Investing Research Articles

Is equal weighting (1/n) of portfolio components a good choice? In their November 2014 paper entitled “Is 1/n Really Better Than Optimal Mean-Variance Portfolio?”, Woo Chang Kim, Yongjae Lee and William Ziemba assess 1/n weighting by comparing its performance to the performances of all feasible mean-variance optimal portfolios for different asset universes. By “all feasible,” they mean many long-only mean-variance optimal portfolios… Keep Reading

Does a need to attract attention distort the information offered by online stock bloggers? Does competition among them suppress or amplify this distortion? In their November 2014 paper entitled “Guru Dreams and Competition: An Anatomy of the Economics of Blogs”, Yi Dong, Massimo Massa and Hong Zhang investigate whether: (1) stock bloggers are informative; and, (2) competition among them enhances the quality of information… Keep Reading

Do predictable monthly outflows from and inflows to mutual funds drive the Turn-of-the-Month (TOTM) effect, a concentration of positive stock market returns around the turns of calendar months? In their November 2014 paper entitled “Dash for Cash: Month-End Liquidity Needs and the Predictability of Stock Returns”, Kalle Rinne, Matti Suominen and Lauri Vaittinen explore TOTM with focus on the… Keep Reading

Referring to “Leading Economic Index and the Stock Market”, a subscriber inquired about using the Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index (LEI) for the U.S. to generate long-term U.S. stock market timing signals, as follows:   “How about using the LEI in the following fashion? Buy when the LEI rises by 1.0 % from its lowest point in… Keep Reading

How do the major components of U.S. stock market performance behave over time? In his October 2014 paper entitled “Long-Term Sources of Investment Returns and a Simple Way to Enhance Equity Returns”, Baijnath Ramraika decomposes long-term returns from the U.S. stock market (as proxied by Robert Shiller’s S&P Composite Index) into four components: Dividend yield Inflation Real average… Keep Reading

How diverse are the beliefs of experts on the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM)? In his November paper entitled “CAPM: The Model and 233 Comments about It”, Pablo Fernandez reproduces 52 largely disagreeing and 181 largely agreeing comments solicited from professors, finance professionals and Ph.D. students regarding his prior paper entitled “CAPM: an Absurd Model” (summarized in “Forget CAPM… Keep Reading

Is the difference between upside and downside asset participation ratios relative to a benchmark a useful metric for evaluating asset investment performance? In his June 2014 paper entitled “On the Holy Grail of ‘Upside Participation and Downside Protection’”, Edward Qian defines and investigates the performance implications of the Participation Ratio Difference (PRD) as a measure of combined upside participation and… Keep Reading

How can investors protect portfolios from crashes across asset classes? In the November 2014 version of his paper entitled “Tail Risk Protection in Asset Management”, Cristian Homescu describes tail (crash) risk metrics and summarizes the body of recent research on the effectiveness and costs of alternative tail risk protection strategies. The purpose of these strategies is to… Keep Reading

Is equity factor investing a straightforward path to premium capture and diversification? In their October 2014 paper entitled “Facts and Fantasies About Factor Investing”, Zelia Cazalet and Thierry Roncalli summarize the body of research on factor investing and provide examples to address the following questions: What is a risk factor? Do all risk factors offer attractive premiums? How stable and robust are these… Keep Reading

Is Piotroski’s FSCORE really as effective at picking stocks as indicated in the original study, which screens stocks with high book-to-market ratios to isolate those that will eventually provide high returns? In their April 2014 paper entitled “Implementability of Trading Strategies Based on Accounting Information: Piotroski (2000) Revisited”, Sohyung Kim and Cheol Lee re-examine the FSCORE testing methodology. Their broader… Keep Reading