Investing Research Articles

We have corrected the Momentum Strategy winners list for January 2015 (to be held during February 2015). The third place winner was incorrect due to omission of a dividend.

Can investors usefully apply stock quality metrics to entire country stock markets? In his December 2014 paper entitled “Country Selection Strategies Based on Quality”, Adam Zaremba investigates whether quality metrics effectively predict country stock market index performance. He also examines whether (1) quality-size and quality-value double sorts enhance country-level value and size strategies; and, (2) high-quality markets offer… Keep Reading

Does the term structure of the the option-implied expected volatility of the S&P 500 Index (VIX, normally measured at a one-month horizon) predict future returns of variance assets such as variance swaps, VIX futures and S&P 500 Index option straddles? In his January 2015 paper entitled “Risk Premia and the VIX Term Structure”, Travis Johnson investigates the… Keep Reading

Do country stock markets act like individual stocks with respect to return for risk taken? In his December 2014 paper entitled “Is There a Low-Risk Anomaly Across Countries?”, Adam Zaremba relates country stock market performance to four market risk metrics: beta (relative to the capitalization-weighted world stock market), standard deviation of returns, value at risk (fifth percentile of observations) and… Keep Reading

Do any of the various U.S. stock market size and value/growth styles systematically lead or lag the overall market, perhaps because of some underlying business/economic cycle? To investigate, we consider the the following six exchange-traded funds (ETF) that cut across capitalization (large, medium and small) and value versus growth: iShares Russell 1000 Value Index (IWD)… Keep Reading

Readers have suggested three alternative metrics for the strategy tested in the “Simple Sector ETF Momentum Strategy Performance”: (1) Sharpe Ratio over the past six months; (2) slope of price over the past six months; and, (3) average of three-month, six-month and 12-month past returns. Do these metrics outperform past six-month return in a momentum… Keep Reading

In the preface to the eleventh (2015) edition of his book entitled A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, author Burton Malkiel states: “The message of the original edition was a very simple one: Investors would be far better off buying and holding an index fund than attempting to buy and sell individual securities… Keep Reading

In an effort to generate more responsive exchange-traded fund (ETF) momentum switching, a subscriber proposed a version of the “Simple Asset Class ETF Momentum Strategy” (SACEMS) that measures ETF returns from the lowest daily close within the momentum measurement interval rather than the monthly close at the beginning of the momentum measurement interval. To investigate, we… Keep Reading

Does a cross-asset class, momentum-driven, simplified version of Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) offer reliably strong performance over the long run? In their December 2014 paper entitled “A Century of Generalized Momentum; From Flexible Asset Allocations (FAA) to Elastic Asset Allocation (EAA)”, Wouter Keller and Adam Butler present an asset allocation strategy based on five concepts: MPT is a sound framework for… Keep Reading

Does diversification into alternative asset class investments, which may carry high management fees, help on a net basis? In the December 2014 version of their paper entitled “Fees Eat Diversification’s Lunch”, William Jennings and Brian Payne examine the diversification benefits of different asset classes after accounting for associated investment management fees. They focus on fees relative to allocation alpha, the expected return… Keep Reading