwit Optimism, and Seize Opportunities Others Miss, author Robert Koppel posits that investing has “less to do with the science of computation and more to do the art of managing one’s outlook, emotions, and consciousness.” He seeks to explain “how to overcome debilitating emotions,… Keep Reading

Are there reliable ways to exploit differences in asset class returns under Democratic and Republican U.S. presidents? In his April 2011 paper entitled “Is the 60-40 Stock-Bond Pension Fund Rule Wise?”, William Ziemba examines relationships between the U.S. presidential election cycle and long-run returns for several asset classes. Specifically, he investigates the differential performance of… Keep Reading

Do individual investors truly benefit from using full service brokers? In the February 2011 draft of their paper entitled “What is the Impact of Financial Advisors on Retirement Portfolio Choices and Outcomes?”, John Chalmers and Jonathan Reuter compare outcomes for those Oregon University System’s Optional Retirement Plan participants who choose a firm that uses brokers… Keep Reading

Does aggregate investor sentiment affect the strength of well-known U.S. stock return anomalies? In their January 2011 paper entitled “The Short of It: Investor Sentiment and Anomalies”, Robert Stambaugh, Jianfeng Yu and Yu Yuan explore the interaction of aggregate investor sentiment with 11 cross-sectional stock return anomalies. Their approach reflects expectations that: (1) overpricing of… Keep Reading

Do individual investors actually trade on their stated beliefs? In their February 2011 paper entitled “Do Investors Put Their Money Where Their Mouth Is? Stock Market Expectations and Trading Behavior”, Christoph Merkle and Martin Weber compare quarterly risk and return expectation survey responses to actual trading data and portfolio holdings for a group of self-directed… Keep Reading

Do technical indicators add value to fundamental indicators in assessing broad stock market valuation? In their March 2011 paper entitled “Forecasting the Equity Risk Premium: The Role of Technical Indicators”, Christopher Neely, David Rapach, Jun Tu and Guofu Zhou examine the powers of technical and fundamental indicators to predict stock market returns. They consider 12… Keep Reading

For what kind of stocks does momentum work best? In his March 2011 paper entitled “Growth Options, Idiosyncratic Volatility and Momentum”, Umut Celiker investigates the interactions among valuation (market to-book ratio, arguably a proxy for firm growth opportunities), valuation uncertainty (idiosyncratic volatility) and stock price momentum. For calendar-time analysis, he ranks stocks each month into… Keep Reading

Are some stocks more sensitive to commodity prices than others? If so, is the variation exploitable? In their February 2011 paper entitled “The Stock Market Price of Commodity Risk”, Martijn Boons, Frans de Roon and Marta Szymanowska investigate the cross-sectional variation in stock returns associated with commodity price changes by calculating betas for individual stocks… Keep Reading