July 1, 2024 - Commodity Futures, Economic Indicators
Is copper price a reliable leading indicator of economic activity and therefore of future corporate earnings and equity prices? To investigate, we employ the monthly price index for copper base scrap from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which spans multiple economic expansions and contractions. Using monthly levels of the copper scrap price index and… Keep Reading
June 28, 2024 - Miscellaneous
Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 6/24/24 through 6/28/24. 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.
June 28, 2024 - Economic Indicators, Technical Trading
Is the Buffett Indicator, the ratio of total U.S. stock market capitalization (proxied by Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index W5000) to U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a useful indicator of future U.S. stock market performance? W5000/GDP clearly has no stable average value over its available history (see the first chart below), so the level of the… Keep Reading
June 27, 2024 - Calendar Effects, Momentum Investing
Are there interactions between stock return momentum and days of the week? In their March 2024 paper entitled “Same-Weekday Momentum”, Zhi Da and Xiao Zhang investigate how momentum interacts with days of the week. They first perform regression tests to evaluate abilities of same-day and other-day past returns to predict day-of-the-week momentum. They then evaluate… Keep Reading
June 26, 2024 - Investing Expertise, Political Indicators
Do funds based on holdings/trades of members of the U.S. Congress and their families beat the market? To investigate, we look at performances of two recently introduced exchange-traded funds (ETF): Unusual Whales Subversive Democratic Trading ETF (NANC) – invests primarily in stocks held by Democratic members of Congress and/or their families per public disclosure filings…. Keep Reading
June 25, 2024 - Equity Premium, Fundamental Valuation
Are the industry membership of a firm, as designated by Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code, and the position of the firm within its industry good predictors of the performance of its stock? In their May 2024 paper entitled “Decoding Cross-Stock Predictability: Peer Strength versus Firm-Peer Disparities”, Doron Avramov, Shuyi Ge, Shaoran Li and Oliver Linton… Keep Reading
June 24, 2024 - Calendar Effects
The middle of the year might be a time for funds to dress their windows and investors to review and revise portfolios. The 4th of July celebration might engender optimism among U.S. investors. Are there any reliable patterns in daily U.S. stock market returns around mid-year and the 4th of July? To check, we analyze… Keep Reading
June 21, 2024 - Miscellaneous
Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 6/17/24 through 6/21/24. 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.
June 21, 2024 - Animal Spirits, Individual Investing
What happens to retail investor performance when brokers make trading apps game-like (gamification)? In his June 2024 paper entitled “Gamification of Stock Trading: Losers and Winners”, Eduard Yelagin examines how traders react to injections of gamification in mobile trading apps offered by major U.S. brokers. For each app update, he reviews developer notes about its… Keep Reading
June 20, 2024 - Momentum Investing, Strategic Allocation
A subscriber asked about the stability of the momentum measurement (lookback) interval used for strategies like the Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy (SACEMS). To investigate, we run two tests on each of top one (Top 1), equal-weighted top two (EW Top 2) and equal-weighted top three (EW Top 3) versions of SACEMS: Identify the… Keep Reading