Investing Research Articles

Is there a simple way to tell whether a commodity is overvalued or undervalued? In his May 2014 presentation package entitled “Commodity ‘CAPE Ratios’”, Claude Erb looks at long-term real commodity prices as valuation “crutches” to estimate when commodities are overvalued and undervalued. He provides examples relating real commodity prices to future long-term (10-year) real commodity returns. He… Keep Reading

S&P 500 Index options data imply expected S&P 500 Index volatility (VIX) over the next month. In turn, VIX futures options data imply expected volatility of VIX (VVIX) over the next month. Does VVIX predict stock index option and VIX option returns? In their September 2014 paper entitled “Volatility-of-Volatility Risk”, Darien Huang and Ivan Shaliastovich investigate whether… Keep Reading

Do hedge fund-like mutual funds work like hedge funds? In his September 2014 paper entitled “Hedge Funds versus Mutual Funds (2): An Examination of Multialternative Mutual Funds”, David McCarthy evaluates mutual funds categorized by Morningstar as “multialternative” after further subcategorizing them as: Global Asset Allocation (active asset allocation across a broad set of global markets); Multistrategy (investing across distinct investment… Keep Reading

Does adjusting an asset allocation retirement glidepath according to a stock market valuation metric such as Shiller’s cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio (CAPE ratio or P/E10) improve the outcome? In their September 2014 paper entitled “Retirement Risk, Rising Equity Glidepaths, and Valuation-Based Asset Allocation”, Michael Kitces and Wade Pfau investigate the interaction of pre-determined allocation glidepaths and P/E10 valuation… Keep Reading

“Intraday U.S. Stock Market Behavior” examines behavior of the S&P 500 Index at 15-minute intervals over the trading day during each of 2007 (bullish year) and 2008 (bearish year), finding slight tendencies for market weakness during mid-afternoon and market volatility at the beginning and the end of the trading day. Does recent data confirm these… Keep Reading

How successful are active equity mutual fund managers in timing their domestic markets worldwide? In their August 2014 paper entitled “Market Timing Around the World”, Javier Vidal-Garcia, Marta Vidal and Duc Khuong Nguyen employ daily returns to measure the effectiveness of mutual fund market exposure adjustments made more frequently than monthly. They also examine fund timing performance under different economic conditions. Their… Keep Reading

Is the return on CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) futures predictable? In his preliminary paper entitled “The Expected Return of Fear”, Ing-Haw Cheng investigates whether the relationship between VIX futures prices and VIX level predicts the return on VIX futures. He focuses on monthly returns to a continuously-invested position in the nearest available VIX futures contract. He considers… Keep Reading

A subscriber proposed a simple test of the concept underlying the First Trust Dorsey Wright Focus 5 ETF (FV). This exchange-traded fund (ETF) intends to track the Dorsey Wright Focus Five Index, an equally weighted and weekly reformed portfolio of the five First Trust sector and industry ETFs with the highest price momentum according to the Dorsey, Wright… Keep Reading

The deadline for submission of papers for the 2015 Charles H. Dow Award, presented by the Market Technicians Association (MTA), is January 5, 2015. MTA established this award in 1994 to recognize outstanding research in technical analysis. The Award carries a prize of $5,000 and the opportunity to present the winning paper at the April 2015 MTA Gala… Keep Reading

Are changes in the money supply usefully predictive of stock market behavior? In his September 2014 paper entitled “Does Money Supply Growth Contain Predictive Power for Stock Returns?”, David McMillan investigates whether changes in U.S. money supply reliably affect future U.S. stock market returns. He examines also whether any predictive power of money supply growth is independent of dividend… Keep Reading