Investing Research Articles

A reader requested review of the Decision Moose asset allocation framework. Decision Moose is “an automated stock, bond, and gold momentum model developed in 1989. Index Moose uses technical analysis and exchange traded index funds (ETFs) to track global investment flows in the Americas, Europe and Asia, and to generate a market timing signal.” The… Keep Reading

Is the conventional wisdom that exchange-traded funds (ETF) are efficient, low-cost alternatives to mutual funds correct? In their September 2019 paper entitled “The Performance of Exchange-Traded Funds”, David Blitz and Milan Vidojevic evaluate the performance of a comprehensive, survivorship bias-free sample of U.S. equity ETFs. They first divide the sample into three groups: (1) broad… Keep Reading

How can investment strategy researchers best address the randomness inherent in market data and the ability of investors/markets to adapt to changing conditions? In his September 2019 paper entitled “Tactical Investment Algorithms”, Marcos Lopez de Prado reviews three methods for testing the performance of an investment rule: Walk-forward (WF) tests a rule against an actual… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 10/14/19 through 10/18/19. 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.

Is there a way that asset managers can share knowledge/data across proprietary boundaries with many researchers to advance development of investment strategies? In their September 2019 paper entitled “Crowdsourced Investment Research through Tournaments”, Marcos Lopez de Prado and Frank Fabozzi describe highly structured tournaments as a crowdsourcing paradigm for investment research. In each such tournament,… Keep Reading

The following list links to summaries of recent (since 2010) investment research using long data samples. These summaries may be helpful in developing strategic allocations and tactical wariness for long-horizon investments. “Commodity Futures Risk Premium Over the Long Run” – estimates the historical risk premium of dead and live commodity futures contract series as available… Keep Reading

Below is a weekly summary of our research findings for 10/7/19 through 10/11/19. 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.

What are long run returns for commodity futures? In their September 2019 paper entitled “The Commodity Futures Risk Premium: 1871-2018”, Geetesh Bhardwaj, Rajkumar Janardanan and Geert Rouwenhorst estimate the historical risk premium of commodity futures from a long and broad sample free of survivorship bias covering 230 contract series traded since 1871 mostly in the… Keep Reading

Do bonds have a bad rap based on an unfavorable subsample? In the September 2019 revisions of his papers entitled “The US Bond Market Before 1926: Investor Total Return from 1793, Comparing Federal, Municipal, and Corporate Bonds Part I: 1793 to 1857” and “Part II: 1857 to 1926”, Edward McQuarrie revisits analysis of returns to… Keep Reading

How does a shift in emphasis from active to passive investing affect the financial market risk landscape? In their September 2019 paper entitled “The Shift From Active to Passive Investing: Potential Risks to Financial Stability?”, Kenechukwu Anadu, Mathias Kruttli, Patrick McCabe, Emilio Osambela and Chaehee Shin analyze how a shift from active to passive investing… Keep Reading