Investing Research Articles

How attractive are purified factor portfolios, constructed to focus on one factor by avoiding exposures to other factors? In their January 2017 paper entitled “Pure Factor Portfolios and Multivariate Regression Analysis”, Roger Clarke, Harindra de Silva and Steven Thorley explore a multivariate regression approach to generating pure factor portfolios. They consider five widely studied factors: value (earnings yield);… Keep Reading

Do legal, policy and practical constraints on short selling substantially detract from factor investing performance? In their February 2017 paper entitled “Factor Investing: The Rocky Road from Long Only to Long Short”, Marie Briere and Ariane Szafarz examine how severely constraints on short selling affect the attractiveness of factor investing. They consider 11 assets consisting of the… Keep Reading

Which stock market factors and stock characteristics contribute significantly to portfolio performance when considered jointly (accounting for interactions) on a net basis (accounting for offsetting trades)? In their February 2017 paper entitled “A Portfolio Perspective on the Multitude of Firm Characteristics”, Victor DeMiguel, Alberto Martin-Utrera, Francisco Nogales and Raman Uppal investigate which of 51 stock factors/characteristics matter on a… Keep Reading

In their February 2017 paper entitled “Bayesian Model Averaging, Ordinary Least Squares and the Price of Gold”, Dirk Baur and Brian Lucey analyze a large set of factors that potentially influence the price of gold via two methods: Ordinary Least Squares (OLS, scatter plot) and Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA, accounting for model uncertainty). They include as potential influencers three other precious… Keep Reading

“Option-implied Correlation as Stock Market Return Predictor” finds that implied correlation for a broad stock market index relative to its components may be useful for predicting equity market returns. To corroborate, we look at the readily available CBOE S&P 500 Implied Correlation Indexes. The indexes are a series of three based on sequential pairings of… Keep Reading

Does option-implied correlation, a measure of the expected average correlation between a stock index and its components over a specified horizon, predict stock market behavior? In their January 2017 paper entitled “Option-Implied Correlations, Factor Models, and Market Risk”, Adrian Buss, Lorenzo Schoenleber and Grigory Vilkov examine option-implied correlation as a stock market return predictor. They consider expected average… Keep Reading

What drives the low-risk stock return anomaly, wherein low-risk stocks outperform high-risk stocks (contrary to a reward-for-risk view)? In their February 2017 paper entitled “Betting Against Correlation: Testing Theories of the Low-Risk Effect”, Clifford Asness, Andrea Frazzini, Niels Gormsen and Lasse Pedersen investigate several ways to select low-risk stocks and infer from findings what drives low-risk outperformance as represented by… Keep Reading

A subscriber requested a horse race among the following four simple asset class allocation strategies: Seasonal SPY-VFITX – the strategy tested in “Bonds During the Off Season?”, which switches between SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) and Vanguard Intermediate-Term Treasury (VFITX) based on the calendar. This strategy switches between U.S. equity risk and U.S. interest rate risk. SPY:SMA10-VFITX –… Keep Reading

Are there plenty of exchange-traded funds (ETF) offering positive or negative exposures to widely accepted factor premiums? In his February 2017 paper entitled “Are Exchange-Traded Funds Harvesting Factor Premiums?”, David Blitz analyzes the exposures of U.S. equity ETFs to market, size, value, momentum and volatility factors. Specifically, he calculates factor betas (exposures) from a multi-factor regression… Keep Reading

“When to Sell Equity Index Put Options” summarizes research finding that the “insurance” premium from systematically selling equity index out-of-the-money (OTM) put options concentrates during the last few days before expiration. An ancillary finding is that a similar, though weaker and more volatile, pattern holds for selling at-the-month (ATM) put options. To test the general finding,… Keep Reading