Investing Research Articles

Is fundamental valuation of stocks an inherently effective investment approach? In their October 2015 paper entitled “Fundamental Analysis Works”, Sohnke Bartram and Mark Grinblatt test whether fundamental valuation usefully predict stock performance. Each month, they estimate the fair value (market capitalization) of each stock based on linear regression versus the 28 most commonly reported firm accounting variables (14 from the balance… Keep Reading

Do stock limit order books tip the direction of stock price? In their October 2015 paper entitled “Enhancing Trading Strategies with Order Book Signals”, Alvaro Cartea, Ryan Donnelly and Sebastian Jaimungal test the use of buying and selling pressures based on limit order book data to predict the direction, depth and magnitude of near-term stock price… Keep Reading

Is the Fama-French five-factor (market, size, book-to-market, profitability, investment) model of stock returns optimal? In the September 2015 draft of their paper entitled “Choosing Factors”, Eugene Fama and Kenneth French investigate potential improvements to the overall predictive power of their five-factor model. Specifically, they examine: Using a profitability factor based on cash rather than operating profit, or substituting a… Keep Reading

Is there a way to predict when beta anomaly arbitrage (long low-beta stocks and short high-beta stocks will work? In the August 2015 version of their paper entitled “The Booms and Busts of Beta Arbitrage”, Shiyang Huang, Dong Lou and Christopher Polk investigate the power of a metric that measures beta arbitrage activity to predict associated returns. They… Keep Reading

Are higher even moments of asset return distributions useful predictors of future returns? In the September 2015 version of her paper entitled “A Low-Risk Strategy based on Higher Moments in Currency Markets”, Claudia Zunft explores an adaptive currency trading strategy that exploits the predictive power of higher even moments of forward currency exchange rate returns. The strategy is each month… Keep Reading

When does it make sense to exercise equity options early? Does it happen frequently? In the September 2015 version of their paper entitled “Early Option Exercise: Never Say Never”, Mads Jensen and Lasse Pedersen investigate the interaction of investment frictions (shorting, trading and funding costs) and early exercise of equity options. They estimate shorting frictions via… Keep Reading

“Mark Hulbert’s NASDAQ Newsletter Sentiment Index” reviews the usefulness of the Hulbert Stock Newsletter Sentiment Index (HSNSI), which “reflects the average recommended stock market exposure among a subset of short-term market timers tracked by the Hulbert Financial Digest.” Mark Hulbert presents HSNSI as a contrarian signal for future stock returns; when HSNSI is high (low), he views the… Keep Reading

Is there a “trick” to good results for risk parity backtests? In their April 2014 brief research paper entitled “The Risks of Risk Parity”, the Brandes Institute examines the sustainability of a critical performance driver for the risk parity asset allocation approach. This approach weights asset classes such that their expected contributions to overall portfolio risk (volatility) are equal, generally by… Keep Reading

How do those whose jobs involve stock valuation perform this task? In their September 2015 paper entitled “Equity Valuation: A Survey of Professional Practice”, Jerald Pinto, Thomas Robinson and John Stowe report results of a 38-question equity valuation practices survey sent to 13,500 CFA Institute members with equity analysis job responsibilities. They guided respondents through the survey via the following introductory question: “In evaluating… Keep Reading

Are annual stock market winning and losing streaks informative about future market performance? To investigate, we consider up and down annual streaks for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). We look at streaks in two ways: Retrospective (non-overlapping). We know the total duration of each streak. Experienced (real-time and partially overlapping). We know each year how long… Keep Reading