Investing Research Articles

Does a flexible robo advisor (offering automated, passive investment strategies tailored to investor situation/preferences) perform well in comparison to mutual fund/stock portfolios they might replace? If so, what inhibits investors from switching to them? In their November 2016 paper entitled “Robo Advisers and Mutual Fund Stickiness”, Michael Reher and Celine Sun compare actual mutual fund/stock portfolios held… Keep Reading

Does trading in exchange-traded funds (ETF) by authorized participants (who may create and redeem ETF shares by exchanging underlying assets) predict associated ETF returns? In their November 2016 draft paper entitled “ETF Arbitrage and Return Predictability”, David Brown, Shaun Davies and Matthew Ringgenberg examine the relationship between ETF share creation/redemption and ETF returns. For their principal analysis,… Keep Reading

Do changes in the dollar-euro exchange rate reliably interact with the U.S. stock market and gold? For example, do declines in the dollar relative to the euro indicate increases in the dollar value of hard assets? Are the interactions coincident or exploitably predictive? To investigate, we relate changes in the dollar-euro exchange rate to returns… Keep Reading

Is there a unique stock risk factor associated with expectations of a bear market? In the November 2016 version of their paper entitled “Bear Beta”, Zhongjin Lu and Scott Murray relate a put option-based indicator of the risk that the U.S. equity market will enter a bear state to individual stock returns. This indicator is based on two… Keep Reading

Is there a way to tell which corporate executives are manipulating earnings? In their November 2016 paper entitled “Expectations Management and Stock Returns”, Jinhwan Kim and Eric So examine the relationship between firm incentives to manage earnings and stock returns around earnings announcements. They define an expectations management incentives (EMI) indicator that combines three groups of incentives: Attention… Keep Reading

How well does the Morningstar fund rating system (one star to five stars) work? In their November 2016 paper entitled “The Morningstar Rating for Funds: Analyzing the Performance of the Star Rating Globally”, suggested for review by a subscriber, Jeffrey Ptak, Lee Davidson, Christopher Douglas and Alex Zhao analyze the global performance of star ratings in terms of ability to predict… Keep Reading

Bitcoin is a currency based on cryptographic proof rather than traditional trust, with transactions taking place directly between users and recorded in a distributed public ledger. How wild is the exchange rate for this new form of currency? In their November 2016 paper entitled “A Statistical Risk Assessment of Bitcoin and Its Extreme Tail Behaviour”, Joerg Osterrieder and Julian Lorenz… Keep Reading

Is the recent Fama-French augmentation of their classic three-factor (market, size, book-to-market) model of stock returns with profitability and investment factors a major advance? In their November 2016 paper entitled “Five Concerns with the Five-Factor Model”, David Blitz,  Matthias Hanauer, Milan Vidojevic and Pim van Vliet identify five concerns regarding the five-factor model. Based on empirical and theoretical (rationale)… Keep Reading

Does the term structure of crude oil futures predict stock market returns? In their October 2016 paper entitled “Do Oil Futures Prices Predict Stock Returns?”, I-Hsuan Chiang and Keener Hughen examine the ability of crude oil futures prices to predict U.S. stock market returns. They identify the first three principal components of the nearest six oil futures… Keep Reading

Is a passive investor one who holds all securities in their respective market capitalization weights, or one who never trades? In his October 2016 paper entitled “Sharpening the Arithmetic of Active Management”, Lasse Pedersen challenges the proposition that active trading is a zero sum game that produces an average gross return equal to that realized by passive investors…. Keep Reading