Investing Research Articles

Does the level of, or change in, the annual U.S. federal surplus/deficit systematically influence the U.S. stock market, perhaps by affecting consumption and thereby corporate earnings or by modifying inflation and thereby discount rates? To check, we relate annual stock market returns to the annual surplus/deficit (receipts minus outlays) as a percentage of Gross Domestic… Keep Reading

Does long term data support the belief that “as goes January, so goes the rest of the year” (January is the barometer) for the the U.S. stock market? To investigate, we consider two views of the S&P 500 Index over its full history: Correlations between index returns during each calendar month and returns over the… Keep Reading

What are optimal intrinsic/absolute/time series momentum (IM) and simple moving average (SMA) lookback intervals for different asset class proxies? To investigate, we use data for the following eight asset class exchange-traded funds (ETF), plus Cash: Invesco DB Commodity Index Tracking (DBC) iShares JPMorgan Emerging Markets Bond Fund (EMB) iShares MSCI EAFE Index (EFA) SPDR Gold… Keep Reading

A subscriber requested a test of Ray Dalio‘s All Weather (AW) portfolio with different rebalancing frequencies, allocated to exchange-traded funds (ETF) as asset class proxies as follows: 30% – Vanguard Total Stock Market (VTI) 40% – iShares 20+ Year Treasury (TLT) 15% – iShares 7-10 Year Treasury (IEF) 7.5% – SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) 7.5% –… Keep Reading

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Are some years of the decade better than others for equity markets? To investigate, we look at average annual returns by year of the decade (xxx0 through xxx9) for the U.S. stock market. Using annual levels of Shiller’s S&P Composite Index for 1871-2023 and the S&P 500 Index for 1928-2023, we find that:

“Exploiting the Presidential Cycle and Party in Power” summarizes strategies that hold small stocks (large stock or bonds) when Democrats (Republicans) hold the U.S. presidency. How has this strategy performed in recent years? To investigate, we consider three strategy alternatives using exchange-traded funds (ETF): D-IWM:R-SPY: hold iShares Russell 2000 (IWM) when Democrats hold the presidency and SPDR… Keep Reading

Each year in December, Barron’s publishes its list of the best 10 stocks for the next year. Do these picks on average beat the market? To investigate, we scrape the web to find these lists for years 2011 through 2023, calculate the associated calendar year total return for each stock and calculate the average return… Keep Reading

“Seasonal Strategy for QQQ?” finds an interesting even year-odd year effect in Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) annual returns. The Trading Calendar and “Monthly Returns During Presidential and Congressional Election Years” find notable differences in S&P 500 Index performances for even years and odd years. A plausible culprit is federal elections. Is this effect growing over time?… Keep Reading

The full-year Trading Calendar indicates that the U.S. stock market has three phases over the calendar year, corresponding to calendar year trading days 1-84 (January-April), 85-210 (May-October) and 211-252 (November-December). What are typical stock market returns and return variabilities for these phases? Using daily S&P 500 Index closes from the end of December 1927 through… Keep Reading