Investing Research Articles

Do alternative beta (factor-weighted) stock indexes present an exploitable advantage over traditional market capitalization weighting? In their February 2016 paper entitled “Alternative Beta Strategies”, Frank Benham, Roberto Obregon, Edmund Walsh and Timur Yontar analyze performance and practicality aspects of alternative beta stock indexes that target high value, high momentum, low volatility and high quality/profitability premiums. They also model multi-beta portfolios to assess the net benefits… Keep Reading

What are the best ways to buy or sell tail risk protection (crash insurance)? In his May 2015 paper entitled “Should You Buy or Sell Tail Risk Hedges? A Filtered Bootstrap Approach”, Lorenzo Baldassini uses filtered bootstrap simulations to estimate whether and how an investor can enhance an equity index return distribution (a buy-and-hold benchmark) by buying or… Keep Reading

Do reversal, momentum and reversion effects hold among German stocks? In his January 2016 paper entitled “Trading Strategies Based on Past Returns – Evidence from Germany”, Martin Schmidt examines the performance of short-term reversal, intermediate-term momentum, long-term reversion and seasonality strategies in the German stock market. The seasonal strategy considers one-month returns from multiples of 12 months ago…. Keep Reading

Do the 12 yearly signs of the Chinese Zodiac cycle (Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig, Rat, Ox, Tiger) relate individually to stock market behavior? In their January 2016 paper entitled “The Zodiac Calendar and Equity Factor Returns”, Janice Phoeng and Laurens Swinkels calculate four annual equity factor returns for each of the Zodiac… Keep Reading

Does a time series (absolute or intrinsic) momentum strategy work at the stock level? In their January 2016 paper entitled “The Enduring Effect of Time-Series Momentum on Stock Returns Over Nearly 100-Years” Ian D’Souza, Voraphat Srichanachaitrchok, George Wang  and Yaqiong Yao test the significance of time series momentum among individual stocks. Their baseline time series momentum strategy consists of each… Keep Reading

Has the Moore’s Law-driven advance in financial information technology strengthened the hand of Murphy’s Law in markets? In the January 2016 version of his paper entitled “Moore’s Law vs. Murphy’s Law in the Financial System: Who’s Winning?” Andrew Lo reviews big unintended consequences of technology-leveraged finance including fire sales, flash crashes, botched initial public offerings (IPO), catastrophic algorithmic trading… Keep Reading

How do gold futures and gold miner stocks interact? In their January 2016 paper entitled “Are Gold Bugs Coherent?”, Brian Lucey and Fergal O’Connor examine the relationship between gold miner stock behavior (NYSE ARCA Gold Bugs Index) and the price of gold (COMEX gold futures). Specifically, they apply wavelet transforms to analyze the degree of co-movement (coherency) and… Keep Reading

How can trend following (intrinsic or absolute or time series momentum) beat the market, while ostensibly similar return chasing transfers wealth from naive to smart investors? In their January 2016 paper entitled “Return Chasing and Trend Following: Superficial Similarities Mask Fundamental Differences”, Victor Haghani and Samantha McBride offer a plausible and testable definition of return chasing and explore its differences from trend… Keep Reading

Should equity risk premium (ERP) forecasters assume in their models, because stocks always carry risk, that the premium cannot be negative? In their January 2016 paper entitled “Forecasting the Equity Risk Premium: The Ups and the Downs”, Nick Baltas and Dimitris Karyampas examine recent ERP forecasting research, with focus on simple models constrained to positive values. Their baseline model is a… Keep Reading

Do simple ratios such as book-to-market value and earnings-to-market price really identify value stocks? In their January 2016 paper entitled “Facts About Fictional Value Investing”, U-Wen Kok, Jason Ribando and Richard Sloan examine the effectiveness of “value” investing as implemented via sorts on simple fundamental ratios. They investigate interactions of these ratios with firm capitalization and test whether it is the value numerator or the price… Keep Reading