Investing Research Articles

A reader proposed: “I recently found something interesting while analyzing the ratio of the equal-weighted S&P 500 Index to its market capitalization-weighted counterpart. Whenever this ratio declines (out of an uptrend), the market crashes (July 2007, September-October 2008, July 2011). Also, when this ratio starts rising, the recovery commences (April 2009). The indicator seems to… Keep Reading

In the June 2018 draft of their paper entitled “An Information Factor: Can Informed Traders Make Abnormal Profits?”, Matthew Ma, Xiumin Martin, Matthew Ringgenberg and Guofu Zhou construct and test a long-short information factor (INFO) based on observed trading of firm insiders, short sellers and option traders. Specifically, the INFO portfolio: Is each month long the 10% (decile) of… Keep Reading

Patrick Donohoe introduces his 2018 book, Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: A Financial Strategy to Reignite the American Dream, by stating that the book: “…will teach you many of the principles and strategies to help discover your own path to financial freedom. Most importantly, it will show you the mindset required to carry out a successful… Keep Reading

Should investors consider Bitcoin as a safe haven from turbulent financial markets? In their June 2018 paper entitled “Bitcoin as a Safe Haven: Is It Even Worth Considering?”, Lee Smales and Dirk Baur assess the potential for Bitcoin as a safe haven, focusing on considerations beyond its low return correlations with other assets during times of market… Keep Reading

Is there an exploitable way to predict when short-term stock market return will be negative? In his June 2018 paper entitled “Predictable Downturns”, Carter Davis tests a random forest regression-based forecasting model to predict next-day U.S. stock market downturns. He uses the value-weighted return of a portfolio of the 10 U.S. stocks with the largest market… Keep Reading

Each week the media report U.S. initial and continued unemployment claims (seasonally adjusted) as a potential indicator of future U.S. stock market returns. Do these indicators move the market? To investigate, we focus on weekly changes in unemployment claims during a period of “modern” information dissemination to release-day and next-week stock market returns. By modern… Keep Reading

Are there any gold trading strategies that reliably beat buy-and-hold? In their April 2018 paper entitled “Investing in the Gold Market: Market Timing or Buy-and-Hold?”, Viktoria-Sophie Bartsch, Dirk Baur, Hubert Dichtl and Wolfgang Drobetz test 4,095 seasonal, 18 technical, and 15 fundamental timing strategies for spot gold and gold futures. These strategies switch at the end of each month… Keep Reading

Is it suboptimal to employ the same asset class proxy universe both to exploit momentum and to avoid crashes? In their July 2018 paper entitled “Breadth Momentum and the Canary Universe: Defensive Asset Allocation (DAA)”, Wouter Keller and Jan Willem Keuning modify their Vigilant Asset Allocation (VAA) by substituting a separate “canary” asset class universe for crash protection… Keep Reading

Brian Portnoy introduces his 2018 book, The Geometry of Wealth: How To Shape A Life Of Money And Meaning, by stating that the book is: “…a story told in three parts,…from purpose to priorities to tactics. Each step has a primary action associated with it. The first is adaptation. The second is prioritization. The third is simplification…. Keep Reading

The many factor-based indexes and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that track them now available enable investors to construct multi-factor portfolios piecemeal. Is such piecemeal construction suboptimal? In their July 2018 paper entitled “The Characteristics of Factor Investing”, David Blitz and Milan Vidojevic apply a multi-factor expected return linear regression model to explore behaviors of long-only factor portfolios. They consider six factors: value-weighted… Keep Reading