Investing Research Articles

Is relative momentum an effective way to switch between stocks and bonds? In his May 2014 paper entitled “Simple and Effective Market Timing with Tactical Asset Allocation”, Lewis Glenn compares the performances of two tactical asset allocation strategies: SPY-TLT:  simple relative momentum strategy that each month holds SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) or iShares Barclays 20+ Year… Keep Reading

Do relative momentum and trend filters operate differently on value and growth stocks? In their May 2014 paper entitled “When Growth Beats Value: Removing Tail Risk from Global Equity Momentum Strategies”, Andrew Clare, James Seaton, Peter Smith and Stephen Thomas investigate the effects of relative momentum and trend filters on portfolios of developed and emerging market broad, value… Keep Reading

In checking data for the monthly update of “Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy” (SACEMS), we discovered changes in historical dividend/split-adjusted prices for the following strategy components: iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index (EEM) iShares MSCI EAFE Index (EFA) iShares Russell 1000 Index (IWB) iShares Russell 2000 Index (IWM) SPDR Dow Jones REIT (RWR) The changes all precede June 2010, and… Keep Reading

What about all those criticisms of momentum investing (such as high turnover/trading frictions and crash-proneness)? In the May 2014 draft of their paper entitled “Fact, Fiction and Momentum Investing”, Clifford Asness, Andrea Frazzini, Ronen Israel and Tobias Moskowitz summarize research on the momentum anomaly and rebut ten criticisms (myths) of momentum investing. Specifically, they address claims that momentum… Keep Reading

Does the Sell-in-May/Halloween effect hold in recent data? In their April 2014 paper entitled “Sell in May and Go Away: Still Good Advice for Investors?”, Hubert Dichtl and Wolfgang Drobetz explore whether holding one of several stock indexes (cash) during November-April (May-October) beats buying and holding the index. They focus on sample periods since: (1) liquid index proxies are readily available… Keep Reading

Are investors exhausting the potential of stocks? In his May 2014 presentation packages entitled “Has The Stock Market Been ‘Overgrazed’?” and “Momentum Has Not Been ‘Overgrazed’”, Claude Erb investigates the proposition that sanguine research and ever easier access to investments are exhausting U.S. stock market investment opportunities. In the first package, he focuses on trends in the… Keep Reading

Does technical analysis boost or depress performance for individual investors? In their February 2014 paper entitled “Technical Analysis and Individual Investors”, Arvid Hoffmann and Hersh Shefrin combine actual trading histories and results of a survey to investigate the use of technical analysis by individual investors. The 2006 survey solicits objectives, strategies and traits from a large group of individual clients of an… Keep Reading

Does the relative performance of 10-year U.S. Treasuries and 30-year U.S. Treasuries offer a useful risk-on/risk-off regime change signal? In their February 2014 paper entitled “An Intermarket Approach to Tactical Risk Rotation Using the Signaling Power of Treasuries to Generate Alpha and Enhance Asset Allocation” (the National Association of Active Investment Managers’ 2014 Wagner Award third place winner), Michael Gayed and Charles Bilello… Keep Reading

Is is feasible to exploit stock price deviation from a purely statistical estimate of equilibrium? In his February 2014 paper entitled “Back to Black” (the National Association of Active Investment Managers’ 2014 Wagner Award second place winner), Arthur Grabovsky investigates exploitation of a model based on assumptions that: (1) unpredictable investor behavior sometimes makes stock price deviate from equilibrium; and, (2) price then tends… Keep Reading

Is there a practical way to mitigating data snooping bias while exploring optimal parameter values? In his February 2014 paper entitled “Know Your System! – Turning Data Mining from Bias to Benefit through System Parameter Permutation” (the National Association of Active Investment Managers’ 2014 Wagner Award winner), Dave Walton outlines System Parameter Permutation (SPP) as an alternative to traditional in-sample/out-of-sample cross-validation and other more complex approaches… Keep Reading